bait and switch

1. 1.

   a deceptive way of selling that involves advertising a product at a very low price in order to attract customers who are then persuaded to switch to a more expensive product

   Broaderselling

Questions about bait and switch

What does bait and switch mean?

bait and switch means "a deceptive way of selling that involves advertising a product at a very low price in order to attract customers who are then persuaded to switch to a more expensive product".

Is bait and switch a common word?

bait and switch is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.