It’s Saturday afternoon and you’re cruising the dishware aisle at your favorite off-price home goods store. You see a serving platter that looks like it should be part of Martha Stewart’s Sunday brunch setting, perfect to present a pile of beautifully baked cranberry orange scones. It’s classy, and so are you.
So you check the price and it’s just $12.99 — a bonafide steal, as the tag claims it was originally $40. How can you not buy this — and five or seven other moderately priced things you want but don’t need — especially when everything you pick up appears to be 50-70% off the retail price?
Many of us are absolutely tantalized by a great deal, but one thing most consumers don’t know is that those “original prices” that are being heavily discounted are sometimes totally bogus.
“I read about a store that had a class-action lawsuit filed against them because they were inflating the original price,” Noah Michelson, co-host of HuffPost’s “Am I Doing It Wrong?” podcast, said on this week’s episode, which features Emily Ruane, HuffPost’s managing editor of commerce and an authority on all things shopping.
“It’s called false reference pricing, and there have been many lawsuits,” Ruane said, swiftly confirming that we’ve all likely been bamboozled at our favorite discount stores.
While this isn’t always the case, Ruane explained, there are some retail categories that warrant a little more skepticism than others when we think we’ve found a great deal.
“Luggage and bedding can be big offenders in the false reference pricing game,” she told us, adding that you can actually sometimes get a better deal on higher-quality bedsheets at a department store.
So how do we know if the original price quoted on the tag is, in fact, authentic?
“Do a reverse Google image search of either the tag for the item or even the item itself and see where else it’s popping up,” Ruane said. “Are you seeing the exact same thing on Poshmark? Or through a third-party reseller like Amazon or a Walmart? Or on the Sam’s Club website?”
Comparing the item and its pricing at other stores — and getting a feel for how rare the item is in the wider market — should instantly tell you if what you have is a special find at a killer price.
Another option to suss out how good of a bargain you’re getting is to use the barcode scanner built into the Amazon app.
“You can scan something and it will pop up on Amazon and tell you how much it is,” Michelson said. “So you can see if it’s $14 at T.J. Maxx and it’s $14 at Amazon, you’re not getting a great deal.”
At the end of the day, the best buy is not necessarily the most deeply discounted one, Ruane reminded us. It’s something high quality out of which you’re actually going to get a lot of use.
“The best things to look for at these stores are brands that you know and trust — things you’ve seen in a store already or that you’ve seen online at a trusted website already.”
Whether you’re in the market for a purse that makes you look more sophisticated than you really are or just a random weird tchotchke for your mantel, the endorphins that a good deal brings are unparalleled. So go forth and prosper — just don’t always believe the hype or fall for a false reference price.
We also chatted with Ruane about what we should avoid buying at off-price stores, why region matters when it comes to snagging certain deals, and where the hell everything at Marshalls, T.J. Maxx and HomeGoods actually comes from.
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