What Does the Law Say About Strikethrough Prices?

When you advertise a discount, the strikethrough price must be the lowest price you charged in the previous thirty days. That's Article L. 112-1-1 of the French Consumer Code, in force since May 28, 2022. The text runs just a few lines.

The problem lies in your back office, where a single field accepts any price without knowing which one it is.

The benchmark

Here is what the article provides, as clarified by the FAQ that MEDEF wrote in consultation with the DGCCRF:

• The reference price. This is the lowest price offered to regular customers during the thirty days before the discount, weekends included, even if you sold nothing at that price.
• Successive discounts. When the discount deepens in stages during a single promotion, the price before the first markdown stays the reference.
• The exclusions. Perishable products at risk of rapid spoilage, comparisons with other retailers' prices, bundles, and benefits reserved for identified customers (loyalty, private sales) fall under other rules. Promo codes shown to everyone on the site are covered.
• The penalty. A non-compliant ad is a misleading commercial practice, punishable by a fine of up to €1.5 million for a company, and up to 10% of average annual revenue when the benefit gained justifies it.

Inspections do happen. In 2024, the DGCCRF checked nearly 5,300 establishments and 350 websites, and found irregularities at a third of those advertising discounts.

In September 2025, PrettyLittleThing agreed to a €1.3 million fine after an investigation found that 55% of the discounts checked didn't match any actual price drop.

The rule

A strikethrough price with no label reads as a discount. On Shopify, the "compare-at price" field accepts any number: the price from three months ago, the manufacturer's suggested price, the sum of the items in a bundle.

The theme displays all of these as a crossed-out figure, and Shopify states in its help center that it neither calculates nor stores the lowest price of the last thirty days. The law, however, distinguishes between these prices.

Comparing with a suggested price is still allowed if the nature of that price is clearly stated, next to the figure. Without that mention, shoppers read it as a price drop, and the FAQ warns that a comparison perceived as a discount can fall under the thirty-day rule.

At the end of September, we spotted this omission in two audits, one on an accessories store and one on an accommodation booking site: a strikethrough price with not a word around it.

Nothing there pointed to a fake promotion, but looking at the product page, neither shoppers nor we, as auditors, could tell which price it was. In an inspection, you have to justify the advertised benefit, backed by your price history.

The steps

1. The label. Name every strikethrough price on screen, "price before discount" or "manufacturer's suggested price," so your discounts are no longer confused with a manufacturer's price.
2. The archive. Keep the prices you charged, item by item, day by day. A daily catalog export is enough, since the Shopify product CSV file contains the "Price" and "Compare-at price" columns for each variant. A dedicated app can also handle it.
3. The calculation. For every promotion, first recalculate the reference price over a rolling thirty days and file that calculation with the archive.

An exercise for this week: take your ten best sellers displayed with a strikethrough price. For each one, note which price it is and where the proof for the last thirty days sits. If a box stays empty, here is the sentence to say to your leadership, in your own words:

"Before the next promotion, we need to be able to prove every strikethrough price, and right now we can't everywhere."

The trap

The preview. If you open an offer to everyone ten days before Black Friday, then present Friday as a new promotion, that offer's price becomes your lowest in the last thirty days, and the discount on the day is calculated from it.

A truly restricted preview (sign-up, personal account) or a discount that deepens in stages within a single promotion falls outside this calculation. The guide on the settings to lock in before Black Friday covers both cases, with figures.

This guide offers benchmarks and is not a substitute for legal advice.