Kitting out your home should be fun, but Which? research reveals that you could be getting misled when you’re trying to save money.
As part of a wider investigation into sales practices at online retailers, we spent more than 10 months tracking the prices of more than 40,000 products at nine home furnishing brands: Argos, Blinds Direct, Blinds2Go, Dunelm, Furniture Village, Ikea, John Lewis, Very and 247 Blinds.
We found examples of potentially misleading sales practices at 247 Blinds, Blinds Direct, Furniture Village and Very.
We’re concerned that these examples could make shoppers think they're getting a better deal than they are. We’ve shared our results with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), and we’re calling on businesses to change their practices to put a stop to dodgy pricing.
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How ‘was/now’ sale prices can be misleading
During sales, retailers often label their products with ‘was/now’ price labels.
Adding a ‘was’ price to a sales product is supposed to illustrate how much you’re saving, because you can compare the new discounted price with the previous price of the product.
However, we’ve found examples in which the ‘was’ price shown on a product was not the most recent price at which it was sold. This could, in some cases, cause shoppers to overestimate their savings.
What we found at Very
You might remember that we found potentially misleading sales at Very in our investigation of TV sales in June. Now we’ve uncovered further examples of bad practice on its home furnishing products.
Starting in March, Very labelled its Rubberwood dining set ‘Was £349’ for 68 days – but sold the product at multiple different prices during this period, as the graph below shows.
The graph shows the item price and ‘was’ price of the Rubberwood Dining Set at Very between 27 February 2025 and 10 May 2025.
Source: prices collected daily from Very.co.uk for New Rubberwood Fixed Top 100 cm Kentucky Dining Table + 4 Chairs – Grey between 7 September 2024 and 28 July 2025. The graph above shows a portion of the full period of time in which we collected these prices – the item was on sale during this portion, but not the full time period.
On 10 May, this product was labelled ‘Was £349, Now £299’. You might assume that meant you were saving £50 – but actually, the set hadn’t been sold at £349 since 3 March.
In addition, since being sold at £349, it had twice been sold at a price lower than £299: once at £249, and once at £199.
In fact, if you bought the product on 10 May, you would have spent £100 more than if you'd bought it just two weeks earlier.
We found that 75% of sale products at Very had one or more of these ‘intervening prices’ during a sales period.*
We also found that 32% of Furniture Village’s sales products had intervening prices.*
For example, on 3 February, the Dolce dining set at Furniture Village was labelled ‘Was £2,349, Now £1,795’.
However, between 8 January and 2 February, the set was sold at £2,095 – that’s £254 less than the ‘was’ price.
While shoppers might have thought they were saving £554 on the product, they were saving just £300 compared with the previous month.
We found similar examples of poor practice at 247 Blinds.
The price of its Prairie Horses blind was changed five times between December and February, all with the same ‘was’ price.
On 2 February, this blind was labelled ‘Was £105.66, Now £103.88’ – but it hadn’t been sold at this higher price since the beginning of December. In fact, this blind had more recently been sold at £79.25.
We found that a whopping 98% of sale products at 247 Blinds had one or more intervening prices.*
The guidance on ‘was/now’ pricing
The CMA offers guidance on how online retailers should use sales and price labels to market their products.
It says that for a price comparison to be genuine, the ‘was’ price must be that which was offered immediately before the discount begins.
This guidance is targeted at online mattress sellers, but the CMA says it will also be taken into account when it considers enforcement action in other sectors.
The Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) also says that it may not consider price comparisons to be genuine if the ‘was’ price is not the most recent price at which the product was sold.
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The CMA and CTSI also offer guidance on sale duration.
The CMA mattress guidance states that the ‘was’ price shouldn’t be offered for less time than the discounted offer price. The CTSI also says that this would be less likely to comply with its guidance.
However, we found instances in which a product was on a ‘was/now’ discount for longer than it was actually sold at the higher price at both Furniture Village and Very.
The Rubberwood dining set we mentioned earlier was labelled ‘Was £349’ for 68 days from 4 March to 10 May 2025 – but it had been sold at this price for just five days immediately before.
We found that 65% of sale products at Very used a ‘was’ price for longer than the product was actually sold at that price.**
At Furniture Village, the proportion was 75%.** Its Sofia sofa was sold at £1,595 for 16 days in December, then labelled ‘Was £1,595’ for 42 days.
