How to tell a real discount from a fake one

A discount is a claim about two numbers: what something used to cost, and what it costs now. Retailers control both. The second number is real, because it is what you will be charged. The first is often whatever makes the second look best, which is why a percentage on its own tells you almost nothing.

The anchor is the part that gets manipulated

The most common trick is not lowering the price, it is raising the reference price. A product sits at a steady figure for months, jumps sharply for a week or two, then returns to roughly where it always was — and is now advertised as heavily reduced. Nothing about what you pay has improved. The only thing that changed is the number it is being compared against.

Manufacturer list price gets used the same way. List price is a suggestion, and for some categories it is a suggestion nobody has followed in years. A product whose list price is far above its normal street price will always appear to be on a large discount, permanently, because the comparison was never meaningful in the first place.

Check the price history, not the badge

The single most useful habit is looking at what a product has actually cost over the past few months rather than what the page says today. A genuine reduction looks like a step down from a stable band the item really traded in. A fake one looks like a return to normal after a brief spike.

• Look for a flat band the price held for weeks, then compare today against that band rather than against the crossed-out figure.
• Treat a single short spike immediately before a sale as evidence against the discount, not for it.
• Be suspicious when the same item is permanently on offer. A discount that never ends is the actual price.
• Check whether the low price is tied to a specific seller or condition rather than the product itself.

Percentage off is the wrong measure on cheap items

Seventy percent off a nine dollar item saves you six dollars. Twenty percent off a six hundred dollar item saves you a hundred and twenty. Percentages are how deals are advertised because large percentages are easy to find on low-value goods, but the number that matters to you is what stays in your account. Judge an offer by the money saved first and the percentage second.

Watch what the discount is attached to

A price is not one number, it is a bundle: the item, the seller, the shipping, the condition, and the return terms. A reduction on the item can be quietly offset elsewhere. Marketplace listings from unfamiliar sellers, open-box or renewed condition, longer delivery windows, and restocking fees on returns all change what the offer is worth, and none of them appear in the percentage.

Compare across retailers before deciding

The fastest sanity check on any claimed discount is what somebody else is charging for the same thing right now. If three other retailers sell it near the discounted figure, the discount is mostly a story about the reference price. If the others are meaningfully higher, the reduction is probably real.

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What we do with this

Every drop we list is checked against the listing's own recent price band before it is published, and drops that only look large because of a brief spike are discarded. It is the check that removes the largest share of candidates, and it is the reason our list is shorter than most.