Presidents Day Sales 2026: Real Discounts vs. Fake Markdowns Exposed

Last updated: August 16, 2026

Presidents Day weekend used to mean a mattress sale and a day off. Now it’s one of the biggest shopping events on the calendar — and one of the most misleading. Here at Deal Drop Today, we spend the whole year tracking prices across major retailers, and the pattern we see around presidents day sales is the same one we see around every other “event”: a lot of crossed-out numbers that were never real prices in the first place. So let’s do something useful with the 2026 data that’s now in. Which presidents day sales actually saved people money, and which ones just moved a decimal point?

What Presidents Day Sales Look Like by the Numbers

The scale here is genuinely big. RetailMeNot data reported by NBC Select put average planned per-shopper spending at roughly $197 for Presidents Day weekend, with industry estimates landing near $22 billion in weekend retail spending. That’s not a sleepy holiday anymore — that’s a mid-tier Black Friday.

What’s more interesting is the participation shift. RetailMeNot found that 46% of shoppers planned to shop the 2026 event, roughly double the year before, while planned spending stayed flat. Read that carefully: twice as many people showed up, but nobody planned to spend more. That’s the profile of a budget-constrained shopper who is hunting hard for a bargain — exactly the shopper a fake markdown is designed to catch.

The Fake Markdown Playbook: How False Reference Pricing Works

The trick has a legal name: false reference pricing. A retailer displays a “regular,” “list,” “compare at,” or “MSRP” price with a line through it, then shows you a lower number beside it. The implied message is that you’re capturing real savings. The problem is when that crossed-out price is fiction — a number the store rarely or never actually charged.

Under federal guidance, a comparison price is supposed to be a price the item was genuinely offered at, for a reasonably substantial period, in the regular course of business. As firms like Tauler Smith have laid out, when a “was” price exists mainly to make the “now” price look good, that’s the conduct regulators and class-action attorneys are targeting. The math on your savings is only as honest as the number it’s subtracted from.

Here’s why it works so well during presidents day sales specifically: you’ve been told a sale is happening. You arrive primed to believe the discount is real and time-limited. You don’t check whether that same item sat at that same “sale” price in November, December, and January. Most of the time, it did.

The Study That Put Numbers on It

This isn’t speculation. Consumers’ Checkbook, the nonprofit consumer group, ran a six-month price-tracking study beginning in February 2025. Researchers checked prices weekly for 24 straight weeks across 25 major retailers. The conclusion was blunt: nearly all major retailers now use fake sales to mislead customers.

At most of the 25 stores tracked, items were advertised at a “discount” more than half the time. For 12 of the 25 companies, more than half of the tracked items were on a false discount every single week, or nearly every week. A permanent sale is not a sale. It’s just the price.

Kevin Brasler, executive editor of Consumers’ Checkbook, put it this way in the group’s announcement: “By constantly offering items at sale prices — and rarely if ever offering them at regular prices — retailers are engaging in deceptive advertising to boost their profits.” That single sentence explains more about presidents day sales than any retailer’s press release will.

The Retailers Named as Worst Offenders

Checkbook singled out a specific group where most tracked items were always or almost always “on sale.” The list included Bass Pro Shops, Bed Bath & Beyond, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Foot Locker, Gap, JCPenney, Michaels, Nordstrom, Old Navy, and Wayfair.

If you recognize that list, it’s because those are exactly the stores that blanket your inbox every February. When a retailer’s baseline state is “40% off,” the Presidents Day version of that promotion isn’t giving you anything extra. You’re seeing the everyday price with holiday branding stapled to it.

This doesn’t mean those stores never have a good price. It means the crossed-out number tells you nothing, so you need an outside reference point before you can judge anything.

Who Actually Runs Honest Presidents Day Sales

The same study found a useful counterexample. Only Apple, Costco, and Dell consistently offered legitimate, non-perpetual discounts — meaning items genuinely sold at a regular price most of the time, and genuinely dropped during a promotion.

That’s a meaningful signal. When Apple or Costco marks something down, the markdown is measured against a price real people were actually paying last week. When a perpetual-sale retailer marks something down, it’s measured against a number that exists mostly in the marketing department. Two identical-looking “30% off” tags can mean completely different things.

The practical takeaway for presidents day sales: retailers with disciplined everyday pricing are worth watching during promotional windows, because their sales are events. Retailers running a year-round clearance vibe need to be evaluated on the final price alone — ignore the discount percentage entirely.

The 2026 Lawsuits: Allegations Piling Up

Courts are getting busy with this. Important framing first: every case below is an allegation. None represent a finding of liability, and companies dispute these claims.

Nike was hit with a class action filed July 21, 2026, alleging that its site and app displayed reference prices the company hadn’t charged in months. ClassAction.org reported the complaint’s example: a black Air Max 2017 shown against a $190 reference price while allegedly sitting on continuous sale from roughly September 2025 through March 2026. Six months of “sale” is not a sale.

Best Buy has faced a California class action over TVs bought in February 2025 — Presidents Day timing, notably — advertised against reference prices that allegedly weren’t the prevailing market price in the prior three months. An earlier January 2025 case was voluntarily dismissed in November 2025 after mediation, and as of June 2026 there was no public settlement.

Shein was sued in May 2026 over allegedly fake discounts built on inflated reference prices. Quince faces a suit from plaintiff Ben Fabrikant over a marked-up “traditional retail” price on a Vintage Wash Tencel Camp Shirt. Other retailers named in recent false-reference-pricing suits include Fossil, Lowe’s Home Centers, L.L.Bean, Under Armour, and Sleep Number.

