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Don’t get tricked by misleading sales and coupons

Some sales are great. Others are just designed to sound that way. LOZO exposes these tricks of the trade and shows you how to get the most value out of any sale, whatever the promotion. Here are some of the “classic” misleading promotions that retailers use. 

Multiple Discounts on the Same Item

  • The Offer: Here’s a typical example, “Take 60% off, plus an extra 15% off. And, if you use your store discount card, you’ll get another 10% off!”
  • The LOZO: This sounds like a whopping 85% savings, but the math only works out to a 70% discount. A nice bargain nonetheless, but not what you would have expected!

The “Up to XX% Off” Sale

  • The Offer: Usually, the retailer will use a really eye-catchingly high percentage off like “Up to 60% off”.
  • The LOZO: They lure you in with the promise of a big discount, but the reality is that there are usually just a few items being sold at that big discount. The majority of items, however, are likely to be sold at much less of a discount like 10% or 20% off.
Buy One, Get one Half Off

  • The Offer: This will usually be presented as “Buy one get, get one half off” or “BOGO 50% off”.
  • The LOZO: Sounds like you will save 50%, right? Not a chance: you have to pay full price for one item (who pays full price?) to save 50% on another. But since the discount is taken on the cheaper item, your real savings can be much less than you expect. The same goes for promotions where you “buy now and save later”, since it ties you in to making two purchases.

So now that you’ve got the LOZO on how retailers mislead us, how do you maximize your savings? Here’s how: 

  • Stick close to whatever minimum requirements there are.
  • Use additional coupons whenever possible (aka “stacking”).
  • Make sure you get good use out of what you are buying. For example, in the “Buy one, get one half off” example you can maximize the discount by buying two items that are the same price. Also, if you have more than 2 items to buy, split them into separate transactions, pairing up two items that are closest in price.

Got any other great tips for us? Let us know! You can also search LOZO for more “deal debunked” strategies on specific promotions.

A LOZO expert posted this tip.