That’s a Great Deal! Or Is It? How to Shop Sales Like a Pro

When was the last time you bought a pair of headphones or sneakers because you had a bad day? The self-soothing effects of shopping are real. A 2011 research paper(Opens in a new window) found “retail therapy has lasting positive impacts on mood. Feelings of regret and guilt are not associated with the unplanned purchases made to repair a bad mood.” More and more, that shopping happens online.

Despite the realness of retail therapy, if you’ve been working on your personal finances or have goals to reduce consumption, online shopping is dangerous. Even window shopping online, when you browse products and read about them without intending to buy them, can go south quickly if you aren’t careful.

Online retailers and advertisers have spent almost three decades studying online behavior to get you to buy things you don’t need. They know how to appeal to your vulnerabilities, persuade you into putting items in your cart, and dangle incentives that lead you to press the checkout button. They also use so-called dark patterns, or intentionally deceptive practices, to get you to buy more.

That’s not to say that there aren’t great deals to be had online! Rather, the organized shopper understands merchants’ tricks and shops with purpose rather than buying on impulse. The tips below can help you avoid buyer’s remorse when you’re bombarded with deals.

1. Don’t Give In to FOMO

Flash sales and limited-time offers are extremely appealing. The “limited time” part of the sale preys on your FOMO (fear of missing out). Putting time pressure on shoppers makes them worry they might regret not buying the product now while they can. A related tactic is putting a timer on an online shopping cart that says your products or the stated price will “expire” in some hours or minutes. Those timers are rarely indicative of a price or product actually going away.

In the case of Amazon’s Prime Day, the company’s two-day mega sale, the deep discounts are real. The company likely loses money on many of the deals it offers. Amazon has long accepted that it can lose money on online retail and still profit long-term as a company by getting people hooked on its services, nudging shoppers to add more items to their cart, creating brand loyalty, and more significantly, raking in money from other divisions to balance out the company, like in its Amazon Web Services division.

Retailers and advertisers have spent almost three decades studying online behavior to get you to buy things you don’t need.

Real deal or not, however, no matter how deep the discounts are, if you don’t need a new television set, you’re not saving money by buying a 72-inch one just because it’s marked down a few hundred bucks from its MSRP for the next four hours. The only way you’re getting a deal is if you had planned to buy the product imminently, regardless of it being on sale.

2. Free Shipping Isn’t Free

There is no such thing as free shipping. Someone always pays for it. You might think the retailer pays for it, but with most big businesses, the cost of shipping is built into the price of the products, which means the cost gets passed onto consumers. (Small businesses have a tougher time making up for the cost of shipping because they have narrower margins. Support small businesses and pay for shipping with them!)

Who hasn’t been $6 away from a “free shipping” offer and gone hunting for an additional $7 item to get you over the limit? Isn’t it better to get the extra item for the same cost it would have been to pay for shipping? 

In times like these, consider delaying your purchase, if you can, until you truly need something else from the same store to get you over the limit. Throwing in an item you don’t need to save a few dollars on shipping doesn’t benefit you, but rest assured it benefits the seller in some way.

3. Don’t Trade Your Privacy for Pennies

So many websites pop up an offer for 10% or 15% off if you give them your phone number or email address, and they do it immediately when you land on the site before you’ve even had a chance to see what’s on the site! 

Once again your best defense is to delay. Don’t give up your personal information before you have decided if there’s anything worth buying. Dismiss the popup and go about your business. If you find items you want to buy and you decide you do want that discount code, open the same website in another browser or incognito mode to get the pop-up again.

If you’re savvy, you might enter a disposable or temporary email address instead of your real one to get the discount code. That way you can cut off any future spam or messages from companies that purchased your email address from the party that collected it.

4. It Doesn’t Matter What Other Customers Bought

Let’s say you are shopping for a new camera. As you read the detailed information about the camera, like what’s included in the box, you might see a gallery of related products below saying “Customers also bought…” Those are your impulse buys. They are like the gum and candy at the checkout counter of the grocery store. 

It’s not always the case, but often they are much lower priced products compared with the main item you want to buy—like in the example of a camera, you might see $30 cases, $20 memory cards, and $12 straps. Put side by side with an $800 camera, those additional items seem downright cheap! Why not throw in an extra lens cap? Don’t get suckered into spending more than you would just because these additional items seem so inexpensive.

Plus, your camera might already include a lens cap! Especially with expensive purchases or complex items, read very carefully the fine print that tells you what’s included; otherwise, you could get tricked into buying a duplicate of something that you’re already getting.

5. Everything Gets Restocked if You Wait Long Enough

Here’s another trick that plays on your fear of missing out: a callout of the stock, like “only two left!” Sometimes these callouts are true, but rarely are they true forever. If an item is in-demand, the retailer will get more stock. It might mean you have to wait a few weeks or even a few months to get the item, but sometimes putting off a purchase is to your benefit. You might change your mind next month and decide you don’t like it or need it anymore. If there’s something you really do want and the purchase isn’t time-sensitive, don’t jump on it just because the stock is currently limited.

6. Are Sale Prices Really Cheaper?

A crossed-out price next to a new lower price (also called was/is pricing) isn’t always truthful. We see this a lot in the world of online software, where there is a ridiculously high price for an app subscription that’s slashed out next to a much lower price, and never once has the company charged the higher rate. It happens in physical retail too. I once rented an apartment in a neighborhood where a store had a “going out of business” sale for the entire time I lived there.

Just because a seller says a product used to cost $119 and now it’s only $79 doesn’t mean the seller ever collected $119 for it. But it sure looks like you’re getting a good deal when you see those two numbers next to each other. You’re probably not.

You might have noticed that a few of these tricks online retailers use to get you to spend money rely on time pressure. Sometimes you do have a deadline for buying something, such as gifts or purchases tied to birthdays, anniversaries, and so on. When your purchases aren’t time-sensitive, however, that’s when you should be most in control of your shopping. Don’t let retailers play psychological tricks games to get you to buy something. Watch out for these tricks to stay in control of your spending and consumption, and check out tips for safer online shopping.