this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
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[–] chiliedogg 19 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Fun fact, it's illegal to say something is on sale when it isn't lower than their normal price, so they'll use weasel words you can watch out for.

"Compare to", "originally", "Hot Deal", "Special Buy", "[Insert holiday] special", etc.

[–] shalafi 6 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

Illegal where? I doubt that's a federal law in the US.

[–] helpImTrappedOnline 6 points 7 hours ago

I doubt that's a regulated federal law in the US.

About as useful as our warranty laws

[–] chiliedogg 3 points 8 hours ago

It is. Here's the link to the rules on deeptive pricing in the Code of Federal Regulations.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-233

[–] [email protected] 2 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

going off memory, I believe it depends on region, but yes federally I don't think it cares as long as the price is correctly shown and the "was price" is not higher than it had ever been listed as

[–] rayquetzalcoatl 12 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Wait, "hot deal" and "originally" get around this?? How literally is that law worded?? "Hot deal" is definitely just a synonym but "originally" is even more explicitly a lie than "on sale"!

[–] chiliedogg 3 points 8 hours ago

"Originally" just means it used to be that price. at some point, not that it's still the regular price.

That's something that might be used on an older model laptop or cell phone.

"Hot Deal" can me something that's considered valuable even at regular price. The Black Friday products that are produced specifically to be cheap for Black Friday can fall into this category. I worked at a retailer that had $10 blue jeans shipped in just for that sale every year, so $10 was their regular price even though they were a "good value".