How to Tell a Real Deal From a Fake Discount: 6 Checks That Take a Minute

RunRunDeals earns a commission from some links on our site. This particular page has
nothing to sell you — it is the checklist we run before we put anything on our
deals page.

A discount is a claim, not a fact. “70% off” tells you what a retailer says the price
used to be, and the retailer chose that number. Here is how to check the claim in under a minute.

1. Look at the price history, not the percentage

The single most useful habit in online shopping: before you buy, look at what the item
has cost over the last six months. Free price-history trackers exist for most major retailers, and browser extensions
will show you a chart on the product page itself.

What you are looking for is simple. If today’s “sale” price is roughly where the price has
been sitting all year, there is no sale — the list price is decoration. If today’s price is clearly below the band the
item normally trades in, that is a real markdown, no matter what percentage the badge claims.

2. Distrust the crossed-out number

Manufacturers set a suggested retail price. Nobody is obliged to charge it, and in many
categories nobody ever does. Small brands in particular will register a high list price precisely so that a permanent
“60% off” badge can sit next to it.

A quick tell: if a product has never, in its entire listing history, sold at the crossed-out
price, that price is a marketing device. Compare against the street price — what the item actually goes for —
and the discount usually shrinks dramatically.

3. Do the unit-price arithmetic

Percentages hide size. A “40% off” pack of batteries can cost more per battery than the
undiscounted pack next to it, because the discounted pack is smaller. Supermarkets have printed unit prices on shelf labels
for decades for exactly this reason; online listings rarely do.

Divide the price by the count, the ounce, the square foot. Then compare. It takes ten seconds
and it is the check that catches the most bad deals.

4. Know what a clipped coupon is doing

A large share of steep marketplace discounts are not price cuts at all. They are coupons that
you must tick a box to apply. Two consequences follow. First, if you forget, you pay full price — which is the point of the
mechanism. Second, a coupon can be pulled at any moment without the listing changing, so the “50% off” you read this morning
may simply not exist this afternoon.

Coupon discounts are real money. They are just less stable than a shelf-price cut, and they
should make you less willing to treat the headline number as a fact about the product.

5. Check who is actually selling it

On a marketplace, the retailer’s name at the top of the page is not necessarily the seller.
Look for the “sold by” and “ships from” lines. A deep discount from an unfamiliar seller, on a product with a returns window
that ends before you would realistically notice a defect, is not a bargain — it is a lottery ticket.

The corollary is a genuinely useful heuristic: a modest discount sold directly by the retailer
often beats a huge discount from a seller you have never heard of.

6. Wait for the calendar if you can

Most categories have a predictable low point. Grills and patio furniture bottom out in late
summer. Televisions fall before the Super Bowl and again in November. mattress-deals/" title="Best mattress deals" class="rrd-auto-link">Mattresses discount around the long weekends. laptop-deals/" title="Best laptop deals" class="rrd-auto-link">Laptops
drop during back-to-school and again on Black Friday.

If the thing you want is not urgent, the largest discount available to you is usually patience —
and it costs nothing. Our buying guides note the seasonal low point for each
category we cover.

The sixty-second version

1. Pull up the price history. Is today below the normal band?
2. Ignore the crossed-out price. What is the street price?
3. Divide by the count. What does one unit cost?
4. Is there a coupon to clip? Then the price is conditional.
5. Who is the seller, and what is the return window?
6. Is this the month this category is cheap?

If a deal survives all six, it is a deal. If it fails the first two, the percentage on the badge
is telling you about the retailer’s pricing strategy, not about your savings.

Where to go next

• Today’s hand-checked deals — the ones that survived this list.
• Everything under $25
• Buying guides, including when each category hits its seasonal low.
• Military, teacher, student and senior discount programs

Last updated July 10, 2026.