This practice of deceptive discounts off of made up or never actually charged MSRPs has gotten so pervasive its become the norm, and unfortunately the law mostly ignores it.

But so should shoppers.

The only rational way to shop these days is as follows:
1. Compare specs from different brands making sure you have the quality and performance level you need.
2. User reviews (knowing some may be planted).
3. Professional reviews (knowing some of those may be "paid for").
4. Consumer Reports reviews (knowing they are often too critical on some products, like cars, and not critical enough on some others, like cell phones).
5. Overall product/brand name reliability history(mainly Consumer Reports from their user surveys.)
6. Anecdotal accounts from friends who have the same product(knowing some people will never admit to making a buying "error")
7. Put all that in a blender and see what comes out, and then -- look for the lowest price on the brands/models that fir your needs(keeping in mind that, as I have personally discovered, some stores (BJs) and some manufactures (Canon) may collude with each other to sell a product with the exact same model # as the units in others stores, like Staples, Sears, etc. but that lacks some of its features.

Caveat emptor has never been more appropriate than it is today in our corporation manipulated society.