Unchecked discount badges and inflated anchor prices are an easy way to trigger heavy fines under the UK's 2026 pricing updates. Regulators are clamping down on fake sales, requiring every crossed-out figure to reflect a genuine, verifiable selling history.
Preparing your PrestaShop store doesn't have to mean guessing what Trading Standards will flag during an audit. This hands-on checklist helps you clean up your promotional data, lock in legal anchor prices, and build an airtight paper trail.
The 2026 UK Pricing Rules are Coming, Whether Your PrestaShop Store is Ready or Not.
Any "was" price you display must be a genuine price you actually charged for at least 28 consecutive days in the previous 6 months, not an invented figure. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCC Act) gives regulators real power to investigate and sanction misleading pricing practices. This checklist walks you through every practical step to audit your store before enforcement begins.
What Exactly Changes for UK Retailers in 2026?
To avoid tricking shoppers and comply with the 2026 UK pricing rules, your store must use a genuine reference price for any "was" claim, typically the price you charged to most customers for at least 28 consecutive days in the previous 6 months. You must clearly display how the discount is applied, avoid artificial anchoring, and ensure your PrestaShop theme is configured to show this information accurately.
The core offence is simple: a reference price cannot be invented or inflated just to make a sale look generous. If you show a crossed-out "was" price, that figure must be a real prior selling price, not a number you plucked from a supplier's RRP or a brief spike you never intended to keep.
For PrestaShop store owners, the practical burden falls on two areas. First, your product data must track the genuine selling history of each SKU, not just the current catalogue price. Second, your theme and module setup must render that history honestly, showing the prior price, the duration it applied, and the saving in a way shoppers can verify at a glance.
Enforcement is expected to focus on repeat offenders and systemic patterns rather than one-off slips. Retailers who rely on seasonal sales, flash events, or perpetual "discount" badges should pay closest attention, since these tactics are the primary target of the updated rules.
Checklist: Audit Your Current 'was now' Price Displays
Before the 2026 rules bite, audit every promotion currently running in your PrestaShop back office. This mirrors what a Trading Standards officer will check: whether your reference price is genuine, current, and clearly presented. Work through the catalogue, not just the handful of products you remember discounting.
- Pull a full list of products with active specific prices. In PrestaShop, go to Catalog > Products and filter by products with reductions, or use the CSV export to review every discounted SKU at once rather than relying on memory.
- Verify the reference price for each SKU. Confirm the 'was' figure you display was the actual selling price for at least 28 consecutive days in the preceding 6 months. If it was a flash sale or a one-week promotion, that price is not a valid reference.
- Check the reduction type and value. In the product's Prices tab, review whether you applied a percentage reduction or a fixed amount. Fixed-amount reductions are riskier because they depend entirely on that 28-day reference being accurate.
- Review every display location. Grep the product page, category listings, search results, and any homepage featured blocks. A compliant product page means little if the listing page still shows the old, invalid comparison price.
- Look for repeated 'sales' on the same product. If a product cycles from £50 to £40 and back to £50 across several weeks, the £50 figure is not a genuine prior price, it is a launchpad for fake discounts.
- Flag products where the discount runs longer than the reference period. If you held a price for 30 days and then promoted the lower price for 90 days, the lower price becomes the new baseline. Document that transition.
- Document your evidence. Keep dated records of price histories, screenshot the relevant PrestaShop price tabs, and note which specific price triggered each promotion. You need to prove compliance, not just claim it.
If this audit feels overwhelming across a large catalogue, modules that log price history are worth exploring. They create the audit trail you would otherwise reconstruct manually, which is precisely the evidence the updated rules expect you to hold. The pattern to eliminate first is the "evergreen sale," where a reduction never ends, because that is the clearest sign of a misleading reference price.
The 28-day Rule: Are You Using the Correct Anchor Price?
UK sale pricing compliance hinges on one calculation: the anchor price you compare against. Under the CMA's expectations, the reference price should be the genuine price your product sold at for at least 28 consecutive days before the sale began. A one-day discount three weeks ago does not make that lower figure your legitimate anchor.
To audit your approach, trace each product's price history in PrestaShop. The platform logs every price change you make through the product settings, so you can see exactly how long each price was active. If you use a module to schedule promotions, check whether it records the start and end date of every price adjustment. That data is your evidence if the CMA asks how you arrived at a reference price.
Three common mistakes appear when stores calculate their anchor:
- Counting clearance periods: a short flash sale or stock clearance does not establish a 28-day reference price. Only uninterrupted selling at one price counts.
- Mixing channels: if you sell on PrestaShop and a marketplace, the 28-day clock applies per channel. Your website price history is what matters for your online shop.
- Ignoring automatic pricing rules: any module that adjusts prices based on stock levels or customer groups can break the consecutive-day count without you noticing.
For each product, set the anchor price manually in the PrestaShop product settings rather than relying on a calculated average. That way, the price shown as crossed out matches a real, verifiable selling price, and your promotion stays defensible under scrutiny.
When your anchor is wrong, every downstream display inherits the error. Fix the reference price first, then check that your sale price shows the correct reduction next to it.
