We read 261 nightwear, night suit, pyjama, lounge pant and camisole listings across 91 brands on ajio.com on 16 September 2026, and split them into brands a shopper would recognise and the rest. The 85 recognised-brand listings have a median selling price of Rs. 525; the other 176 have a median of Rs. 500 — effectively the same money. But the unrecognised brands print a median MRP of Rs. 1,719 against Rs. 699, and a median discount badge of 66 percent against 33. The discount is manufactured in the list price, not in the price. The extreme is a Rs. 454 set carried against a stated Rs. 5,970 — 13.15 times. And not one of the 261 listings publishes a star rating or a review count, so the badge is the loudest signal on a shelf that offers no other.

We read 125 Diwali decoration listings on amazon.in on 16 September 2026 — string and curtain lights, diyas and urlis, rangoli stickers and door torans — and checked every discount badge against its own arithmetic. Five listings compute to 99 percent off, and all five state a maximum retail price exactly one hundred times their selling price: Rs. 474 against Rs. 47,400, Rs. 299 against Rs. 29,900, Rs. 169 against Rs. 16,900. We checked the ratio to three decimals on each and got 100.00x every time. Strip those five out and the shelf is a real one: a median badge of 64.5 percent, a deepest genuine badge of 93, and 106 of the 120 remaining listings selling under Rs. 500. The cheapest thing here is Rs. 69 and the dearest is Rs. 999.

AbhiBus is running 35 coupon codes and payment offers as of 16 September 2026, and we read every one of them from the merchant's own offers page — the code, the cap, the minimum booking value, the eligibility rule and the expiry date. The pattern worth knowing before you book: the deep offers are new-user offers. ASSURED pays a new user 20% off plus 20% cashback and an existing user 8% plus 8%. RJ100 on Rajasthan RSRTC is 50% off for a new user and 10% cashback up to Rs. 50 for everyone else. Eleven of the 35 codes expire on 30 September, SBICAB works only on Thursdays and Fridays, and RBL300 works on every day except Thursday.

We read 85 luggage listings on amazon.in on 16 September 2026 — 79 of them actual bags, from Rs. 265 to Rs. 6,799 — and found the same suitcases coming back again and again. Thirty-eight of the 79 sit inside fifteen shared rating pools, which is Amazon's own tell that several listings are one product in different colours. The clearest case: the Safari Genius Alley 55cm cabin trolley appears four times at Rs. 1,399, Rs. 1,499, Rs. 1,499 and Rs. 1,599, all four on the same 9,094 ratings and the same Rs. 6,999 MRP. One Gear duffle even prints a 56 per cent badge on one listing and 2 per cent on another.

We read 123 backpack and laptop bag listings — 53 on Myntra and 70 on Amazon — on 16 September 2026, and the price comparison ends in a tie. The median backpack costs Rs. 999 on Myntra and Rs. 989.50 on Amazon, both shelves carry a median discount badge of 60 per cent, and both sit at a 2.5x MRP multiple. Two products are priced to the same rupee on both sites: the Skybags Vesper at Rs. 999 and the Genie Berry at Rs. 1,499, each under an identical MRP and badge. The genuine differences are elsewhere — Amazon stocks luggage brands and rates almost everything (69 of 70 listings), while 14 of Myntra's 53 carry no rating at all, and its laptop bags are fashion bags at a Rs. 1,649 median.

We read 63 luggage listings on myntra.com on 16 September 2026 — 32 trolley cases and 31 duffels, from Rs. 250 to Rs. 63,890 — and compared them with the 79 bags we read on Amazon the same day. Myntra's badges are deeper: a median of 73 per cent against 69, and a median MRP multiple of 3.64x against 3.26x. The clearest case is a Teakwood Leathers cabin trolley at Rs. 1,099 under a printed Rs. 8,199 — a 7.46x list price, one of six Teakwood listings between Rs. 1,099 and Rs. 1,499 sitting under Rs. 8,199 and Rs. 9,999 MRPs. Only three bags on the whole shelf sell at their stated MRP: a Nike duffel, an Under Armour duffel and a Hidesign one.

Croma sells two gift instruments that look identical — both Rs. 500 to Rs. 50,000, both valid 365 days, both redeemable in store and online — and one of them keeps your unspent money while the other takes it. Croma's published terms say the Electronic Gift Voucher “has to be utilized in one single transaction and the balance will not be carried forward”, while the physical Gift Card “can be used multiple times until expiry” and can be reloaded. A refund on anything bought with either one comes back as an EGV, not as money. The MyGyftr vouchers banks hand out are stricter still: one use, five codes maximum, and any value above your bill is forfeited. Read 16 September 2026.

