Was-price statistics

A markdown quotes a "was" price. US and EU rules on former prices tie that price to one the item actually sold at. The registry records every product's price every day since 2026-07-19, so for each item on sale it can check whether it ever did.

Recomputed from the registry 6 hours ago.

87%

Markdowns quoting a "was" price never charged

of 65,728 of 75,575 marked-down items with 30+ days of price history

1,158

Stores where most markdowns are like that

of 1,304 stores with 10+ such items (89%)

Stores where every "was" price was charged at some point

of 1,304 stores with 10+ such items (2%)

125,900

Items marked down right now

of at 2,824 stores; 75,575 of them have 30+ days of history

By niche

Fashion & Apparel: 84%of 29,281 of 35,002 items at 812 stores
Beauty & Skincare: 89%of 15,964 of 17,885 items at 623 stores
Home & Kitchen: 89%of 13,544 of 15,239 items at 322 stores
Food & Drink: 93%of 4,128 of 4,459 items at 181 stores
Supplements & Nutrition: 94%of 2,811 of 2,990 items at 169 stores

How it is measured

Days of price history held: 104of one price per product per day
History needed for a verdict: 30 daysof shorter histories are left out, not counted either way

"Never charged" means the highest price recorded on any day is below the "was" price. It says nothing about prices before the history began, in other currencies or on other sales channels. The FTC Guides Against Deceptive Pricing (16 CFR 233.1) and the EU Omnibus Directive (2019/2161, lowest price in the prior 30 days) both tie a "was" price to prices actually charged; this page measures the fact, not a legal conclusion about any store.

How these numbers are produced

Every figure on this page is computed from the registry itself — public product feeds, policy pages the stores publish, and our own daily price snapshots. Nothing is bought, modelled or estimated, and a number is only printed when its denominator can be printed beside it. The same data is downloadable as registry.csv and documented on the dataset page.

All research →Registry findings →

Computed by StoreProfiles under rules v0.10, from the store’s own public data and recomputed nightly. No page here is hand-edited and no store can pay to change one · data last checked 6 hours ago. How the score is computed · Who pays for this