How WEM catches fake discounts UK retailers don't want you to see

One of the features we're most proud of is fake discount detection — and I wanted to explain how it actually works, because it's the thing that surprised us most when building WEM.

The trick retailers use: A product sits at £49 for 3 months. The retailer bumps it to £79 for two weeks, then "slashes" it back to £49 and calls it 38% off. Technically legal. Practically dishonest. This happens constantly across UK retail.

What WEM does about it: The extension tracks real price history across multiple retailers. When you land on a "deal," we show you:

• The actual price trend over time (not the retailer's self-reported "was" price)

• Whether the current price is genuinely low, average, or inflated

• If another retailer has it cheaper right now

What we found building this: Some "sale" prices are actually higher than the product's normal price at competing retailers. We see this pattern most on electronics, home appliances, and fashion.

A few questions for the community:

1. What product categories do you find the most misleading pricing in?

2. Would you find it useful if WEM sent you an alert when a product you viewed actually drops to its real lowest price?

3. Any retailers you'd like us to add to our comparison engine?

We're a small team and we're building based on real user feedback — so anything you share here genuinely shapes what we ship next.

Thanks