Every gadget listing shows you two prices: the one you pay and the one you supposedly saved. Only one of those is real. The crossed-out number is set by whoever wrote the listing, and on marketplaces it is frequently a price the item never actually sold at. Learning to check it takes about ninety seconds and it is the single highest-value habit in consumer tech buying.

The strike-through price is a claim, not a fact

Manufacturers publish a suggested retail price, but that number stops mattering the moment a product has been on the market for a few months. What you see struck out on a product page is usually a "list price" the seller entered, and sellers have wide latitude in choosing it. The Federal Trade Commission's guidance on comparative pricing says a reference price should reflect an actual, recent, prevailing price, but on large marketplaces enforcement is light and the practical result is that a headline discount tells you almost nothing.

Treat the percentage off as decoration. The only number that matters is what the item has actually sold for recently.

Check price history before you check the discount

Browser tools such as Keepa and CamelCamelCamel chart the historical selling price on Amazon, and Google Shopping shows a price range across retailers. Pull up the twelve-month chart and ask two questions. First, what is the twelve-month low? Second, where does today's price sit relative to the median?

A genuine deal is at or near the twelve-month low, or matches the low set during the last major sale event. If today's price is within a few dollars of the median, the "45 percent off" banner is describing a discount from a price nobody paid. On seasonal categories such as televisions, robot vacuums, and laptops, the real lows cluster in a handful of windows: the week of a major summer sale event, the stretch from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, and the January clearance of last year's model.

Watch for the model number that is one character off

This is the trick that catches careful shoppers. Large retailers commission derivative models built specifically for sale events. The 55-inch television in the doorbuster looks identical to the one that reviewers praised, and its model number differs by a single letter or digit. The differences are in the parts you cannot see in a photo: fewer full-bandwidth HDMI ports, a 60 Hz panel instead of 120 Hz, a dimmer backlight, less local dimming, a slower processor.

The defense is mechanical. Copy the complete model number from the listing, paste it into a search engine, and confirm that the reviews you are relying on name that exact string. If the reviews name a different string, you are looking at a different product.

Do the bundle math yourself

Bundles hide price increases well. When earbuds are thrown in "free" with a tablet, look up the standalone street price of both items and add them. Often the bundle costs more than buying the two separately from the same retailer on the same day. The same applies to third-party accessory bundles on cameras and drones, where a memory card and a nylon case worth thirty dollars are attached to a body priced eighty dollars above the going rate.

Read who is actually selling it

On a marketplace listing, find the "sold by" line. A third-party seller you have never heard of may be shipping grey-market stock, which means the manufacturer warranty may not be honored in your country. Check three things before you commit:

  • Return window in days, and whether it is the retailer's standard window or a shorter seller-specific one
  • Restocking fee, which is commonly 15 percent on opened electronics
  • Whether the warranty is from the manufacturer or from the seller

Refurbished stock is often an excellent value, but the grading language matters. "Manufacturer refurbished" or "certified refurbished" generally carries a real warranty of 90 days to a year. "Seller refurbished" and "open box" are unregulated terms and can mean anything from a returned unit that was never opened to a repaired unit with cosmetic damage.

The ninety-second checklist

  • Pull the twelve-month price chart and find the low
  • Confirm the exact model number matches the reviews you read
  • Price the bundle components separately
  • Read the "sold by" line and the return window
  • Check whether a coupon on the page stacks with the sale price at checkout
  • If the deal is time-limited and you cannot finish this list, skip it

Scarcity messaging exists to stop you from doing exactly this. A countdown timer that resets when you reload the page is not information. If a price is genuinely good, it will survive ninety seconds of checking.