How to read a was-price
By Venkata Siva Ramakrishna Naidu. Published 2026-10-20. Updated 2026-10-20.
How we choose products: rows come from in-stock affiliate feeds that have a name, a price, and a photo when the shop sent one. We do not test the products, and a higher commission does not move a shop up the list.
A was-price is only useful when it could have been a real selling price. This page explains the rule we apply.
What we show
If the current price is lower than the was-price, the was-price is under three times the current price, and the gap is at least 5 percent and under 70 percent, we may show a small percent-off badge. That is a display rule in the site, not a statement that the shop charged the higher price yesterday.
The was-price comes from the feed when the feed sends one. We do not type recommended prices in by hand and we do not scrape a manufacturer’s website to fill a gap.
What we refuse to show
A was-price that is about five times the selling price produces a theatrical 80 percent badge. When every card in a rail shows that same pattern, it is not a set of independent promotions. The badge is hidden. The product can still be listed at its current price if the rest of the row is acceptable.
We do not ‘correct’ the was-price to a number we think is fair. We either show a plausible one or we show none. Inventing a fair was-price would be another fiction.
What you should do on the shop’s site
The shop may show a different was-price, a multibuy, or a voucher. Those can be real and they can be noise. Read them there. Our badge is only about the two numbers in the feed.
If you came through Visit retailer, that click is an affiliate hop. It does not add a fee and it does not validate the was-price. The disclosure is on the affiliate page.
Why /deals is cautious
A deals page that is a wall of identical percent-off badges teaches shoppers the wrong lesson. Until the feed’s was-prices look like individual promotions, the deals page is kept out of the sitemap. You can still open it. Do not treat it as a curated sale we have verified.
Price history, where a product page has more than one recorded point from the catalogue, is the more honest picture. We do not draw a fake history from a single was-price.
A was-price is a claim about the past
A strikethrough price says the item used to be higher, or that a recommended price was higher. Those are different claims and shops do not always say which. A feed gives us a number in a was-price field. It does not give us a history we can swear to. So this site shows a discount badge only when the higher number is plausible next to the current price: higher, but not a wild multiple, and not a tiny gap that rounds into a boast. A fixed five-times pattern is hidden. So is a badge around eighty percent off when that is what the multiple produces.
If you do not see a badge, that does not mean the current price is high or low. It means we will not dress the number up. Look at the live price and at the other shops on the page. Two shops at a similar current price tell you more than one shop with a theatrical was-price. This is a display rule in the website, written so a feed glitch does not become a wall of identical deals.
Why some deals pages look quiet
The deals page is held back from Google’s index until was-prices are trustworthy enough to be a public list. You can still open it from the site and see price cuts when the feed and the plausibility rule agree. If they do not agree, the page says there is nothing to show rather than filling itself with fake urgency. An outage is a different message from an honest empty list. One means we could not reach the catalogue. The other means we could, and we will not invent cuts.
Lowest prices are not the same thing as discounts. A low current price with no was-price is just a low current price. It can be a small item, a refill, or a genuine cheap product. The homepage only uses figures that survive the same kind of sanity check. When the stats block has nothing reliable, it stays hidden. We would rather show no count than a zero that looks like a broken shop, or a count from a different source than the one on the about page.
How to read a badge when one is shown
Read the current price first. Then read the was-price as ‘the feed says it was higher’, not as ‘you will save this much at the till’. Delivery can erase a small gap. A bundle mismatch can erase a large one. If the badge and the title disagree with a second shop that has no badge and a similar current price, trust the pair of current prices more. Open both shops. See which product is actually in the basket.
Do not refresh the page hoping the percent climbs. We do not run a countdown. If the feed updates and the was-price stops being plausible, the badge disappears. That is the rule working. If you already clicked Visit retailer, you are on the shop’s site and their basket is the price that matters. Our page can be behind the shop by the time you check out. That lag is normal for a feed.
What we will not do with prices
We will not write a ‘compare from’ price that is the same on every card. A hero price has to be that product’s live price, and a line about comparing shops only appears when more than one shop is actually on the offer. We will not draw a price history from a single was-price. A chart needs real history points from the feed. One strikethrough is not a chart.
We will not pick the shop that pays more commission and call it the best price. The order you see follows the live figures we stored, after we have removed shops and titles that look like marketplaces or replicas. You still need to read the shop. The badge is a hint that a higher number was in the feed and looked plausible. It is not a promise, a test, or a reason to skip the title.
A worked example without invented numbers
Suppose two shops list the same model and only one shows a was-price. Read both current prices. If they are close, the badge is not doing much work and you can choose on delivery and returns. If the shop with the badge is far cheaper, read the title again for a missing accessory, a refurbished grade, or a smaller size. The badge never replaces that reading. If neither shop shows a badge, you have not lost information. You have the live prices, which is what you pay.
Suppose every was-price in a feed is a fixed multiple of the current price. The rule hides those badges across the site so the deals page does not become a wall of identical percents. You may still see the products at their current price elsewhere in the catalogue. You should not see a bright discount that came from that multiple. If you do, it is a bug worth reporting to the contact address, with the product URL, not a reason to rush the checkout.
Visit retailer links on the category pages are affiliate links. Read the affiliate disclosure.