something I've noticed

while shopping online...well, and most places really.

The expanding habit of retailers making up some ridiculous number purely so they can "slash" it and promote the "sale" price, which is just what the thing costs and not any sort of sale at all.

Amazon's housewares section is particularly egregious, regularly pretending that the list price of an item is half again the actual amount so they can brag about their markdown.

Brick and mortar stores do the same thing though- before they went bankrupt Mervyn's entire store was perpetually marked down from ludicrous made up numbers they got by someone mashing their face on the keypad.

Yeah, sure, everyone loves a sale. And yeah, sure, you can mislead people into thinking they're getting a "deal" by pretending the list price is a lot higher than it actually is. But big picture, it undermines the trust of the buying public. Which isn't a bad thing- skepticism & capitalism should go hand in hand. I just don't get why a business would think misleading their customers as a matter of course would be a good idea.