A price is meant to be a fact. In this market a fifth of them are an offer, and the difference is entirely invisible when two figures sit side by side in a comparison. This page counts how much of the published pricing is a promotion rather than a rate, using the sellers’ own words rather than any inference about their intent — the same method as the disclosure counts in who publishes a dose ladder.
How much of it
Of 728 pricing notes this desk has recorded, 159 contain promotional language — 22% of them. The commonest is a first month, in 79 notes. A figure described that way is not necessarily wrong; it is describing a different thing from the figure beside it.
The anchors are the worst of it
31 notes describe a struck-through figure sitting above the price. An anchor is not a price anyone has ever paid — it exists to make the number beneath it feel smaller — and in this market almost none of them is sourced to anything.
That is worth separating from a genuine introductory rate, which at least corresponds to a real transaction for a real month. Both distort a comparison, but only one of them is a number a buyer could ever be charged.
What it changes about comparing
It means the two most useful questions about any figure are what it applies to and for how long. A first-month rate answers a different question from a standing rate, and a comparison that places them side by side is not a comparison. We follow that through seller by seller in when the headline is not the bill and count the structural version of it in what sellers will not tell you.
It also means a figure read once may not survive a second reading — which is why every price on this site carries the month it was taken, and why reading a price twice found so much movement.