Fake Black Friday discounts: how to prove the price was never lower

Why so many Black Friday discounts are fake

The classic trick is simple: raise the price in October, then “cut” it in November back to roughly where it was all along. The crossed-out price looks real, the red badge says -40 %, and the countdown timer adds pressure. In reality the customer pays the normal price – or more.

Consumer organisations across Europe check Black Friday prices every year and regularly find that a large share of advertised deals are not cheaper than the price a few weeks earlier. You do not need to rely on anyone’s statistics, though: you can check a specific product yourself, and you can prove it if you capture the evidence at the right moments.

• Price inflation shortly before the sale, so the “before” price exists only on paper.
• Comparisons with a manufacturer’s recommended retail price that nobody actually charges, presented as if it were the shop’s own earlier price.
• Discounts calculated from the highest recent price instead of the lowest one.
• Fake scarcity: timers that restart on reload and “only 2 left” badges that never change.

The EU 30-day rule in plain language

The rule is Article 6a of the Price Indication Directive 98/6/EC. It was inserted by the Omnibus Directive (EU) 2019/2161 and has applied in all EU Member States since 28 May 2022, through national law – for example § 11 of the German Preisangabenverordnung, Article L112-1-1 of the French Code de la consommation and, in Czechia, § 12a of the Consumer Protection Act (since January 2023).

• Whenever a trader announces a price reduction on a product, it must indicate the prior price.
• The prior price is the lowest price the trader applied during a period of not less than 30 days before the reduction.
• Member States may allow exceptions or shorter periods – for perishable goods, for products on the market for less than 30 days, and for progressively increasing reductions, where the prior price is the one before the first reduction.
• The rule covers goods sold to consumers; services such as flights or hotel stays are judged under general misleading-advertising rules instead.

A fake discount can also be a misleading commercial practice under the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive 2005/29/EC. That matters for shops outside the narrow scope of Article 6a and for tricks such as fake timers.

What the Court of Justice decided in Aldi Süd (C-330/23)

For two years some retailers argued that the 30-day price only had to be printed somewhere, while the headline discount could be calculated from a different, higher reference price. A German consumer association challenged an Aldi Süd flyer that did exactly this, and the case went to the Court of Justice of the EU.

In its judgment of 26 September 2024 the Court ruled that a price reduction expressed as a percentage, or as a claim such as “price highlight”, must be calculated on the basis of the prior price within the meaning of Article 6a – the lowest price in the last 30 days. Otherwise the rule would be pointless, because consumers would still be misled about the real size of the saving.

How to spot a fake discount

You rarely need special tools to become suspicious. A few minutes of checking before you click “buy” is usually enough.

• Look for the prior price next to the sale price. If a shop shows a percentage but no 30-day lowest price, that alone is a warning sign.
• Compare with independent price-history services or comparison sites, which often show a chart for the last weeks or months.
• Check whether the “before” price appeared only in the last days or weeks of October.
• Be careful with labels like RRP, UVP or “original price” – they are not the shop’s own prior price.
• Reload the page or open it in a private window: timers and stock badges that reset are pressure tactics, not information.
• Check other sellers of the same product: if everyone’s “normal” price is far below the crossed-out one, the reference is inflated.

Document the price before Black Friday – and again on the day

A fake discount is proven by comparing two moments in time: the price weeks before the sale and the sale page itself. Price-history websites are helpful for spotting a problem, but they are third-party data. If you want to complain, get a refund or support an authority’s investigation, your own dated captures of the shop’s page are far stronger.

1. Make a short list of products you are really considering – with the exact product URLs.
2. Capture each product page now, in October or early November, including price, seller, variant and any “before” price already shown.
3. If you can, capture again about a week before the sale starts – this is when prices are most often raised.
4. On Black Friday or Cyber Monday, capture the sale page again, including the crossed-out price, the percentage badge and the stated prior price.
5. Keep order confirmations and emails, and note the time you saw each price.

Why a screenshot is not enough

A screenshot is an editable image without a trustworthy date. A shop can simply say it was edited, or that the price was different in your region. A forensic capture records the full page, its source code and network traffic, seals everything with SHA-256 hashes and an eIDAS qualified timestamp and anchors it in the Bitcoin blockchain, so anyone can independently check that nothing changed and when it was captured.

