The fake bargains of sales season and Black Friday

A crossed-out price does something to your head: it turns a purchase into a saving, even when the item didn't interest you the day before. Sales season and Black Friday largely rely on this mechanism, and it works, or shops wouldn't devote so many window displays to it.

What the percentage doesn't tell you

A 40% discount on something you didn't need is still spending 60% of nothing. The percentage shown measures the gap against a reference price, not the item's actual usefulness to you. Some retailers even inflate that reference price before the sales period, which makes the real discount far smaller than it looks.

The only question that matters

Before confirming a purchase during a promotion, one question is enough: did I want this item before I saw the crossed-out price? If the answer is yes, the deal is probably real. If the answer is no, or if you're hesitating, it isn't a bargain, it's a purchase triggered by the packaging of the discount.

This is where a list kept up in advance changes things: if you keep your wants noted throughout the year, you arrive at the sales with an already sorted shortlist, rather than discovering wants on the spot, in the moment, under the pressure of displayed urgency.

Tricks worth spotting

• The countdown that pushes you to decide in a few minutes rather than think it over.
• The stock shown as almost gone, whether it's real or not.
• The reference price inflated a few weeks before the discount.
• The bundled deal, which makes it hard to work out the real price of each item.

Buying during the sales, without getting caught out

Nothing stops you buying during the sales — an item you genuinely wanted, at a genuinely lower price, is still a good deal. The problem isn't the timing, it's the order of the steps: decide first what you want, then check whether the price drops, rather than letting the price decide for you what you want.

Common questions