How it works

UK Price Drops watches the public product pages of UK retailers and ranks what has got cheaper. This page explains exactly how, and what to do when a deal turns out to be a mistake.

Where the prices come from

A crawler visits retailers' own product and clearance pages and reads the price they publish for anyone to see. It follows each site's robots.txt rules, waits between requests, and identifies itself with a contact address. Retailers that ask automated visitors to stay away are not crawled at all.

The two kinds of deal

Every card says which kind it is, because they are not equally reliable.

• Retailer's own discount. The page states a pre-discount price, so we show the saving the retailer itself claims. We do not verify that the higher price was ever really charged.
• Price fall we tracked. We recorded the price ourselves and have since seen it fall. This is evidence rather than a claim, so it is the stronger of the two.

What "suspected pricing error" means

A deal is flagged when the price looks too low to be deliberate. That happens when a price we tracked has fallen by 60% or more, when an advertised discount is 80% or more, when the price is far below the product's own recent average, or when it is under 40% of what the same item fetches on other marketplaces.

It is a flag, not a verdict. Genuine clearance can look identical to a mistake, and we would rather show you a real bargain that looks odd than hide one.

If a retailer cancels your order

This is the part worth reading before you buy. In the UK, displaying a price is normally an invitation to treat rather than a binding offer. A contract is usually formed when the retailer accepts your order, and many terms state that acceptance happens on dispatch, not at checkout. That means a retailer can generally cancel an order placed at an obvious mistake price and refund you, even after taking payment and sending an order confirmation.

In practice: expect a refund rather than the product, do not spend money that depends on the order arriving, and treat anything flagged as a suspected pricing error as a gamble. If a retailer refuses to refund you, Citizens Advice can tell you where you stand. We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice.

Comparison prices

Where we can, each listing shows the median price of the same item on other marketplaces, so you can tell whether a discount is genuinely good. Products are matched by name, so the comparison is close rather than exact, and nothing is shown unless several similar items were found.

Why a deal might be wrong

Prices change constantly and a page can be out of date by the time you read it. Stock runs out, delivery costs differ, and a variant we matched may not be the one you want. Always check the price on the retailer's own site before buying. If you spot something wrong, tell us or use the "Expired" button on the card.