We read 133 wallet, belt and small-leather listings on tatacliq.com on 16 September 2026, from Rs. 319 to Rs. 5,280, and found the discount is a property of the brand rather than the product. United Colors of Benetton prints 55 per cent on all eighteen of its listings here; Red Tape prints 77 on all five, Teakwood Leathers 65 on all five and Hidesign 50 on all five. The evidence behind those badges is thin: fifty of the 133 listings publish no rating at all and the median count among the rest is three. Only fourteen listings clear ten ratings, and the deepest badges sit on the emptiest listings.

We read 175 small kitchen appliance listings on croma.com on 16 September 2026 — sandwich makers and toasters, rice cookers and egg boilers, induction cooktops, air fryers and dishwashers — and the first thing to say is how little evidence there is. Only 78 of the 175 publish any rating count, the median of those 78 is three, and just 18 listings in the whole read clear ten ratings. The largest sample on the shelf is 274. The prices span Rs. 849 to Rs. 1,04,490, a factor of 123, and the discount runs opposite to the price: sandwich makers carry a median badge of 32.5 percent, dishwashers just 17. Croma's own label is the cheapest and most heavily discounted name in its own aisle, at a median Rs. 2,924 and 36 percent.

We read 25 voltage stabilizer listings on croma.com on 15 September 2026 and tested the number everyone shops by. The amps rating does not predict the price — across the 22 listings that state both, the correlation is -0.08, which is no relationship at all. The cheapest 15 Amps unit here is Rs. 1,414; the dearest 6 Amps unit is Rs. 5,389. What does explain the shelf is the working voltage window printed in the brackets everybody skips: window width against price correlates at +0.71. Seven 12 Amps units for the same 1.5-ton air conditioner sell between Rs. 1,999 and Rs. 4,574. And the two listings Croma discounts by exactly one rupee are both wide-window boxes.

We read 23 extension board and surge protector listings on croma.com on 15 September 2026, and the first problem is the titles. The word 'Amps' means two different things on this one shelf: a load rating on the boards (6 Amps, 10 Amps) and a surge capacity on the seven Honeywell units (7,500 up to 36,000 Amps). Sorting the aisle by that number compares quantities that are not comparable. Divide by socket count instead and a socket costs Rs. 99.67 to Rs. 742.25, a 7.4x spread. Belkin's four sizes get cheaper per socket at every step; Croma's own range runs backwards. And every one of the seven Honeywells — the dearest chapter here — has no rating count at all.

We read Flipkart's Terms of Use on 15 September 2026 — about 150,000 characters of it — to answer one question: who are you actually buying from? Flipkart's own answer is that it is not a party to the transaction, never takes possession of the goods and never gains title to them, and acts as an ‘intermediary’. The seller sets the price, the shipping cost, the delivery date, the warranty and the after-sales service — and “all discounts, offers (including exchange offers) are by the Seller/Brand and not by Flipkart”. The document also contradicts itself usefully on mediation, and contains a three-day deadline that settles an ignored refund request in the buyer's favour. Every quotation here is Flipkart's own wording.

We read 86 lighting listings on amazon.in on 15 September 2026 — study lamps, rechargeable emergency bulbs, torches, lanterns, night lamps and ordinary LED bulbs from Rs. 59 to Rs. 1,999 — and found one clean dividing line. Twenty-eight listings state a wattage, and all twenty-eight come from the ten established lighting brands: Philips, Havells, Crompton, wipro, Eveready, Orient, Bajaj, Halonix, Syska and Sturlite. Not one of the other fifty states a power figure anywhere. And the listings that tell you least discount the hardest: a median badge of 61.5 percent against 52.5 for the branded ones, on a median rating count of 680 against 2,124. A watt is power drawn rather than brightness, and we say so on every card that quotes one.

We pulled 93 listings from six amazon.in searches on 15 September 2026 — badminton racquets, shuttlecocks, cricket bats, kits and size 5 footballs — and seated the 24 best-evidenced under Rs. 2,000. The headline finding is a pricing one: the Yonex ZR 100 Light appears five times in this read at Rs. 629, Rs. 1,290, Rs. 1,290, Rs. 1,879 and Rs. 1,949, and the cheapest of the five carries the largest rating sample, 24,732. Five listings print an MRP almost exactly 100 times their selling price — Rs. 7,44,900 above a Rs. 7,449 kit — and are excluded from every count here. Across the 88 that remain, listings with 1,000+ ratings carry a median badge of 43 percent and listings with under 50 ratings carry 50: the loudest discounts sit on the least-bought gear.

We read 95 floor-covering listings on myntra.com on 15 September 2026 — carpets, floor mats and bath rugs, from Rs. 272 to Rs. 3,920 — and the problem is what the titles leave out. Three of the ninety-five state a size, the one fact that decides whether a carpet fits. Fifty-eight name no material. Fifty-one publish no rating count. There is no dominant brand to fall back on either: 40 distinct brands share the shelf and the largest holds just nine listings. And the ratings that do appear are often pooled — seven DREAM WEAVERZ bath rugs all show 4.5 stars from exactly 143 ratings. A star pill appears on this page only where the rating-and-count pair is unique in the read.