How to Handle Tiered Discounts and Multi-buy Offers
Tiered pricing is where compliance slips most often in PrestaShop. When you offer a higher percentage off for buying three items than for buying one, the 2026 rules require you to treat each tier as a separate promotion with its own reference price. You cannot advertise "up to 40% off" and apply that rate to the single-unit tier.
In PrestaShop, the catalog price rules and specific prices features let you set quantity-based reductions per product. For each tier you create, verify that the displayed reference price matches the lowest price the product was sold at in the preceding 28 days, not the original catalogue price. A common error is leaving the "was" price static across all quantity brackets.
For multi-buy offers, such as "buy two, get the third at 50% off", the reference price must reflect the unit price a customer would have paid without the conditional discount. If the third unit sells at half price, the "was" figure for that transaction is the standard unit price, not the bundled average.
Apply the same principle to PrestaShop's cart rules. When a voucher applies only after a spending threshold, the displayed saving must reference the actual pre-discount basket value. Keep a documented audit trail of every price change per tier, including the date and the reason, so you can evidence compliance if the CMA asks.
The safest approach is to display the effective per-unit price at each quantity level, with the reference price anchored to the 28-day lowest sale price for that same tier. Test your tiered pricing as a customer would, checking the front office at one, two, and three units before you publish any campaign.
PrestaShop-specific Settings and Modules to Enforce Clear Pricing
Your PrestaShop back office already gives you most of the controls you need to stay sale pricing compliant. The work is in configuring them deliberately and keeping an audit trail. Below are the core settings and module types worth reviewing before the 2026 rules tighten.
Set specific price rules, not blanket discounts. In PrestaShop, navigate to Catalog > Discounts > Specific Price Rules to create promotions tied to conditions rather than store-wide reductions. You can limit a rule to one product, a category, or a customer group, and define start and end dates with precision.
Three configuration areas deserve particular attention:
- Price reduction type. Choose between a fixed amount or a percentage. Fixed amounts are easier to reconcile against your 28-day anchor price when you review records later.
- Start and end dates. Set these explicitly for every rule. A rule with no end date can quietly run past your compliance window and leave you showing a reference price that is no longer valid.
- Customer group restrictions. If a promo is meant for newsletter subscribers only, restrict the rule to that group, so your public-facing pricing stays consistent.
Log your prices automatically. PrestaShop does not retain a long-term price history out of the box, so you need a tool that records every price change with a timestamp. You can request custom development of a price history module from FME Modules. That will log price movements automatically so your compliance records exist without manual spreadsheet work.
Automate reference price display. If your store shows a crossed-out "was" price, that figure must match your genuine anchor price. Review your theme's product page template to confirm the displayed reference price pulls from the right field, and test it against a completed sale before you go live.
Schedule regular compliance checks. Use cron jobs to export your active specific price rules and current product prices on a weekly cycle. Keep those exports organised per month, because you will need them if the CMA asks for evidence during a pricing investigation.
What Constitutes A 'fake discount' Under the New Rules?
A fake discount is any offer that creates the illusion of savings when no genuine reduction exists. Under the 2026 rules, the core test is whether the advertised "was" price reflects a real prior selling period or whether you simply inflated the anchor to make the sale price look generous.
The clearest example is the price-inflation trap: say you sell a kettle for £40 all year, then raise it to £60 for two days before listing it at £45 as a "was £60" offer. That is misleading because the £45 price is still higher than your genuine selling history, and the £60 anchor was never a real market price. If a consumer cannot trace the anchor to an actual sales period, the discount is likely non-compliant.
Other non-compliant scenarios include:
- Raising the price on the product page immediately before launching a sale, with no genuine intervening trading period at the higher figure
- Using a single item's brief spike in price as the reference for an entire product range's discount
- Listing a "was" price that applies only to one variant (for example, a large size) while advertising the discount on a cheaper standard size
- Carrying over an outdated reference price from a previous season that no longer reflects your current stock cost or market position
The principle regulators apply is straightforward: the higher price must be one you genuinely charged for a reasonable period, not a figure you invented to make a modest reduction look dramatic. For PrestaShop store owners, this matters during every product import and price update, since the platform allows you to set any reference price you choose. You can develop Customized PrestaShop Modules to help you manage these displays, but the underlying data discipline must come from your own records of what you actually sold and for how long.
Traders who cannot demonstrate a genuine prior selling period for their anchor price face the highest risk of enforcement action under the updated regime.
How to Communicate Price Reductions without Legal Risk
The wording of your sale labels matters as much as the underlying pricing logic. Even a compliant anchor price can become misleading if your copy implies a bargain that does not exist. Write labels that describe exactly what you are offering: a straightforward reduction from a previous price, nothing more.
Use was/now phrasing rather than vague claims like "huge savings" or "up to 70% off" unless every product in the group genuinely qualifies. For example, replace "everything must go" with "selected lines reduced." Place the previous price next to the current price in the same visual field so shoppers can verify the reduction without hunting for disclaimers hidden at the page footer.
The safest framing is plain, factual and free of urgency language that pressures a hasty decision.
