E ighty-four percent of consumers admit they do not trust the original price listed next to a discount and yet half of those same people say the visual cue of a line through a number makes them more likely to click a button. This is the great ghost of the modern market and it is a number that exists only to be killed. We have entered an era where the reference point is a phantom and we all know it is a phantom and we buy the product anyway because we have lost the ability to measure the ground beneath our feet.

The Hurghada Riddle

Rita sits at her kitchen table at ten past eleven at night and her phone is propped against a bowl of cold pasta that she forgot to finish. She has her laptop open with four tabs and she is looking at the same resort in Hurghada on four different websites. In the first tab the room is 749 crossed out to 599 and in the second tab the room is 689 crossed out to 599 and in the third tab there is no crossing out at all and the price is just 599.

She stares at the three versions of the same room and she understands that the strikethrough is not information and it is not a history of what someone once paid. The strikethrough is a piece of furniture and it is purely decorative and it is there to make the room feel full of value even when the value is a lie. She closes the laptop and she decides to book nothing at all because she is tired of the riddle.

The problem is that a price is supposed to be a signal and it should tell you something about the worth of the thing or the cost of making it or the rarity of the moment. When the reference point is manufactured the signal collapses and the buyer is left navigating by feel and that is exactly what this discount theater is designed to produce. We are raising a generation of shoppers who are fluent in urgency and illiterate in value and then we blame them when they buy things that fall apart or trips that do not exist.

I spent three hours yesterday trying to put together a bookshelf that arrived at my door with half the screws missing and the instruction manual had a picture of a shelf that looked nothing like the wood in my hands. The box said I had saved forty percent on the retail price but the retail price was a number I could never find anywhere else on the internet and the manual was a map to a place that did not exist. I felt the same hollow anger that Rita felt at her table and I realized that we are all just trying to assemble lives out of missing pieces.

The Economy of Honesty

Honesty is an unfunded job in the travel industry and nobody is getting paid to make sure that 749 ever existed. The seller is paid to display a saving because that is what triggers the lizard brain of the customer and the platform is paid on the click because that is how their balance sheet works. The regulator is a person in a suit who arrives two years after the sale and issues a fine that is smaller than the profit made in one week of the campaign.

There is no incentive to be the person who tells the truth because telling the truth takes time and it takes effort and it takes a database that tracks what things actually cost yesterday. If you are a hotel owner and you see your competitor listing a room at a fake discount you have two choices and neither of them is good.

Most people join the game because they have staff to pay and a roof to fix and they tell themselves it is a marketing cost and not a moral failure.

A Stylist’s Perspective

As a food stylist I spend my days making things look like something they are not and I use heavy glue for milk and I paint grill marks on raw meat with a brush. I understand the pull of the image and the need to make the burger look tall and juicy but there is a line between making a thing look its best and making a thing look like a different thing entirely. A price that was never charged is a burger made of plastic and it might look good in the photo but you cannot eat it and you cannot build a relationship on it.

A Revolutionary Act of Opening

The moment someone timestamps a price and publishes what it was before they take on a cost that their competitors do not carry and they have to prove their work. This is why most sites avoid it and they prefer the vague cloud of a savings claim because a cloud is hard to pin down in a court of law.

When a company like NetViagens puts the original price next to the discounted one and then tells you the exact date and time they found that price they are doing the unfunded job. They are giving you a coordinate in time and space so you can see if the ground is solid or if the sand is shifting under your feet. It is a simple thing but in a world of fake numbers a timestamp is a revolutionary act of being open.

Most people who book a trip to the Caribbean or North Africa are not looking for a luxury that they cannot afford and they are just looking for a week where they do not have to worry about the bill. They want the all-inclusive resort because it removes the daily stress of deciding what a sandwich is worth and it turns the holiday into a flat fee. But that peace of mind starts with the booking process and if the booking process is a hall of mirrors then the holiday is already ruined before they even get to the airport.

We have reached a point where we expect to be lied to and we have built our entire economy around the idea that the first number is a joke. We see a pair of shoes for eighty dollars marked down from two hundred and we do not think we are getting a two-hundred-dollar pair of shoes and we think we are getting an eighty-dollar pair of shoes and we wonder why they had to lie to us to get us to buy them. This constant low-level deception wears down the trust that holds a society together and it makes us cynical and it makes us tired.

The travel industry is particularly bad because the product is an experience and you cannot return an experience if it does not fit. If you buy a shirt and the quality is poor you can send it back in a bag and get your money back but if you spend a week in a resort that was sold to you on a mountain of fake discounts and hidden fees you cannot get that week of your life back. You just come home feeling like you were the mark in a long con and you look at your bank account and you feel a sense of regret that no amount of sun can burn away.

Beyond Regulation

The answer is not more regulation because the regulators are always three steps behind the technology and the answer is a demand for transparency from the bottom up. We need to stop rewarding the sites that use countdown timers and fake stock levels and strikethrough prices that have no basis in reality. We need to look for the timestamps and the clear lists of what is included and the human beings on the other end of the phone who can explain why the price is what it is.

You do not have to open ten more tabs to find out how you are going to get from the airport to the sand and you do not have to worry about the fine print on the insurance policy. You can just look at the number and decide if that number is worth the memories you are about to make.

Reclaiming the Kitchen Table

The kitchen table should be a place for eating and for talking and not a place for solving a puzzle that was designed to make you lose. Rita deserves to know that 599 is a fair price for a week in the sun and she deserves to see the history of that price so she can trust the person she is giving her money to. She should be able to close her laptop and finish her pasta and go to sleep knowing that she bought a real thing for a real price.

We are all looking for a way to buy back our time and our sanity and the first step is to stop playing the game of the crossed-out number. We should look for the people who show their work and who give us the date and the time of the deal and who do not try to hide the cost of the transfer in the shadows of the terms and conditions. Honesty might be an unfunded job but it is the only job that matters if we want to build a world where a price means what it says.

I finally found the missing screws for my bookshelf in the bottom of a different box that belonged to a different piece of furniture and I realized that the system is not just broken but it is confused. We are all living in a world of mixed-up boxes and missing instructions and the only way out is to start being honest about what is actually inside the package. The strikethrough is just ink on a screen and it has no power unless we give it our trust and I for one am ready to start looking at the real numbers instead.

If the price of the room was 599 yesterday and it is 599 today then just tell me it is 599 and do not try to tell me I am saving money on a ghost. I would rather pay the full price for a truth than a discount for a lie and I think most people would feel the same if they had the chance to choose. We have been trained to chase the red text but we can train ourselves to look for the timestamp instead and that is how we take the power back from the people who think we are too stupid to see the line.

The sun will come up in Hurghada tomorrow whether Rita is there or not and the hotel will have empty beds or full beds depending on who clicked which button at what time. The world keeps turning and the prices keep shifting but the need for a solid ground to stand on never goes away. We should find the platforms that give us that ground and we should leave the hall of mirrors to the people who still think that a line through a number is a reason to believe.

Every time we click on a fake discount we are funding the lie and every time we search for the timestamp we are funding the truth. It is a small choice and it happens at eleven at night at a messy kitchen table but it is the choice that determines what kind of market we want to live in. I am tired of the decorative furniture and I am tired of the missing screws and I am ready for a price that stays the same when I look it in the eye.