In my country they have to be called out on it, but to verify a discount, they have to prove that they were actively selling it at the undiscounted price for a period of about 4 weeks or so.
Unfortunately a lot of this is subverted by brands inflating the recommended retail price and then the stores just show a discount from RRP
And god knows why they insist on doing Black Friday sales in Europe, where we don't celebrate Thanksgiving, so stores are selling Christmas stuff all through November and there's nothing special about that Friday.
The industry convinced FDR to move thanksgiving forward one week to increase Christmas shopping so it’s been going on longer. Thankfully the holiday was moved back to original
And in Europe they try to pull this shit off for almost 2 months. They call it Black Weeks, almost every store does it. They seriously try to tell me, that they have a sale, for 2 whole fuking months.
I just bought a new washing machine. The price on the site said something of 40-50% discount. The store I bought it at has a policy that, if you see an item for cheaper on the Internet (like Amazon or ebay), they sell if for the same price or lower.
When I checked a website for price comparisons that also shows a price history you see the the prices where nearly the same the past year. And since they're always among the cheapest seller, the discount is complete and utter BS.
I hate that the stores who do that will often get the same item with a different SKU so that there isn't anything online that they actually match. It could be the exact same product, but different SKU.