Consumer advocacy
The "Was" Price: How a Discount Gets Invented, and the Four Checks That Catch It
A sale is two numbers, and the one you are meant to look at is the one nobody verifies. Here is where the crossed-out price comes from, why it is often fiction, and a four-step check that takes less time than the checkout.
Every sale listing shows you two prices. The one in big type is what you will pay. The one with a line through it is what you are supposed to believe you would have paid. The first number is checked by your bank. The second is checked by nobody, and that is the whole business model of the season.
Where the crossed-out number comes from
There are four common sources for a “was” price, and only one of them means what you think it means.
The list price. The manufacturer’s suggested retail price, printed on the box or the brand’s own site. For many products nobody has paid it in years. A pair of headphones can carry a list price that was set at launch, two generations ago, and every retailer has sold it below that figure ever since. A discount “off list” is a discount off a number that was never the market price.
The pre-event spike. The price is raised for a few weeks before the sale, then lowered to where it was. The listing now shows a “was” price that is technically true, because the product did sell at that number, briefly, to almost nobody. Price-history charts make this pattern easy to see: a flat line, a short step up, then the “sale” that lands exactly on the flat line.
The derivative model. A product is made specifically for the sale, with a model number one character off the one reviewers tested, a cheaper panel or a smaller battery, and a “was” price borrowed from its better sibling. We wrote about how to read those model numbers in One Word Apart. The short version is that the sale version is a different product and its reference price is for a product you are not buying.
The real recent price. The product actually sold at the higher number for months and is now cheaper. This is the one that matters, and it is the minority.
Why it works on careful people
Anchoring is not a weakness of inattentive shoppers. It is how everyone’s judgment of value works. Shown a product at one price and then a lower one, we evaluate the second number against the first instead of against what the product is worth to us. A mediocre air fryer at a “40% off” price feels like a win even when the final price is the same as a better air fryer sitting next to it with no banner at all.
The sale environment amplifies this with two more pressures. The countdown clock turns a purchase decision into a reaction. And the sheer volume of deals means you cannot research each one, so the discount percentage becomes a proxy for quality. It is a bad proxy. Across the comparisons on this site, the product we tell readers to skip is the cheapest product in its lineup far more often than it is the most expensive, which is another way of saying that the deepest-looking discount is frequently on the product least worth having.
The four checks
Each of these takes under a minute. Together they catch nearly every invented discount.
1. Check the price history, not the “was” price. Search the exact product name plus “price history”. Several free trackers chart what major retailers actually charged over the past year. Read the chart like this: if today’s price is at or below the lowest point on the chart, the deal is real. If today’s price is the line the chart has been sitting on for months, you are looking at the normal price with a costume on.
2. Check the model number against the review. Find the number on the sale listing and compare it character for character with the one in a review you trust. A suffix like “-S”, “B” or a different final digit usually means a different product. If the review does not mention that exact number, assume the sale product is not the one reviewed.
3. Check what we said about the product itself. The discount changes the price. It does not change whether the product is any good. Our Black Friday page lists, for the categories where sale cuts are genuinely deep, the product that won our comparison and the one we would skip. If the sale item is on the skip list, the banner is irrelevant. If it is the pick, you have your answer and can stop reading.
4. Check the return window. Sale purchases often carry different return terms, and the window matters more when you bought fast. Confirm the return period and whether a restocking fee applies before the countdown clock does your thinking for you. We made the longer case in Return Policy Is a Feature.
The decision rule
Ignore the number with the line through it. Ask two questions instead: is this a product I would buy at the final price if no sale were happening, and is the final price lower than what it actually sold for recently? Both yes, buy it. Either no, it is not a deal. It is a price.
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