How to spot a discount that is not really a discount

A discount is a comparison, and whoever controls the number being compared against controls the discount. When the retailer supplies both figures, the percentage tells you about their pricing strategy rather than about your saving.

The mechanic

Set a "regular price" that few people ever paid. Sell at the real price. Display the difference as a discount. Nothing here is necessarily dishonest — a product may genuinely have launched at that price two years ago — but the percentage stops describing anything useful about today.

We currently have 308 tracked products where the advertised discount overstates the real one by fifteen percentage points or more. The typical gap between what is claimed and what we measure is 12.0%.

Check one: compare to the market, not to the store

The question is never "what did this store previously charge?" It is "what does this product cost right now, everywhere it is sold?" A 40%-off badge on a price that four other retailers beat is not a deal, it is a headline.

Check two: compare to the typical price over time

If the price has hovered around the same figure for three months, a sale that returns it to that same figure is not a saving. This is the check most people cannot perform, because it needs price history that nobody publishes — which is precisely why we record our own.

The tells

• The "was" price is a round number and the sale price is not.
• The same discount has been running continuously for weeks.
• The product is at the same price at several other stores that are not advertising a sale.
• The discount percentage is dramatic but the absolute saving is small.

What a real discount looks like

Real discounts are usually less dramatic than advertised ones and more concentrated in time: several independent stores cutting price within the same week, an end-of-generation clearance, or genuine oversupply. In the last seven days we recorded verified price changes on {{drops_7d}} products.

The three reference prices, and what each is worth

Almost every crossed-out number is one of three things, and they are not equally meaningful.

The manufacturer's list price. A number set by the brand, often years ago, frequently above what any retailer charges. A discount against list can be a discount to the ordinary street price — which is to say, no discount at all. This is the most common inflated reference, and it is also the most defensible legally, because the list price is real; it is just not a price anyone pays.

The retailer's own former price. More meaningful, if the product genuinely sold at that price recently and for a reasonable period. Much less meaningful if the "former price" ran for a fortnight two years ago, or if it appeared shortly before the sale.

A competitor's current price. Rarely used, and the most useful of the three when it is — because it compares two numbers that both exist today.

Why the absolute figure matters more than the percentage

A percentage tells you about the reference price. The money tells you about your wallet. "40% off" on an inflated reference can be a smaller real saving than "8% off" against a price the market actually charges.

Read the money first, then check the money against what other stores are asking. The percentage is the least informative number on the badge.

What to do in thirty seconds

1. Ignore the badge entirely.

2. Look at the actual price.

3. Compare it to what the product costs at the other stores selling it today.

4. If there is recorded history, compare it to the price the product normally sells for.

Steps three and four are what this site exists to do. Everything on a product page here is built to answer them without you having to open eight tabs.

See the products where the advertised discount and the real one diverge most, or read how we calculate the real saving.