You've seen the page before. A product listing screams "60% OFF" above a strikethrough price that looks suspiciously round — say, $299.99 — with the "deal" price sitting at a tidier $119.99. The visual is dramatic. The savings feel real. You add it to your cart.

Then you go back two weeks later and the price is still $119.99. The crossed-out $299.99 is still there. The "deal" is still on. It always was. It always will be.

That isn't a discount. It's a baseline price wearing a costume.

Spotting the costume version of a deal isn't hard once you know what to look for. There are three checks, and together they take about thirty seconds. None of them require a tool you don't already have. Walking through them turns "I think this is a good price" into "I know this is a good price" — and on the days the answer is no, it saves you from a purchase you'd quietly regret.

Has the price actually moved?

The first thing to look at is the strikethrough price itself, because in most cases it's fiction.

That number — labeled "List Price" or "Was" — is almost never what real customers paid recently. It's the manufacturer's suggested retail price, set at the seller's discretion, and there is no requirement that anyone has ever paid it. A seller can list a $40 charger with a "list price" of $200 and a "deal price" of $40, and the page is technically accurate the way a magic trick is technically accurate.

What actually matters is the price history. What has this exact product sold for over the last thirty days? Ninety days? Six months? If today's price is at or near the lowest the product has ever been, the discount is real. If today's price is the same as it's been every single day for the last quarter, the discount is theater.

The simplest free way to check is CamelCamelCamel. Paste the Amazon URL into their search box and you'll see a chart of every price the product has been listed at, going back years. The shape of that chart tells you everything you need to know in about three seconds. A flat line at the current price? It's not a sale. A real dip below the trailing average? That's the genuine article.

This is the first signal our scoring engine looks at on every Amazon deal we surface. The flat-line costume deals never make it to our homepage — only the products that have actually moved.

Is it cheaper anywhere else?

Amazon's "list price" is Amazon's claim about what something is worth. The market's claim is what the same product costs everywhere else.

Before you buy, open two more tabs. The first should be the brand's official website. The second should be a direct competitor — Walmart for general consumer goods, Best Buy for electronics, Target for home and decor. Search for the same product, the same model number, the same SKU.

If Amazon's "deal" price is lower than what the brand itself charges and lower than the competitor's regular price, you're looking at a real markdown. If Amazon's "deal" is the same as everyone's regular price, you're looking at marketing. And if Amazon's "deal" is somehow higher than the regular price elsewhere — which happens more often than it should — the entire claim is fiction and you should buy from whoever's actually cheaper.

This step sounds obvious. People skip it constantly. The reason is psychological: once you've decided you want something, opening another tab feels like an obstacle. But thirty seconds of comparison shopping is the difference between paying the real market price and paying Amazon's suggested fantasy price.

Who's actually selling it?

The third question is the one that catches the most people, because the answer is buried halfway down the page in small grey type.

Every Amazon listing has a "Sold by" line. Sometimes the seller is the brand itself, which is the safest scenario — direct from the manufacturer, full warranty, easy returns. Sometimes the seller is Amazon.com, which is also fine, because Amazon's own inventory comes with their full guarantee. And sometimes the seller is a string of letters and numbers that looks like someone fell asleep on their keyboard, which is when you should slow down.

Third-party sellers are not all bad. Plenty of legitimate small businesses use Amazon as their storefront, and there's nothing wrong with buying from them. But unfamiliar third-party sellers are also where almost all of the counterfeit goods, gray-market imports, and bait-and-switch listings live. A 40% off "deal" from XGreatDealQ-9KsD on a brand-name electronic isn't a steal — it's a coin flip on whether you'll receive the real product, a clone, or a box of nothing.

When the listing also mixes "Used – Like New" pricing with new-condition pricing in the same view, the headline number is almost always the used unit. The new one is more expensive. People click through expecting the lower price, see the higher one at checkout, and either buy anyway out of momentum or spend the next ten minutes trying to figure out what happened.

The two-line check here is straightforward. Look at "Sold by" and "Ships from." If both are the brand or Amazon, you're in the safe lane. If both are unfamiliar handles, the risk is real and you should either do the research or move on. There's almost always another listing for the same product from a more reputable seller, even if it costs a couple of dollars more.

Putting it together

The framework, once you've internalized it, becomes second nature. A real deal is one where the price has actually dropped recently, where it's cheaper than the same product at two other retailers, and where it's sold by the brand or by Amazon itself. Two out of three is usually enough. One out of three means you're being marketed to, not given a deal.

We automate all three checks in the iDealsHunt scoring engine, which is why the products that make it onto our homepage have already been through this filter. But the framework is yours to take anywhere — to other deal sites, to your own searches, to the next time someone forwards you a link they swear is the steal of the century. Fifteen seconds of price-history check, fifteen seconds of competitor comparison, three seconds of seller verification, and you'll know whether to buy or close the tab.

Most of the time, the answer is to close the tab. That's not a discouraging conclusion — it's a freeing one. The fewer fake deals you fall for, the more your money is available for the real ones when they show up.

Found a deal worth flagging? Send it to us — we'll take a look.