No, the scare quotes are there for a reason. They’ve determined that the most profitable price point is at $300, but they want to advertise “50% off!” without actually lowering the price, so they raise the price to some ridiculous number for as short as legally possible, then claim that it’s the “real” price and say that $300 is discounted.
It’s just lying, and it’s illegal in many jurisdictions. For example, Dell recently got fined $10,000,000 in Australia for advertising “was $x, now $y” discounts when $x was not the price for the majority of the product’s recent availability.
Wouldn’t they lose money by always having it include a discount?
No, the scare quotes are there for a reason. They’ve determined that the most profitable price point is at $300, but they want to advertise “50% off!” without actually lowering the price, so they raise the price to some ridiculous number for as short as legally possible, then claim that it’s the “real” price and say that $300 is discounted.
It’s just lying, and it’s illegal in many jurisdictions. For example, Dell recently got fined $10,000,000 in Australia for advertising “was $x, now $y” discounts when $x was not the price for the majority of the product’s recent availability.