Eight ways a half price special costs you money
A half price special is a genuine discount and also, unavoidably, a piece of marketing. It exists because it changes what people put in a trolley. Most of the time that change works out fine for both parties. Sometimes it does not, and the ways it goes wrong are consistent enough to list.
1. Buying something you would not otherwise have bought
The big one, and the hardest to see from the inside, because it feels like thrift. If a product was not going to be in your trolley at full price, buying it at half price has not saved you anything — it has cost you the discounted price.
The check: before adding an item, ask whether you would be buying it today at the regular price. If the answer is no, the discount is doing the deciding.
2. The smaller pack that is worse per unit
A half price 30-pack of dishwasher tablets can easily cost more per wash than a 60-pack at its ordinary price. The sticker is honest and the maths still goes against you.
The check: read the unit price on the shelf label — per 100g, per wash, per 100 sheets. It is legally required to be there. See the unit pricing guide.
3. Percentages instead of dollars
Fifty per cent off sounds identical whether the item is $1.20 or $60. It is 60 cents in one case and $30 in the other. Percentages make trivial savings feel significant, which is precisely why they are used on the sticker.
The check: decide using the dollar saving. Sort by it if you can — the insights page lists the current deals with the largest dollar savings.
4. Buying more perishable food than you will eat
Discounted fresh produce, dairy and bakery are usually discounted because the clock is running. If a third of it goes in the bin, you have paid more per unit consumed than if you had bought a smaller quantity at full price.
The check: name the meal before you buy it, or name the freezer. If neither applies, buy the quantity you would have bought anyway.
5. The extra trip
Driving to a second supermarket to catch its specials routinely costs more than it saves, once you count fuel, time and the unplanned items that come from walking through a second store. The exception is a genuinely large single saving on an expensive item.
The check: would the saving alone justify the trip if nothing else were on the list? If not, do one shop at one store.
6. Confusing Down Down and Prices Dropped with a special
Both are long-term price positions rather than weekly deals. They look like promotions, and they create the same urgency, but the price is not going back up next Wednesday, so there is nothing to act quickly about — and nothing to stockpile against.
The check: if it does not say half price or carry a genuine was/now, treat it as the ordinary price. The catalogue terms guide covers each label.
7. The multi-buy that barely discounts
"2 for $7" when a single is $3.80 is a 30-cent saving in exchange for buying twice as much. Multi-buys are a volume mechanism with a discount attached, not the other way round.
The check: divide the multi-buy price by the number of items and compare it to the single price. If the gap is small, buy one.
8. Trying something new in bulk
A discount is a reason to try a product once. It is not a reason to own four of them. This goes double in health and beauty, where an unsuitable product will simply sit unused, and in food, where taste is not negotiable.
The check: new product, buy one. Proven product, buy the quantity that reaches the next promotion.
The pattern. Almost every item above is the same failure in a different costume: the discount changed the decision instead of improving it. The discount is only a saving when it applies to something you had already decided to buy.
Two things that are not traps
It is worth being fair about this, because guides like this can tip into cynicism that is not warranted.
- Half price specials are real. The reduction against the retailer's own regular price is genuine, and Australian Consumer Law puts real constraints on misleading was/now claims. This is not a con, and treating every discount as a trick will cost you money too.
- Buying ahead genuinely works. For products that keep and that you use predictably, matching your purchases to the promotional cycle is straightforwardly cheaper than buying at random intervals. That is most of the non-perishable half of a shopping list.
The goal is not to outwit the supermarket. It is to take the part of the offer that suits you — cheaper versions of things you were buying anyway — and decline the part that does not.
Related: what is actually worth stockpiling and how to plan a fortnightly shop.