For scale, look at older resolved cases: JCPenney settled a deceptive-pricing matter for $50 million, and Ascena Retail Group paid $50.8 million. These aren’t rounding errors. They’re the cost of a business model.

What the FTC Is Doing About Deceptive Pricing

Regulators are moving on adjacent ground. The Federal Trade Commission sued Instacart over deceptive labels, disclosures, and algorithmic pricing — including price disparities reported as high as 23% higher for some users viewing the same items. In December 2025, Instacart agreed to pay $60 million in consumer refunds.

The FTC also finalized a 2025 rule targeting hidden fees in ticketing and short-term lodging, forcing all-in pricing upfront. The direction of travel is clear: the total price you pay, disclosed honestly, matters more to regulators than the theatrical discount attached to it.

That’s a useful mental model for shoppers too. Stop grading the percentage. Grade the dollar figure you hand over.

Mattresses: The Most Inflated Category in Presidents Day Sales

No category leans on inflated MSRP harder. Industry reporting from outlets like Sleep Retailer describes brick-and-mortar mattress retailers running markups in the 200–900% range over wholesale, versus roughly 60–150% for direct-to-consumer brands like Nectar, DreamCloud, and Saatva.

That spread is the whole magic trick. If your markup is 400%, you can advertise “40% off MSRP” every weekend of the year and still clear a healthy margin. This is precisely why mattress presidents day sales feel so aggressive — and why the identical offer reappears for Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day.

None of that makes mattresses a bad buy. It makes the discount percentage meaningless. Compare final delivered prices across three or four brands for a comparable build — coil count, foam density, warranty, trial period — and ignore every crossed-out number on the page.

Manufactured Urgency and the Countdown Clock

The second half of the playbook is pressure. Countdown timers, “only 3 left,” “ends tonight,” flash windows that reset when you reload the page. The goal is to stop you from doing the ten seconds of research that would kill the sale.

Marketing roundups often cite a figure that roughly two-thirds of shoppers make unplanned purchases during promotional holidays because of attractive discounts. We’d treat that specific number cautiously — it traces to aggregator sites rather than a named survey — but the underlying behavior is well documented and probably matches your own experience. Urgency short-circuits comparison.

The defense is boring and effective: when you feel the timer working on you, that’s the moment to close the tab for an hour. Genuine presidents day sales survive an hour of thinking. Fake ones depend on you not taking it.

How to Tell a Real Discount From a Fake One

Here’s the checklist we actually use at Deal Drop Today before we’ll call something a deal:

• Check price history first. For Amazon items, paste the product URL into CamelCamelCamel or Keepa. Both are free and show you months or years of actual pricing. Look for the historical low, not the crossed-out list price.
• Compare to the low, not the “was.” A real deal sits at or near the historical low. If the current price is merely below a list price nobody paid, you’ve found marketing, not savings.
• Watch when the reference price appeared. If the “regular” price only showed up days before the event, that’s a red flag worth taking seriously.
• Look for the “Best Price” indicator. Price trackers flag all-time lows. That flag is worth more than any banner.
• Check three retailers minimum. Cross-shopping is the single highest-return habit. Checkbook’s own conclusion was that shopping around is the key defense.
• Ignore the percentage entirely. Ask one question: is this final number good for this item, right now, from anyone?
• Check the total, not the sticker. Shipping, fees, delivery, and haul-away can erase a 20% markdown instantly.

Categories Genuinely Worth Buying During Presidents Day Sales

Real timing advantages do exist. February is a legitimate clearance window for a few things, driven by inventory cycles rather than marketing calendars.

1. Winter apparel and outerwear. Retailers are clearing seasonal stock for spring. These markdowns are real because the alternative is storing coats for eight months.
2. TVs. New model years arrive in spring, so prior-year panels get pushed out. Just verify against price history — this is also the category drawing lawsuits.
3. Large appliances. Floor models and outgoing lines move now. Negotiate; ask about dented-box and open-box pricing.
4. Mattresses. Genuine competition exists between DTC brands. Compare final prices, never percentages.
5. Fitness equipment. January resolutions have collapsed by mid-February and retailers know it.

What’s usually not worth it during presidents day sales: fast fashion, everyday electronics accessories, and anything from a store that’s been “on sale” since last summer.

Your Presidents Day Sales Game Plan

Build a short list before the ads start. Write down the three to five things you actually need, with a target price for each based on price-history research, not on what a retailer says something used to cost. That list is your defense against every countdown clock in February.

Then, during the event, check each item against your target. If it hits, buy it. If it doesn’t, walk. The next promotional holiday is roughly ten weeks away, and for perpetual-sale retailers, the identical offer will be there next Tuesday anyway.

One more habit: save a screenshot of the listing page. If a reference price turns out to be inflated and a class action later covers your purchase, documentation is what turns a headline into a refund.

The Bottom Line on Presidents Day Sales

The honest summary of 2026: a lot of real money moved, some real deals existed, and a large share of the advertised savings were measured against numbers that didn’t mean much. Checkbook’s 24-week study, the wave of false-reference-pricing suits, and the FTC’s push on pricing transparency all point the same direction.

None of that means you should skip presidents day sales. It means you should grade them differently. Stop reading the discount and start reading the price. A crossed-out number is a claim; a price history is evidence. Once you make that switch, the noise gets quiet fast, and the genuinely good presidents day sales become easy to spot.

Do the ten seconds of research. Compare three stores. Buy at your number, not theirs — and let the fake markdowns expire without you.

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