SAN DIEGO — ‘Tis the season for great shopping deals, right? According to a new study, bogus discounts and fake sales are more pervasive than ever.
As hordes of shoppers visit retail and department stores this holiday season looking for steals and deals, many of these sales aren’t sales because some items always have the same markdowns. The nonprofit, Consumers’ Checkbook claims “sale prices are rarely real deals.” The group spent more than eight months tracking prices at 25 major retailers and found that most discounts are “attempts to mislead.”
Checkbook found that most sale prices, even those that advertise significant savings, are bogus discounts, with retailers offering the same “sale price” more than half the time, and oftentimes, these fake sales never end. At many retailers, the “regular price” or “list price” is seldom, if ever, what customers pay.
The nonprofit calls this “deceptive advertising.” These special-but-not-really-special discounts are all designed to make you feel so good about what you’re paying that you’ll snap up more stuff while you’re at it.
This year, Checkbook’s researchers tracked the prices offered by 25 national chains for 25 products at each store, expanding on similar studies performed in 2015 and 2018. Nearly all the stores they checked – 21 out of 25 – advertised sale prices more than half the time.
According to Checkbook, the most egregious pricing practices came from Amazon, Banana Republic, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Foot Locker, GAP, Nordstrom, Old Navy, Wayfair, and William Sonoma. At these stores, most of the items tracked were always or almost always on sale.
They say only Apple, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Costco conducted consistently legit sales, with Target not far behind as what they call a “borderline” case.
So when it comes to shopping, Checkbook says “be weary” of sale prices because they’re not always that. Our best tool for finding the best deal is comparison shopping at different stores.
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