CMV: Websites that use fake countdown timers for sales are scummy and deserve to go out of business.

My trust in the company is zero if I see a fake countdown on a sale. It’s manipulative and scammy. You are literally lying to every single customer on your page.

If your website has a countdown on a sale & I refresh the page and the countdown restarts, you are an awful company and deserve to go out of business.

To meet the 500 character minimum, let me tell you more about why I hold this view. Every time I run into this, it feels like the company is intentionally trying to trick customers. There’s a difference between marketing and straight up faking urgency. This isn’t like putting an item on sale for a week or running a holiday promotion. This is just pure manipulation disguised as some “act now” bullshit. If the deal is always available or unrelated to your FOMO countdown, then be honest and just make it your normal price. It’s wild to me that companies think customers won’t notice that the clock resets. It shows me they don’t respect the customer at all.

What might change my view is if there’s some legitimate reason companies do this that isn’t manipulative. If there’s some technical or business reason why the countdown can’t be real, or a situation where it actually benefits the customer and not just the company trying to squeeze a sale out of someone. I’ve never seen a good argument for it. To me it just feels like fake urgency, fake scarcity, and fake honesty. But if someone can tell me why this isn’t as bad as I think it is, I’m open to hearing it.