How to Spot a Fake Sneaker Discount (3 Numbers to Check)
You've seen it: “$220 → $140, 36% off.” Feels like a deal. Half the time, it isn’t — that $220 was never a real price, it’s a number picked specifically to make $140 look aggressive. The FTC has had rules against this since the 1960s (16 CFR 233.1): a “former price” only counts if it was a real price the item actually sold at, for a real stretch of time, in good faith. Retailers inflate it anyway, because almost nobody checks.
We check. Building out automated deal detection for SneakerBinge meant deciding exactly how much to trust a retailer’s own “was” price — and the answer we landed on cost us coverage on purpose.
The situation
Our pipeline already scrapes boutique Shopify catalogs every six hours for release data. Shopify’s product feed carries a field called compare_at_price — the retailer’s own declared strikethrough price (Shopify’s own pricing docs cover how merchants set it). It’s free, it’s already in the payload, and it fires the instant a sale goes live. It’s also the easiest number in retail to fake — set the “compare at” high enough and every price looks like a deal.
So compare_at_price alone was never going to be the whole system. We built a second signal to check it against: price_history, a table that logs every price we observe for every product, every scrape. A discount only becomes a real SneakerBinge deal when both signals agree.
The decision, and the tradeoff we took on purpose
The rule: a discount only fires if the retailer’s declared “was” price doesn’t exceed 1.5x the trailing median price we’ve actually observed for that product — or it matches the confirmed retail price on a shoe already in our release database. On top of that, it needs to clear a 20% minimum discount and a $15 minimum dollar drop, so a $4 markdown on a $60 accessory never counts as a “deal.”
That 1.5x anchor cap was a real call, not a default we left untouched. The looser version would have surfaced more deals, faster, on day one. We chose the strict version anyway — hold the 1.5x cap exactly as specified, accept slower and thinner coverage while the price-history table is still warming up, and only loosen it later if a manual review shows the guard is killing real deals instead of fake ones. Coverage was the thing we were willing to lose. Trust wasn’t.
There’s a cold-start problem baked into that rule: a product needs a track record before we can judge its “was” price against anything. A price drop with no retailer-declared compare_at_price at all only qualifies once we’ve logged at least 6 price observations across 3+ days. A retailer-declared discount can fire on the first sighting, because the retailer is the one making the claim — but it’s still subject to the 1.5x cap.
Before any of this touches a live deal feed, it runs in shadow mode for roughly two weeks: the pipeline logs every candidate to an internal report, writes nothing user-facing, and we check the candidates against the live retailer pages by hand before flipping it on.
Run the same 3 checks yourself
You don’t need our pipeline to apply the logic. Next time you see a sneaker “sale”:
- Is the discount at least 20%, and at least $15 off? Anything smaller isn’t worth the deceptive-pricing risk for a retailer to fake — and it’s usually not worth chasing either.
- Does the “was” price hold up against what you’ve actually seen the shoe sell for? Pull the product page on the Wayback Machine and check the last month. If “was $220” only ever shows up the same day as “now $140,” that’s not a former price — the FTC’s own word for it is “fictitious.”
- Does the “was” price match the shoe’s actual retail? If a $190 release is suddenly “was $260,” something’s off — no boutique sold it at $260 first.
Fail any of those three and the “sale” is doing more marketing than math.
SneakerBinge already runs a Deals feed in the app; this same three-gate logic is what we’re rolling into it now, live once the shadow-mode review clears. Get the app to see it land.
22 comentarios
https://www.facebook.com/Erexiva.usa
https://www.facebook.com/events/2913526982352450/
https://www.facebook.com/events/1017804257717881/
https://www.facebook.com/events/1050748771228900/
https://www.facebook.com/events/1550819370171599/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1418924146723919
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1904475964273287
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1383889873837652
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2497563180657784
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmrokfbde127w01wl3y5ze889
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmrok58ir0zvn01w2ffg7bdrl
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmrok8bvn126b01wl3y918h87
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmrok9ygo0joa01xba0a2212s
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmrokcyfb127c01wlfadcadw1
https://scribehow.com/o/cXyI-6lnQ3KbTe_RCIDZgw/viewer/Erexiva_Review_Best_Male_Wellness_Supplement__RHK_6tPJQDKMBQ3aMZkxDg
https://scribehow.com/o/cXyI-6lnQ3KbTe_RCIDZgw/viewer/Erexiva_Review_Natural_Mens_Wellness_Formula__Vae2XaktRDGKWuOYirh-SQ
https://scribehow.com/o/cXyI-6lnQ3KbTe_RCIDZgw/viewer/Erexiva_Ingredients_Explained_Whats_Inside__te4D3GBSSte0hmZoIzx_zw
https://scribehow.com/o/cXyI-6lnQ3KbTe_RCIDZgw/viewer/Erexiva_Natural_Formula_for_Men__dlwEEW3iRNe4qeFVr9oNuA
https://scribehow.com/o/cXyI-6lnQ3KbTe_RCIDZgw/viewer/Erexiva_Review_Ingredients_That_Matter__ZKHk5zHiQ0qyH-4jw4e72A
