Independent buying guides
For UK shoppers who want to know whether today's reduction is a reduction. One buying question per guide, sourced figures with their check dates, and a discount calculator that shows exactly how it works out a saving.
| # | Categories | The short answer |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | How deals work | Where discounts come from, and what they hide. |
| 02 | Price history | Reading a price curve before you buy. |
| 03 | Comparisons | Like-for-like comparisons on the specifications that matter. |
| 04 | Timing | When buying later is cheaper. |
| 05 | Traps to avoid | Dark patterns, bundles and fake reference prices. |
| 06 | Budget and prices | What the total comes to once everything is counted. |
Where discounts come from, and what they hide.
1
Photo: Cdanternii · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Reading a price curve before you buy.
1
Photo: veroyama · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Like-for-like comparisons on the specifications that matter.
0
Photo: RizaCPH · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
When buying later is cheaper.
0
Photo: Globetrotter19 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Dark patterns, bundles and fake reference prices.
1
Photo: Basile Morin · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What the total comes to once everything is counted.
0
Photo: Nkansahrexford · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Each guide answers one buying question and shows the figures behind the answer.
How deals work
A percentage is only worth the price it comes from. The arithmetic of was-and-now pricing, stacked reductions, and what the ASA asks of a reference price.
Photo: RizaCPH · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Price history
Weight a price by the days it was charged and most savings shrink. The three-month window the ASA uses, the arithmetic, and how to keep your own record.
Photo: Cdanternii · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Traps to avoid
Fees added after the headline, timers that are not real deadlines and free-delivery thresholds, with the CMA findings and the banned practices list in full.
Photo: Globetrotter19 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Every figure in a guide is taken from a named source, with the date it was checked. Where a number is an assumption or an example, it says so in the same sentence.
We do not run paid product tests, we do not publish reader reviews, and we do not claim to have handled every product mentioned. Where a claim needs a lab or a long-term test we do not have, the guide says that plainly.
Photographs are free-licence images from Wikimedia Commons or Openverse, credited to the photographer with the licence named. Charts are drawn from the figures printed in the same guide.
This site earns money from advertising and, where disclosed, from affiliate links. That does not change the order of a comparison or the conclusion of a guide.
Advertising is not enabled on this site yet. When it is, ads will be labelled and kept visually separate from the guides.
Each calculator shows its formula, units and assumptions. Nothing is estimated for you in secret.
Compares an advertised discount against the lowest price you have actually seen.
advertised saving = (reference price - sale price) / reference price x 100; real saving against your own lowest seen price = (lowest seen - sale price) / lowest seen x 100
What a cross-border order really costs once shipping, duty and tax are added.
landed cost = (item price + shipping) + duty + tax, where duty = item price x duty rate, and tax = (item price + shipping + duty) x tax rate
Weighs a likely later discount against the cost of waiting for it.
expected price if you wait = price x (1 - expected discount x probability); cost of waiting = value of use per week x weeks waited