Fake 'Was' Prices: How Retailers Inflate Discounts

You've seen it a hundred times: "Was £80, now £40 — 50% off!" The discount looks huge. But if that item only ever sold for £45, the "£80" is fiction, and your "50% off" is really about 11%. This is the inflated reference price, and it's the oldest trick in retail.

How the trick works

A retailer sets a high "RRP" or "was" price that the product barely ever sold at — sometimes for a token few days, sometimes never at scale — then runs a permanent "sale" against it. The strikethrough does the persuading; the real price barely moves.

What the UK rules say

This isn't just sharp practice — it can be unlawful. Under UK consumer protection rules (the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations, now backed by the stronger enforcement powers of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024), a "was" price has to be genuine: it should reflect a real, recent selling price, not a number invented to make a discount look bigger. Regulators have repeatedly pulled retailers up on exactly this.

How to see through it in seconds

• Ignore the strikethrough. Judge the price you'd actually pay, on its own.
• Compare across shops. If the "sale" price is just the normal price elsewhere, there's no deal.
• Be wary of permanent sales. If something's been "50% off" for months, the lower price is the price.

Why we don't rank by discount %

Because it's the single easiest number to fake. Shopperazzi ranks by genuine popularity and shows the lowest price across the shops that stock an item — so you're comparing real prices, not marketing.