We also found that 74% of sale products at 247 Blinds used ‘was’ prices for longer than the products were sold at those prices.**
Sales at Blinds Direct
Blinds Direct labels its sales differently from other retailers. Instead of using a ‘was’ price, it labels products with a crossed-out reference price and a percentage-off discount.
However, we found that 60% of sale products used crossed-out reference prices for longer than they were actually sold at those prices.**
Between September 2024 and April 2025, the Whiston blind at Blinds Direct was sold at £122.31 for less than two months in total.
However, also during that period, it was on sale with £122.31 shown as a crossed-out price for almost five months – that’s more than twice as long as it was sold at that price.
It’s not all doom and gloom. We were impressed with the sales we saw at Argos, Blinds2Go, Dunelm, Ikea and John Lewis.
Across all these retailers, we found that 12% of sale products or fewer had intervening prices, and 5% or fewer used ‘was’ prices for longer than the product was actually sold at that price.
At Argos, we found only two products that were on a ‘was/ now’ discount for longer than they were sold at the higher price. The retailer also impressed us in our investigation of TV sales.
Its products typically go on sale for only brief periods of time, with only one sale price used.
In the three months between May and August, for example, Argos ran a one-month sale on its Miami dining set. This sale used just one sale price, and the ‘was’ price matched the most recent price charged before the promotion.
The graph shows the item price and ‘was’ price of the Miami dining set at Argos between 6 March and 6 August 2025.
Source: prices collected daily from Argos.co.uk for Miami Oak Dining Table & 4 Brown Chairs between 7 September 2024 and 28 July 2025. The graph above shows a portion of the full period of time in which we collected these prices – the item was on sale during this portion, but not the full time period.
It's clear both that you're making a saving in buying the dining table during the sale, and exactly how much that saving is.
Blinds Direct said: ‘[We] are committed to ensuring our pricing remains clear, fair and transparent. We thank Which? for informing us of its upcoming article referencing pricing on [the Whiston blind], where a percentage discount promotion applied only to orders over £49. While this promotion is intended to provide additional value for our customers, we recognise that this example highlights an area that could be improved. We will investigate this promptly and make any changes necessary.’
Furniture Village said: ‘Furniture Village is committed to fair and transparent pricing for our customers, and we work in close alignment with our Primary Authority to ensure our pricing practices are compliant and not misleading. The Dolce dining set example cited by Which? does not reflect our standard pricing approach, as the product was discontinued in June 2025 and marked down in line with our usual clearance process as we sold through remaining overstocks.’
Very said: 'Our teams work hard to keep the prices of our 100,000+ products up to date, as we know promotions are important to our customers. Prices for many items can fluctuate based on market trends, such as the launch of major promotions or new models. We are continually exploring new ways to enhance our pricing and promotional practices to ensure customers can shop with confidence.'
247 Blinds didn’t respond to our request for comment.
We collected data for more than 10 months between 7 September 2024 and 28 July 2025 to analyse the pricing history of furniture, blinds and home furnishing products sold on promotion at Argos (2,725 products), Blinds Direct (912 products), Blinds2Go (1,073 products), Dunelm (7,337 products), Furniture Village (6,482 products), Ikea (4,835 products), John Lewis (12,414 products), Very (577 products) and 247 Blinds (3,977 products).
All the prices we collected for blinds retailers were for a blind measuring 153cm wide with a 162cm drop. We kept all other features of the blind (such as motorisation and chain colour) as the default settings on the website.
Note that we were not able to collect prices every day for all products.
*Where we have reported on intervening prices, we analysed products by splitting the data into pricing periods. Each period was a length of time in which a product was sold at a single price. We excluded any period if we were missing more than 25% of the days during that period.
For example, consider a product sold at £30 on two consecutive Sundays, and at £25 in the Monday to Saturday period. If we were missing data on the Wednesday only, we assumed it was sold at £25 on that day. But if we were missing data on the Wednesday and Thursday, we excluded that Monday to Saturday period from our analysis – it would not be considered an intervening price.
**Where we have reported on the ‘was’ price being charged for less time than the discounted price(s), we gave retailers the benefit of the doubt and assumed on any day for which we didn’t have data that the product was sold at the ‘was’ price.
