How to tell a real discount from a fake one

Most sale badges compare today's price to a number the shop chose. That number might be what the item sold for last month, or it might be a recommended retail price nobody has ever paid, set by the brand and used by every stockist as a starting point to cut from.

Both look identical on the page: a struck-through figure, a percentage, a colour. Nothing in the presentation distinguishes a genuine reduction from a decoration, which is precisely why the presentation is used.

A genuine discount has a history behind it. The item sold at one price for a stretch of time, then moved down, and the new price is below what it actually cost before, not below a figure invented for the comparison.

That is checkable, but only with a record kept over time. It is the reason this site records a price every day rather than reading the badge, and the reason a product page here will decline to call something a good price when there is not enough history to support the claim.

The permanent sale. An item that has been reduced continuously for months is not reduced; that is its price. The badge is doing work the number is not.

The inflated anchor. A recommended retail price set high makes every subsequent cut look generous. Watch for items where no retailer anywhere has ever charged the crossed-out figure.

The narrow window. A price raised shortly before a sale, then cut during it, can end up roughly where it started while advertising a substantial reduction. This is why the shape of a price over months tells you more than the size of a percentage today.

Compare against what the item has actually cost, not against the crossed-out figure. Compare the total including shipping rather than the headline, since a lower price with higher delivery is common and easy to miss.

Then compare across retailers on the same day. The same item at the same moment often carries different prices at different shops, and the gap is frequently larger than the discount being advertised by any one of them.