A discount is a comparison. "Now $4" on its own is just a price — it becomes a saving only when set against something else, and that something else is a claim about what the product used to cost.
Which raises a question most of us never think to ask at the shelf: used to cost when, and for how long?
The rule, in plain terms
Under Australian Consumer Law, a business must not make false or misleading representations about price. For a "was/now" claim, the settled principle is that the higher figure has to have been a genuine selling price — one the product was actually available at, for a reasonable period, immediately before the discount.
"A reasonable period" was doing a lot of unexamined work in that sentence for years. In May 2026, the Federal Court gave it a concrete shape. Considering a set of promotional tickets, Justice O'Bryan indicated that had the higher price been held for twelve weeks before the discount was advertised, the ticket would have been unobjectionable. A four-week period was found to be too short to support the claim.
Why this is useful rather than just legal trivia: it converts a vague idea — "the was-price should be real" — into a number a shopper can actually reason with. Roughly three months at the higher price is solid ground. A few weeks is not.
The ACCC's broader inquiry into the supermarket sector, which reported in February 2025, made related recommendations: clearer pricing information, promotions that can actually be verified, and explicit notification when a package size changes. The direction of travel is towards discount claims that a customer can check, rather than take on trust.
What that looks like on a price chart
The distinction is obvious the moment you can see the price history, and completely invisible if you can't. Both of the tickets below would read "was $8.00, now $4.00" in the aisle. They are not the same offer.
Three questions worth asking at the shelf
You can't reconstruct a price history from memory. But you can get most of the way with a few habits.
- Does the "was" price feel like the price you've actually paid? If a product has felt like a $6 item for a year and the ticket says it was $8, that gap is worth a second of scepticism.
- Check the unit price, not the headline. It's the only figure on the label that survives a change in pack size, and it lets you compare the discounted item against everything beside it. More on that here.
- Ask what the alternative costs today. A genuine half-price on a premium brand can still land above the everyday price of the own-brand next to it.
A price ticket can only ever show you a single moment. Whether that moment is a bargain depends entirely on a shape it has no way of drawing — and that you have no way of remembering.
That's the honest situation. Not that discounts are generally fake, or that anyone should shop suspiciously — most promotions are exactly what they appear to be, and the rules exist and are being enforced. It's simply that the ticket is the wrong instrument for the job. It's a snapshot being asked to answer a question about a trend.
The only thing that answers it is a record of what the price has actually been, kept by something that was paying attention when you weren't.
Keep the receipts, automatically
Watch the products you buy and we'll track their price over time, then email you when one genuinely drops — measured against what it's actually been, not what a ticket claims.
Watch a productSources and further reading
- ACCC — Proceedings over alleged misleading discount pricing claims
- ACCC — Supermarkets inquiry final report, February 2025
- The Conversation — How these court cases could change shopping in Australia
- CHOICE — On the ACCC's final supermarkets report
This article is general information about how pricing rules work, not legal advice, and it doesn't allege wrongdoing by any retailer. Proceedings referred to are a matter of public record; at the time of writing, penalty questions in one matter and judgment in another remain before the courts.