What we check before we call something a price drop
Our price drop posts on social media and in Discord are generated from live data. Here is every check a drop has to pass first, and why we round savings down.
VantaSpec posts price drops to Discord, Bluesky, Threads, Instagram and Facebook. They are generated automatically from the prices we track, which makes it worth explaining exactly what a drop has to prove before it is posted, because automated deal posts are easy to get wrong.
Every figure is checked against the database
A drop names a product, a retailer, a price and what it was before. Each of those is checked against live data when the post is made, not taken on trust:
- The product is live on the site. A product we have taken down, or have not approved, cannot be posted.
- The retailer is selling it now. The price must belong to a live offer at that retailer.
- The price is the current price, to the penny.
- The "was" price really happened. It has to appear in that product's own price history at that retailer. A "was" price we never recorded cannot be posted, so a drop cannot be invented by comparing against a made-up list price.
- The percentage is worked out, never typed in. It comes from the two checked figures.
- "Lowest price we've recorded" is only said when it is true of the product's whole history, new stock only.
Checked again before it goes out
Posts are queued and sent through the day. A video or a card made in the morning could be wrong by the afternoon, so a generated post is checked again at the moment it is sent. If the price has moved, it is not sent.
Savings are rounded down
"Save £90" on a £449.99 to £359.99 drop is exact. When a saving is not a whole number of pounds, we round down, so we never claim a saving bigger than the real one.
What we do not post
- Refurbished or open-box prices as drops on new products.
- A "was" price taken from a retailer's own "RRP" that we never saw it sold at.
- Prices from listings we have flagged as the wrong product, such as a mouse mat matched to a mouse.
Where to find them
Join the VantaSpec Discord (linked at the foot of every page) for drops as they happen, follow us on your platform of choice, or browse the deals page for everything that has dropped recently. If a drop looks wrong to you, tell us. We would rather fix it than have you find out at the checkout.