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It says 5'1", he should fit in our server rack.

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No, it's starting at 5'1", and here it's listed as up to 7 feet.

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Hold on, I found the same guy on Amazon and it says compare at 6'2"?

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What does that mean? He's an organic mask. We just want him in the server rack.

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What are you even talking about? No.

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This type of deceptive marketing has existed for as long as I've been 4'1",

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but more recently it's become an even bigger problem.

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For example, just last year, Best Buy.com decided to change how they present promotional prices.

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Instead of calculating discounts compared to their typical everyday price, or, you know, MSRP,

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they now use a compare at reference price that is, from what we can tell, at best optimistic

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and at worst an outright lie. And the worst part is Best Buy seems to know this,

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given that they haven't brought this practice to other regions where they have

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stricter regulations on this behavior. So let's talk about how retailers are trying to avoid pricing transparency,

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how this plague is spreading, and what we can do as consumers to push back against it.

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Starting at this segue to our sponsor.

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This problem runs much deeper than just one retailer, and we're going to get into that later,

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but I want to start with Best Buy's recent changes.

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This monitor, for instance, is listed for $260 off compared to Best Buy's comparable value.

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Compared to what, though? At a glance, this seems to suggest that it is compared to their normal retail price, but

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why don't we dig into the fine print here? Oh, and dig into the fine print here, shall we?

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Our comparable value prices are based on the price at which the product or a comparable item.

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Wait, the reference price can be for another product entirely?

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Who decides what's comparable? Oh, wait, okay, hold on, there's more.

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It can also be a price that was or in the future will be offered for sale by Best Buy,

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Marketplace sellers, manufacturers, suppliers, or other retailers online or in store.

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Let me get this straight. Best Buy's new policy is that it can reference the price of any product at any time, even in the

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future, sold by anyone, anywhere, and use that to calculate how much money I'm saving,

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and they think that that's a useful reference?

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No, of course they don't. Why would they make this change? The simple answer is to capitalize on the FOMO of shoppers who might not obsessively track prices

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and might not realize that the discounts they're being offered are kind of BS.

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If you want me to illustrate why this matters and why it needs to be stopped,

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I've got a perfect example for you. LTTstore.com sometimes discounts our legendary ratcheting multi-bit screwdriver.

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$10 off, though, doesn't sound like that big of a deal.

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But hold on a second. What if I compare at some other multi-bit screwdriver from, say, Vera Tools?

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No, no. Not the price on their site. How about this one from a random seller?

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Now look at the LTT screwdriver. What a deal.

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But wait, there's more. I think that that Red Bull Edition could double in price in the future.

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Well, now you're saving $940 on your purchase from LTTstore.com,

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which sounds ridiculous because it is. But if we don't do something, that's the direction we could be headed.

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And look, I fully recognize that the slippery slope argument may be a fallacy.

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But Best Buy is obviously out there icing the hill right now.

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So isn't any of this against the law? Well, I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice,

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but the short version is it seems like it is.

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And it seems like Best Buy knows it. You might have noticed that I keep using the words reference price.

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And that's because reference pricing is a common phrase used in legal documents

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for what the American FTC calls retail price comparisons.

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And false reference pricing or deceptive pricing

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is a practice that is regulated by the FTC. How do I know that Best Buy knows this?

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Because they've been sued over it as recently as just last year.

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That suit claims that Best Buy enticed shoppers with discounted prices

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that would either not change after the sale period

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were not lower than the regular price 90 days before the sale

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or even were higher than another recently advertised price.

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Now that case was voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiffs.

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But that doesn't mean that Best Buy is in the right. It is possible that they were right,

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but it's also possible that the plaintiffs were dissuaded by the cost of litigation

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or it's possible that Best Buy settled out of court. I don't really consider the matter resolved one way or the other.

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And neither should you. It is worth noting by the way that outside of the U.S.

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Best Buy Canada doesn't use this language. And that appears to be because Canada's Competition Bureau

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requires retailers to pass a certain volume or time test

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in order to count something as an ordinary selling price.

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Although it is worth noting that even then, recent lawsuits have cropped up accusing Best Buy Canada

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of misrepresenting regular prices and savings.

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Now, I've picked on Best Buy a lot so far. But I promise to touch on the others

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and now it's time to do just that because this is a widespread issue.

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Walmart's reference pricing appears to be based on the median price within 90 days

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offered by Walmart or its marketplace sellers.

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That's a little better, but that bit at the end.

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Knowing how marketplace sellers tend to price items, that clearly gives Walmart a lot of leeway for representing their discounts.

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Then of course, there's Amazon. They do use a suggested retail price,

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which can be provided by the manufacturer, supplier, or seller.

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If the reference price is labeled list price, but if it's the typical price, like on Walmart,

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that's just the 90-day median price that customers have paid

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with no real auditing or transparency from our side to actually verify it.

