the scourge of the fake discount

I dimly recall posting a screed about the proliferation of completely made-up "discounts" in online retailing a while back.

Here is a sterling example of Amazon pulling a retail price right out they ass, manufacturing a 25% discount from wishful thinking.  I noted this particular bottle of scent while getting my haircut last week, Aveda salon retail price is $79.00.
How did Amazon come up with $107.25?
Who knows!

Here's the same cologne at the Aveda site, which fudges price in the other direction.
$65?  That's a heck of a deal!
Oh wait, what's this?  They charge shipping on a sliding scale that goes up along with the price of your order?
So, standard shipping on $65 is $8, which makes our cost.....$73.


Salon price is $78.


Oh, for those halcyon days when list price was list price and you didn't have to worry about retailers randomly assigning numbers to products.  It almost makes one sympathetic to that particular breed of shopper who races around frenziedly scanning everything in sight with their phones to ensure they pay not one centime more than the lowest possible cost.

Almost.