Don’t Fall for These 3 Outlet Shopping Tricks

Dirty Secret #3: Faux Price Tags

Wait a second: If merchandise is being bought and produced especially for the outlet, that means… Yes, you guessed it, that price tag’s exuberant slash on that “original price” is not authentic, which essentially means your savings aren’t, either.

Again, some of the merchandise is actually from the main store, so not all price tags are fake, but if we had to hazard a guess, we’d say around 75-80 percent of outlet merchandise these days carries “fake” prices built into the price tags. Our anonymous buyer told us, “When I bought merchandise for outlet, I not only determined the selling price as I typically would, I also created a fake ‘full price’ for each item that would get marked on the labels. But, of course, our markup was based on the selling price.” Which means that the “$250 shirt” that is selling for $50 was bought for around $20.