Guides / What “up to 70% off” really means
The oldest trick in sale copy, and how to read past it.
"Up to 70% off" is a true statement even if exactly one item in the entire sale is discounted by 70% and everything else is discounted by 5%. The headline number is a ceiling that legally only needs to apply to something — not a floor, and not an average.
The steepest discounts in most sales sit on whatever the retailer most wants gone — slow-moving stock, an end-of-line colour, last season's model. That's not dishonest; clearing that stock is exactly what a sale is for. But it means the number in the ad and the discount on the item you actually want are often two very different figures.
The banner describes the best case across potentially thousands of items. It says nothing about the specific thing in your cart. The only way to know what your item's actual discount is, is to look at that item's own price — which is exactly what a Deal Score is built to do instead of quoting the headline back at you.