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How we check codes

Collect, try, summarise, date, take down: what "tried at checkout" means.

“Tried at checkout” is on every card. Here is the routine behind it, in order.

Collect

Each weekday morning we pull the live offers from retailers’ affiliate programme feeds. Anything that is not a real discount for a US shopper — foreign-currency offers, restricted categories, duplicates, plain links pretending to be codes — is dropped before a person sees it.

Try

A person opens the retailer’s site, puts an item in the basket and enters the code. If the discount does not appear, the code is not published. The title is rewritten so it says what the saving actually is.

Summarise

The retailer’s terms are read and the parts that matter — minimum spend, exclusions, who qualifies — are written on the card in one short line. The full wording sits under “See details”.

Date

The retailer’s end date is printed on the card. Where none was given, the card says so instead of inventing one.

Take down

On its end date an offer leaves every live list. It stays for a few days in a clearly labelled expired section so you can see what changed, then it is deleted. A code you report as dead is re-tried the same day and removed if it has stopped working.