COMPLIANCE · Pro PLAYBOOK
WHY PRICING CLAIMS ARE AN ENFORCEMENT MAGNET: price is the claim consumers act on fastest and verify easiest, which makes deceptive pricing the FTC's oldest and most consistently punished category — the 'deceptive pricing' standards date back decades and have been applied to every new medium without modification, including livestreams. For live sellers, three pricing moves carry nearly all the risk: the anchor ('retails for $80'), the countdown ('price goes back up in 5 minutes'), and the comparison ('was $50, now $29'). Each is legal when true and each is a violation in its common fake form.
THE ANCHOR RULE: referencing a retail or MSRP price is lawful only when that price reflects a genuine, substantial marketplace price — one at which the product was actually offered for a reasonably recent and substantial period, or is genuinely offered by other sellers. The anchor against a fictional $80 nobody ever charged is deceptive pricing, full stop. Safe practice: anchor only against prices you can screenshot today from a real retailer's page, keep the screenshots dated in your compliance file, and say the anchor honestly ('this style runs about $45 at big-box retailers — here's the page, check me') rather than theatrically.
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