Why YSK: Online platforms, particularly some very prominent offenders, may artificially spike prices before creating “discounts”. Whether this is intentional or the result of third party sellers fighting amongst themselves, I cannot say. Either way, don’t blindly purchase something because of a deal (camelcamelcamel is great to see price history if you just care about Amazon). Besides, if your sole motivation to purchase something is based on a discount, you might be better off cutting consumption instead.
Source: I run fetchnotifs. While checking the logs this morning, I was scared to death I deployed a bug to production—Nope, it’s just that day of the year.
JCPenny tried to stop doing the fake sales and just go with actual pricing and it nearly broke them so they went back to the fake sales. They were even completely honest about it, letting everyone know they are the actual prices and the sales were fake and people weren’t happy about it until they went back to the fake sales.