Is your "sale" price actually a sale?
A compare-at price identical to your actual price shows shoppers a fake "was/now" discount badge with zero real savings — an easy, invisible mistake that regulators have started scrutinizing.
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Every sale price, cross-checked against its compare-at
We sample your public catalog and compare each variant's price to its compare-at ("was") price, flagging the two patterns that make a "sale" badge misleading.
Phantom sales
A compare-at price exactly equal to the actual price — the product displays "was $50, now $50," a discount badge with zero real savings.
Inverted markups
A compare-at price lower than the actual price, which shows a negative or nonsensical discount — almost always a data entry error, not intentional pricing.
Sample size and coverage
This scan samples up to 20 products from your store's public catalog — a fast spot check, not an exhaustive audit of every product you sell.
Clean pass
Stores with no compare-at pricing set, or with fully consistent "was/now" pricing across every sampled product, get a clear pass with nothing to fix.
Fake discounts are a known deceptive pattern
A "was $X, now $Y" badge is a strong purchase trigger — which is exactly why regulators, including the FTC, have specifically called out fake reference pricing as a deceptive practice in recent guidance. Most stores that show a phantom sale didn't mean to: a compare-at value gets set for a past promotion and is never cleared once the sale ends, so the badge quietly keeps showing a "discount" that no longer exists.
Even when it's unintentional, it erodes shopper trust the moment someone notices the math doesn't add up, and it creates real legal exposure once a regulator or a competitor notices instead.
What fixing your pricing does
Catch it before anyone else does
Find an accidental fake-discount badge before a sharp-eyed shopper — or a regulator — notices it for you.
A five-minute fix
Once you know which products are affected, the fix is a quick trip into Shopify Admin to clear the compare-at field.
Protects your margin
Real discounts communicate genuine value and drive real urgency; fake ones just look dishonest once spotted.
Peace of mind before a promo push
Confirm your pricing is clean before you drive traffic into a sale campaign, not after.
Three steps, about ten seconds
Paste your store URL
Any public storefront works — yourstore.com or the myshopify.com address. No login, no install, no admin access.
We sample your public catalog
Our scanner reads up to 20 products from your store's public /products.json endpoint and checks each variant's price against its compare-at price.
Get your score & full report
Your score and top issue appear instantly. Unlock the full issue-by-issue report — with a specific fix for each finding — with your email.
Common questions
How many products does this check?
Up to 20 products sampled from your store's public /products.json — a spot check, not a full-catalog audit.
I intentionally leave compare-at price equal to price sometimes — is that always wrong?
It will always display as "no real discount" to shoppers regardless of intent, so it's worth reviewing even if deliberate.
What's the actual fix?
In Shopify Admin, either clear the compare-at price field entirely (if there's no real discount) or set it to the genuine original price.
Does this check discount codes or automatic promotions?
No, this only compares the price and compare-at price fields already published on each product — it doesn't test discount codes at checkout (see the Cart & Checkout Journey checker for that).
Want the cleanup done rather than just diagnosed? Pricing QA and storefront polish are part of our store optimization service.