Why screenshots are not enough as evidence →

How to complain – capture first, report second

Once you complain to the shop or post on social media, the page can be corrected within hours – and your proof goes with it. Secure your captures first, then act.

1. Contact the shop in writing, attach or describe your evidence and ask for the difference to be refunded or for a withdrawal from the contract.
2. If you bought online, remember that you usually have a 14-day right of withdrawal anyway, even if the discount was genuine.
3. Report the practice to your national consumer authority or consumer organisation, with your dated captures attached.
4. For a shop based in another EU country, contact the European Consumer Centre (ECC-Net) in your country for free help.

Where to report depends on your country. In Czechia, the Czech Trade Inspection Authority (ČOI) supervises discounts; in Germany the Verbraucherzentralen and the Wettbewerbszentrale can take action against unlawful price claims; in France you can report through SignalConso (signal.conso.gouv.fr), which forwards cases to the DGCCRF. In most other EU countries the national consumer protection authority accepts online complaints.

Amazon, Temu and cross-border marketplaces

Black Friday on large marketplaces has its own difficulties: prices change several times a day, the same listing can have many sellers, and some platforms show different prices to different users or apps. The 30-day rule applies to traders selling to EU consumers, but proving a violation depends even more on precise, dated captures.

• Capture the listing together with the seller name – on a marketplace, the seller is usually the trader responsible for the price.
• Note the country version of the site and whether you were logged in; logged-in or app-only prices need to be captured from your own browser.
• Capture coupon and “limited time deal” conditions as well, because they are often where the real price is hidden.

How to capture evidence from Amazon →

How to capture evidence from Temu →

For e-shops: document your own compliance

If you run an online shop, the question is not only whether your discounts comply, but whether you can prove it months later – when an authority, a consumer association or a competitor claims otherwise. Your internal price database helps, but it is your own record and can be questioned. A sealed series of captures of the public product page shows what customers actually saw.

• Define which products and category pages will be in the Black Friday campaign at least 30 days in advance.
• Capture those pages regularly during the 30-day reference period, not just on the day of the sale.
• Capture the sale pages when the campaign starts, and again when you change the discount level.
• Keep the captures together with your internal price logs and campaign approvals.
• Check that the percentage badge is calculated from the 30-day lowest price, as required after Aldi Süd.

Scheduled website monitoring does exactly this automatically: it captures a public page daily or weekly, seals every capture as a separate proof and emails you when the page changes. The result is an independently verifiable price history of your own shop.

Set up scheduled monitoring of your price pages →

Competitors: documenting another shop’s fake discounts

Fake discounts are not just a consumer problem – they distort competition. A shop that inflates prices before the sale takes customers from shops that discount honestly. In most EU countries unfair-competition law lets competitors act; in Germany, for example, breaches of price-indication rules are commonly pursued with a warning letter (Abmahnung) under the UWG.

1. Identify the competitor’s product pages likely to be part of the campaign.
2. Start capturing them regularly well before the sale, so the 30-day lowest price is documented.
3. Capture the sale pages as soon as the campaign starts, including banners, badges and the stated prior price.
4. Hand the sealed series to your lawyer; the hashes and timestamps let them verify the evidence independently.

Web evidence for compliance and legal teams →

How to capture it properly with GetProofAnchor

GetProofAnchor creates a forensic capture of any public URL from our server. You paste the product link and receive an Evidence ZIP that anyone can check offline or at /verify.

• Full-page screenshot plus the complete HTML and a network log (HAR) of the page.
• SHA-256 hashes of every file and an eIDAS qualified timestamp from an EU-accredited trust service provider.
• A Bitcoin OpenTimestamps anchor and a PDF report you can attach to a complaint.
• For logged-in or member-only prices, the browser widget on subscription plans captures what you see in your own browser.

For a consumer, the Starter pack is usually enough: one proof of the product page now, one on Black Friday, and one spare – 9 € one-time, no subscription. We cannot promise that a court or authority will accept any evidence, since they assess it freely, but a sealed capture is much harder to dispute than a screenshot.

See the Starter pack and plans →

Frequently asked questions

This article is general information, not legal advice. National implementation of the 30-day rule differs in details; for a specific dispute, consult your consumer authority, a consumer organisation or a lawyer.