https://form.jotform.com/261972128539062
https://form.jotform.com/261971547944066
https://form.jotform.com/261971955042058
https://form.jotform.com/261971510552051
https://form.jotform.com/Erexiva/erexiva-get
https://form.jotform.com/Erexiva/erexiva-us
https://form.jotform.com/Erexiva/erexiva-usa
https://form.jotform.com/Erexiva/erexiva
https://sites.google.com/view/get-erexiva/
https://sites.google.com/view/erexiva-get/
https://getsimplemaleenhancementgummiesus.blogspot.com/2026/07/erexiva-natural-support-for-mens.html
https://erexiva-get.lovable.app/
https://www.facebook.com/get.Erexafil
https://www.facebook.com/events/2009119756660964/
https://www.facebook.com/events/2547566529017894/
https://www.facebook.com/events/1755716438919224/
https://www.facebook.com/events/1711976760118765/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/erexafil.us
https://www.facebook.com/groups/get.erexafil
https://www.facebook.com/groups/erexafil.get
https://www.facebook.com/groups/erexafil.usa
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmriu8ner01wn01t6hycs0dig
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmriu6k7l01o501waaacj2mau
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmriu4sth01vq01t6fpg1ct1l
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmriu361c0c3m01tv1uhc8mh2
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmriu0dh50kg701wiavkqg2k0
https://scribehow.com/o/Uz2oe_4SQoOW5je2Nah1uQ/viewer/Erexafil_Customer_Feedback_Pros_Cons_and_Results__vMCVyN6LTZiWJg-mpiBSwg
https://scribehow.com/o/Uz2oe_4SQoOW5je2Nah1uQ/viewer/Erexafil_for_Male_Wellness_What_You_Need_to_Know__ndZnjVlORZGdPqH0XaOS6A
https://scribehow.com/o/Uz2oe_4SQoOW5je2Nah1uQ/viewer/Erexafil_Ingredients_and_Their_Potential_Benefits__RqeOpkdpQcWroCfSU0oMtw
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/get-erexafil.lovable.app
https://get-trimoryn.lovable.app
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/get-trimoryn.lovable.app
https://www.facebook.com/getTrimoryn
https://www.facebook.com/events/1695668381554722/
https://www.facebook.com/events/851598924699076/
https://www.facebook.com/events/1364658782261037/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/trimoryn.get
https://www.facebook.com/groups/trimoryn.try
https://www.facebook.com/groups/gettrimoryn
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmrkiyrcv011001rp6he28jfu
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmrkix9y6011l01waeqg5hcvd
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmrkivtnb010301wq19a1a1s5
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmrkitgjn00rz01w3a9v45gnk
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmrkir8he00xv01wqc9a893bk
https://form.jotform.com/261943187426060
https://form.jotform.com/261943347207055
https://form.jotform.com/Trimoryn/trimoryn-usa
https://form.jotform.com/Trimoryn/trimoryn
https://scribehow.com/o/Uz2oe_4SQoOW5je2Nah1uQ/viewer/Trimoryn_Formula_Review_Whats_Inside__DeGNp4X3R62I9jtVJe_McQ
https://scribehow.com/o/Uz2oe_4SQoOW5je2Nah1uQ/viewer/Trimoryn_Review_Honest_Analysis_Before_You_Buy__cERtKEOFQ3idxFVes1fHcA
https://scribehow.com/o/Uz2oe_4SQoOW5je2Nah1uQ/viewer/Trimoryn_Side_Effects_Important_Information_Before_Use__df5IvPlhSv6Efi2feFT—A
https://scribehow.com/o/Uz2oe_4SQoOW5je2Nah1uQ/viewer/Why_People_Are_Talking_About_Trimoryn_in_2026__QXUNtxMlTVKTQ5KEfQO4Qw
https://scribehow.com/o/Uz2oe_4SQoOW5je2Nah1uQ/viewer/Trimoryn_Review_2026_Ingredients_Benefits_and_User_Experience__4nwXnboZTqq0JTvRVYK3Vg
https://getbioveramaleboostgummies.lovable.app
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmrlnuh9600ie01wl7l4xe1tr
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmrlnsmqp03yv01wrhg9z5wtd
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmrlnq46w004u01yc7l6hbtm2
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmrlnlndx003y01yc23qpcn1t
https://open.firstory.me/story/cmrlnj71h003o01yc6sz2eolc
https://form.jotform.com/261950826412053
https://form.jotform.com/261950892465064
https://form.jotform.com/261951480497063
https://form.jotform.com/bioveramaleboost/biovera-male-boost-gummies-usa
https://form.jotform.com/bioveramaleboost/biovera-male-boost-gummies-get
https://form.jotform.com/bioveramaleboost/biovera-male-boost-gummies
https://scribehow.com/o/ICPqTbO1To-A-Ivm0ir2JQ/viewer/Biovera_Male_Boost_Gummies_Top_Features_and_Benefits__touS43zXQEucGC-S5rbNzA?referrer=workspace
https://scribehow.com/o/ICPqTbO1To-A-Ivm0ir2JQ/viewer/Biovera_Male_Boost_Gummies_Does_It_Deliver_Results__4E1LnebhQcKnW8OkUib-Kg
https://scribehow.com/o/ICPqTbO1To-A-Ivm0ir2JQ/viewer/Biovera_Male_Boost_Gummies_Best_Gummies_for_Mens_Wellness__mklGoKtwTmi6e86Kxz-Hdw
https://scribehow.com/o/ICPqTbO1To-A-Ivm0ir2JQ/viewer/Biovera_Male_Boost_Gummies_Everything_About_the_Formula__rB8Cv1eJSwq3Hcs6IUPHMA
https://scribehow.com/o/ICPqTbO1To-A-Ivm0ir2JQ/viewer/Biovera_Male_Boost_Gummies_Review_Is_It_a_Good_Choice__WcQ0c5lzQueMmfVk4b45Bg
https://www.facebook.com/Biovera.Male.Boost.Gummies.us
https://www.facebook.com/events/1324597816491276/
https://www.facebook.com/events/917082263998491/
https://www.facebook.com/events/2283422069066539/
https://www.facebook.com/events/1068113982554563/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2109308892956411
https://www.facebook.com/groups/910175618058678
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1591895632653860
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2531192190672963