Shopping Tips · 5 min read · 2026-09-12
How to Actually Tell If a Sale Is a Real Deal
Inflated "was" prices are everywhere. Here's how to check whether a discount is genuine before you buy.
By DealsCanvas Editorial
Retailers know shoppers respond to big percentage-off numbers, and a strike-through price is one of the easiest things to inflate. Before trusting a discount, check the item's price history — a site that's shown a product at the "sale" price for most of the last month isn't really discounting it.
A quick way to sanity-check any deal: search the exact product name plus the word "price history" or use a browser extension that tracks it. If the current price matches what it's been for weeks, the surrounding banner is decoration, not a real markdown.
Genuine deals tend to cluster around predictable moments — end-of-season clearance, a named sale event, or a retailer clearing stock ahead of a new collection. Discounts that appear with no clear reason and disappear just as suddenly are worth a second look before you check out.