How to Spot a Fake Discount Before You Click

Most fake discounts aren't trying to steal your card details directly — they're trying to rush you past the point where you'd normally stop and think. Slowing down for thirty seconds catches almost all of them.

Fake urgency is the biggest tell

A countdown timer that resets when you refresh the page isn't counting down to anything — it's a prop. Genuine time-limited offers are usually tied to a real calendar event (end of a sales period, a specific bank holiday weekend) rather than a clock that conveniently restarts every time you reload. If a page needs you to feel rushed to make the offer look good, that's worth noticing on its own.

Check the maths

A "was £400, now £80" claim on an unfamiliar site is usually just a made-up "was" price, not a real 80% cut. A quick price-history check (or simply searching the product name plus the retailer elsewhere) takes seconds and either confirms the discount is real or saves you from a number that was invented specifically to look dramatic.

Look at the URL, not just the page

Scam pages increasingly copy a retailer's design well enough to fool a quick glance. The web address won't lie in the same way — check it's actually the retailer's real domain, not a lookalike with an extra word, hyphen, or unfamiliar ending tacked on.

A code with no source is a red flag

If a code is being shared with no explanation of where it came from — posted anonymously, forwarded with no context, or appearing in an unsolicited message — treat it with real caution before entering it anywhere that asks for payment details. Genuine codes come from the retailer, an affiliate site that discloses how it sources them, or a loyalty scheme you're actually signed up to.

What we do differently

Every code on this site is sourced, checked, and re-verified on a schedule — not scraped from wherever it happened to turn up. If one stops working between checks, our report a broken code link is there specifically to catch it fast, because a site that just leaves dead codes live isn't much better than one that made them up in the first place.