Fake Discounts: The Truth Marketing Won’t Tell You

Most sales? Well, they're not sales. There are six ways a discount lies to you, and every one of them has a ten-second check. I'm going to give you all six in a second.

I'm Allen Stafford, I help people think clearly in a noisy world, and this is Think Sharper. I spent 30 years in marketing, and I've built most of what you're about to see. So by the end of this video, you'll be able to look at any sale sign and know, before you buy, whether the discount is actually real.

All right. Number one is "up to," as in "save up to 50%." Here's how it works. Your eyes land on the 50. The "up to" is two small words in front of it, and you skip them almost every time. But the 50% is the best case, for one lucky item in the back corner of the store. Your item is probably more like 10% off, and the 10% is what the sign was legally promising the entire time. The government actually tested this. They showed people an ad for windows that said "save up to 47%," and a large share of those people walked away believing they'd get the 47%. The agency's conclusion was that if you say "up to," people hear the top number as a promise. So what do you do? When you see "up to," say the sentence out loud with the smaller number. Something like, "Some items are 10% off." That's the real sign.

Number two: the permanent sale. This is the one where a price tag shows a big number crossed out and a smaller number next to it. The trick is that the crossed-out number was never really the price. Nobody ever paid it. It exists so the real price looks like a bargain. Now, this one has been in court. Back in 2016, the city of Los Angeles sued four of the biggest department store chains in the country over this exact practice. One example from the complaint was a necklace advertised at 75% off an original price of $120. According to the city, the necklace went on sale online at $30 and never sold for more than $30 in the five months that followed. But to be fair, an old price can be real. If the store sold it at the higher number, let's say last month, that discount is honest. The tell is when the crossed-out number has no date on it and the sale never ends. So what do you do? If the sale has been running every time you've visited the store or the site, the sale price is the price. Decide as if the crossed-out number isn't there.

Number three is the countdown. Let's say you're on a checkout page online, and there's a clock that says something like "Offer ends in 9 minutes and 40 seconds." Your heart starts pumping a little bit, and you click Buy. Here's the thing: reload the page. On a lot of these sites, the clock starts over. There was no deadline. The deadline was you. And regulators have named this one. The FTC's 2022 report on manipulative web design lists countdown timers on offers that aren't actually time-limited as a deceptive design element. So what do you do? Reload. If the clock resets, you've got all the time in the world. Come back and buy it when you're ready.

Number four is the coupon you had to earn. "Give us your email for 10% off." "Install the app for 15% off." "Share it with a friend for 20% off." That's not a discount. That's actually a purchase. You're paying with your inbox, your phone storage and your friend's inbox. And the 10% off is often set with the 10% already built into the price. I've built these. The math on the back end is simple: the email address is worth more to the company than the 10%, or the offer wouldn't exist. So what do you do? Log out of the site and check the price in a private window. If it's the same, the coupon was the only thing you were being sold.

Number five: "Members save more." It's the loyalty card, or the free membership, or the rewards program. Same trick as number four, but it's a longer game. The discount is real, but what it costs is a record of everything you buy, which is worth more than the discount over a year, and a steady stream of reasons to come back. This one's fine when you'd already shop at that store anyway. If you're already in the store every week, take the card. Just know what you're actually trading for it. But what do you do if you're not? Ask yourself one question at the sign-up screen: would I have come to the store, or bought here, without this?

Number six is the stack that isn't. "Extra 20% off clearance." "Buy one, get one free." Doorbusters on top of the sale on top of the coupon. The layers feel like they add up to a steal, right? They add up to whatever the store decided you'd pay before it printed the first sign. And buy one, get one is the clearest version. In the same Los Angeles case I talked about earlier, the city alleged that one retailer advertised "buy one, get one free" on products that were never sold as a single item at the listed price. So there was no "one" to buy. There was a two-pack with a marketing name on it. So what do you do? Start from the receipt, not the sign. What did I pay, for how many, all in?

Six tricks, one tool. On this channel, we run something called the Source Test on any claim before we trust it. It's three questions, and for a discount, here's how it goes. The stake: who set this number, and what do they get if I believe it? A sale sign is written by the person who wants the sale. Then the source: what's the discount measured against? A real price from last month, or a number nobody paid? And then the steelman: what's the honest reason this might be a real deal? Sometimes there is one. Clearance is real. End of season is real. But if you can't find the honest reason in ten seconds, there probably isn't one. And the first move, before all three: say the real price out loud. Not the percentage. The number you'll actually pay today, all in.

If you want the six checks on one card you can keep on your phone, grab the free download. The link is in the description below. Take it with you the next time you see a sale sign. And if you want every trick stores use in one place, I've got the playlist right here.
Think Sharper. Stay Sovereign.