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Now, I could continue to give examples, but I think at this point it would be better to lay out

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what we feel needs to be done, starting with compare at reference prices,

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simply being banned, or required to be the manufacturer's advertised MSRP.

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This move is unlikely to make anything cheaper, see GPUs that regularly retail for well above NVIDIA's supposed MSRPs,

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but at least this would give consumers the transparency to understand

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what is a deal and what just plain is not a deal.

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With that out of the way, compare at, though, is just one of the three horsemen of the deceptive marketing apocalypse.

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Up two can be just as bad, whether it's sales where the deeply discounted items are all garbage,

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or product specifications that would be better represented as

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your mileage may vary. Up two has turned into this catch-all but covering clause

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that just absolves manufacturers and retailers of any responsibility

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for products or offers that don't live up to their promises.

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And the funny thing about it is that guidelines around this one

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totally do exist as well. They just need to be adopted by regulatory bodies and then enforced.

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The Better Business Bureau, for instance, prohibits up two sale claims where at least 10% of the items in the sale

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don't meet the advertised discount threshold. That sounds pretty sensible to me.

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As for the last one, starting at, I'm not going to get into too much detail since we've got a whole video dedicated

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to dunking on companies for advertising an awful configuration

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you shouldn't buy that gets you in the door, then upselling you something usable often for a lot more money.

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So, with the three out there, what can we do about them?

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Well, it's tough because there are cases where these terms do make sense.

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Apple's Mac Mini would be a great example of a product that is an awesome value,

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even at its starting-at configuration. Let's pick on ourselves again.

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Our own true spec USB-C cables are starting at $21.99.

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But like Apple, I'm not going to apologize for that product being a great value,

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especially when the one that's 40 times faster costs just $5 more than that starting-at price.

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And so with everyone setting their own line in the sand,

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I don't know how you would police something like that. So let's come back to compare at because here there's something that we can,

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or at least should be able to do, to fight back. PC Part Picker is an incredibly useful tool because they track pricing across multiple retailers

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over time, which helps shoppers determine what an item is actually worth

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and how a current price compares to a historical pricing.

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But we've noticed a pattern of behavior, especially here in North America,

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where retailers are actively fighting against similar services.

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Similar websites that have tried to do what PC Part Picker did,

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but more broadly, have crumbled under the pressure.

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Like Price Zombie, a tool that tracked price history across multiple online retailers

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and then collected affiliate money from the traffic that their links generated.

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That actually sounds like a business model that would be beneficial for everyone, right?

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Well, Amazon didn't think so, and allegedly they barred Price Zombie from their affiliate program

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for violating its rules that prohibit showing Amazon prices that are more than 24 hours old.

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Given that Amazon affiliate was 90% of Price Zombie's revenue, it was a death blow.

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Then there's Camel Camel Camel, who CEO has said outright that they live or die by Amazon

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and that they also prohibit showing Amazon prices next to pricing from a competitor,

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which is why they decided to only display Amazon data, despite originally also tracking Best Buy and New Egg on separate websites.

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How does Amazon wield so much power here? In the EU, for instance, Idealo is a huge website that somehow manages to display

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and compare prices, even historical prices, across a ton of retailers, including Amazon.

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What are our alternatives? Well, there is one, but I'm not recommending it.

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It's f***ing honey. Those bloodsuckers, with their pay tell money, have somehow managed to build and keep live

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a tool called Drop List that seems to do a pretty decent job of scraping prices

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and tracking price history. It's not as good at showing price history across retailers, all in one place,

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like Idealo is or Price Zombie was, and it seems to glitch out a bit with certain retailers,

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but it is there. It is insane to me that this is the only tool we could find that could do this job

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outside of tech, and it wasn't just us.

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It seems like you just need to have major financial muscle in order to get away with this.

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On that note, the next closest thing has probably got to be Google Shopping,

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but even that doesn't prominently display the best deal, and while its price tracking does exist,

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it also doesn't seem to show you Amazon in any of its results in the US.

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Finally, there's Capital One Shopping, which does a good job of showing multiple retailers

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with the best price up top, but doesn't track price history.

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Now there are a lot of other services that claim to do this job,

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but we usually found that they simply didn't give us the best price.

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With that said, if you know of one we missed, hey, leave a comment below and help to spread the word.

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With all that said, what can you do to stop retailers from using deceptive practices

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like false reference pricing and going after tools that help you make more informed purchasing

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decisions? Unfortunately, the only answer is the one that's going to be work.

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You've got to get involved. Follow websites like ClassAction.org and participate wherever you can.

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You can also advocate for stricter regulations and better enforcement

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by touching base with consumer advocacy groups or by writing your government representative.

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I know that's not a convenient or especially fulfilling solution, but it's what you can do.

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Another thing you can do is steer your hard-earned money toward businesses that don't participate

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in these practices, like for example, LTTstore.com and our sponsor.

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If you guys enjoyed this video, why not check out the one that we did on Starting At?

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It's a little more tech focused, but I think it does a good job of outlining

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why it can be so problematic.