Where you need a disclaimer, for example to state that only certain variants are discounted, position it directly beneath the price block in legible text. Avoid relying on hover states or click-to-expand accordions, because a disclosure that requires interaction may not count as clear communication. On category and listing pages, state the reduction plainly; reserve detailed terms for the product page where the shopper makes the final decision.
Keep comparisons honest. Ensure the products you compare are genuinely the same item, not a similar newer model. If you run PrestaShop sale campaigns, check how your theme renders the discounted price by default, since some templates display the reduction percentage automatically.
Final Compliance Self-audit: 10-point Checklist
Run this audit before the deadline to confirm your store is ready for the updated pricing rules. Work through each point in your PrestaShop back office, and fix anything that fails before trading under the new regime.
- Confirm your reference price source. Check that every "was" price in your Price & catalog settings uses the genuine 28-day anchor price, not a short-term promotional price.
- Audit live product displays. Review active products with discounts to ensure the reference price shown is the lowest price charged in the past 28 days, and that the reduction is clear and accurate.
- Check your PrestaShop version. Verify you run the latest official release, since module compatibility for pricing displays depends on current core behaviour.
- Review automatic specific prices. Look at every specific price rule in your catalog to confirm the discount is genuine and the original price shown to customers is the correct anchor.
- Verify unit prices separately. If you sell multi-buy or bundle offers, confirm the displayed per-unit price is not misleading once the 28-day rule is applied.
Continue with these final checks before you publish or renew any promotion:
- Test your storefront as a customer. Load product pages in a private window to confirm the "was now" labels render correctly and match the prices in your catalogue.
- Remove expired reference prices. Delete old price rules that no longer reflect the current 28-day anchor, so customers never see a stale baseline.
- Document your pricing evidence. Keep dated records of list prices for each product so you can prove the anchor price was genuinely charged in the qualifying period.
- Schedule a calendar review. Mark a monthly recurring task to re-audit pricing, since retail prices move and your anchor will shift over time.
- Train your team. Confirm anyone who creates promotions understands the 28-day rule and knows how to set reference prices correctly in PrestaShop.
Most of these checks take under five minutes per product line. A failed audit costs more than a delayed sale, so treat this as a legal gate, not an admin nicety.
After you have completed the audit, use PrestaShop's price formatting options to keep every reference price visually distinct and easy to read.
Why Sale Pricing Rules Are Changing for 2026
The rules targeting fake discounts come from the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, which the 2026 enforcement updates will apply more strictly to online reference pricing. The core principle is simple: a sale price must be a genuine reduction from a price the product actually sold at, not an inflated figure you invent for the promotion.
Regulators are paying closer attention to how retailers calculate reference prices, particularly the practice of raising a price shortly before a sale to make the discount look larger. PrestaShop store owners should treat 2026 as the deadline to clean up their pricing practices rather than a distant worry.
How to Verify Genuine Previous Prices in PrestaShop
PrestaShop records price changes in your product catalog, which gives you the starting point for verifying a genuine previous price. Look at the price field for each product and compare it against the sale price you intend to display.
If your store uses a PrestaShop module to manage promotions or price rules, check whether that module logs the previous price automatically. Some modules designed for sale management record the original price at the moment you create the discount, which provides usable evidence for compliance purposes.
The key question for every product is simple: did customers actually have the chance to buy this at the higher price? If the higher price existed only in your admin settings and never appeared on the storefront, it is not a genuine reference price.
Display Rules for Previous Prices on Product Pages
The previous price must appear plainly next to the sale price so shoppers can see the saving without hunting for it. On PrestaShop product pages, this typically means the crossed-out reference price sits beside the discounted price in the product information block.
Check that the previous price is not visually obscured or presented in a way that makes the saving look larger than it is. The layout should be clear and unambiguous, because the display itself is part of your compliance, not just the underlying prices.
Keep the unit price visible for products sold by weight or volume, as this remains a separate legal requirement. A sale on a multi-buy offer should still show the per-unit cost so customers can compare fairly.
Record Keeping for Compliance Audits
Good records turn a pricing dispute into a straightforward demonstration of compliance. Store the evidence of your previous prices in a way that your team can retrieve quickly, ideally in a shared folder or a dedicated compliance log.
Your records should include the product identifier, the previous selling price, the dates that price was live, and the new sale price. Screenshots of product pages from before the sale started are useful because they show what customers actually saw on the storefront.
Document also the reference period you applied, such as the 30 days before the sale. If you used a different period for a particular product, note the reason. This documentation is what you would present if a trading standards officer asked you to justify a discount.
Using PrestaShop Modules to Support Compliance
FME Modules, an official PrestaShop Partner, has developed marketplace solutions that help store owners manage their catalogues and sales operations. Modules created specifically for PrestaShop can support compliance work by improving how you track pricing and run promotions.
When choosing a module to help with sale pricing, look for one that records the original price when a discount is applied and keeps that data available after the sale ends. This type of audit trail reduces the manual work involved in capturing evidence at the point of each promotion.
Recognise that a module supports compliance, but it does not replace your responsibility to set genuine prices. The software can record what you did, yet only you can ensure the underlying pricing practice is fair and accurate.