We read both retailers' tablet listings on 1 September 2026 — 16 on Croma, 14 on Reliance Digital — and the difference is which shelf exists at your budget rather than who undercuts whom. Reliance Digital starts at Rs. 11,999 and puts six of its fourteen listings under Rs. 20,000; Croma starts at Rs. 19,999 and puts exactly one there, with a median listing of Rs. 45,499 against Reliance Digital's Rs. 21,249. The two stores share five brands but almost no identical variants, so a straight price table is not possible honestly: the nearest match, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Lite, is Rs. 46,999 at Croma with 5G and Rs. 41,999 at Reliance Digital without it. At the top end Croma lists the A16 iPad at Rs. 47,900 while Reliance Digital lists the iPad Air M3 from Rs. 55,691 — different machines, not different prices for one.

Amazon India's fan listings held 46 unique products on 1 September 2026, from Rs. 599 to Rs. 4,099, and splitting them by motor type gives the number that actually decides the purchase. A BLDC 1200mm ceiling fan runs a median of Rs. 2,999; a conventional induction 1200mm fan runs Rs. 1,712. That is a premium of about Rs. 1,287, roughly 75 per cent, bought for a stated 28–35 W draw against roughly 70 W. The discount badges run the other way to the price: table fans, the cheapest group, carry the deepest median cut at 48 per cent, and BLDC fans the shallowest at 41. And one fan makes the case against reading badges at all — the atomberg Renesa Enzel appears twice at the same Rs. 3,849 price with two different stated MRPs, showing 25 per cent off on one listing and 32 per cent on the other, with the identical 48,409 ratings on both.

Amazon India's cookware listings held 89 unique products on 1 September 2026, from Rs. 314 to Rs. 12,999 — and 20 of them state an MRP that cannot be a list price. Sixteen are the same pattern: the stated MRP is the selling price divided by the number of pieces the title says the set contains. A Bergner “4 Pcs” set sells at Rs. 2,196 against a stated Rs. 549, exactly a quarter; a Vinod “25-Piece” box sells at Rs. 7,399 against Rs. 295. The other four state exactly 100 times the price and display as 99 per cent off. Across the 69 listings with a usable MRP the median is 29 per cent off, a flat shelf by Amazon standards. Hawkins discounts 5 to 7 per cent and holds the largest rating pool here — 39,751 on one cooker — while Pigeon runs 5 per cent on some listings and 54 per cent on others.

Hostinger's refund policy, revision-stamped 30 June 2026 and read on 1 September 2026, opens with a clean 30-day money-back rule and then attaches conditions to almost everything an Indian buyer would purchase. The most important one is buried in a list of roughly sixty country registries that “DO NOT permit refunds upon cancellation”: .in, .co.in and .in.net are all on it, alongside .uk, .de, .fr, .eu, .jp, .au, .us and .ae. Where a domain refund is possible at all the window is 96 hours, not 30 days, and a second condition requires that 24 hours have passed since your last domain refund. Domain renewals are never refundable, a successful transfer is never refundable, VPS refunds carry a 180-day cooldown, Hostinger Horizons requires fewer than 30 AI prompts used, and the first payment after a free trial sits outside the standard terms entirely. Privacy Protection, the SEO Toolkit, Google Workspace Email and all paid support services are on the flat no-refund list.

AJIO's saree, co-ord set, women's heels and women's handbag listings held 163 distinct items on 1 September 2026, priced from Rs. 222 to Rs. 4,499 — and 95 of them cost under Rs. 800, with 23 under Rs. 500. Three of the four categories have a median selling price below Rs. 810; only handbags sit higher, at Rs. 1,279, with the shallowest median discount at 60 per cent. The percentages on this shelf are close to useless for choosing: 95 listings are at 70 per cent off or more, and the MRPs they are calculated from repeat across unrelated products. Thirteen listings — handbags and heels from five brands — share an MRP of exactly Rs. 1,999 while selling between Rs. 460 and Rs. 1,279, ten share Rs. 4,999 across three categories, and eight pairs of heels sharing a Rs. 2,995 MRP all sell at exactly Rs. 779.

Myntra's watch pages carried 80 distinct listings on 1 September 2026, priced from Rs. 425 to Rs. 19,995 — and 36 of them, 45 per cent, showed no discount at all. Those 36 are not spread evenly. Casio accounts for 27 of them, with only one of its 28 listings discounted; the Titan group adds nine more across Fastrack, Sonata and Titan. Every discount above 60 per cent on the same shelf belongs to a house or marketplace label: Mast & Harbour runs a 74 per cent median across 14 listings, Roadster 82 per cent, JOKER & WITCH 80, WROGN 78 — all calculated against brand-set MRPs we cannot verify. The rupee prices are what survive: Rs. 645 to Rs. 792 for those house labels, Rs. 995 for a full-price Fastrack, Rs. 1,895 for the most-reviewed watch on the shelf, a Casio Vintage with 25,448 ratings.

We read both retailers' saree shelves on 1 September 2026 — 41 listings on AJIO, 42 on Nykaa Fashion — and they turn out to be two different tiers of the same garment. AJIO's median saree costs Rs. 805 against Nykaa Fashion's Rs. 1,720, and 36 of AJIO's 41 listings sit below Nykaa Fashion's median price. Under Rs. 800, AJIO had 20 sarees and Nykaa Fashion had two; above Rs. 2,000 the position reverses, with fourteen Nykaa Fashion listings against one. AJIO's floor is Rs. 222 for a printed saree; Nykaa Fashion reaches Rs. 4,636. The brands do not overlap at all, so no same-saree comparison is possible. AJIO discounts everything between 33 and 84 per cent, which makes the badge useless for choosing; Nykaa Fashion's range reaches down to 5 per cent, the only place on either shelf where the MRP looks like it is doing real work. Neither site published a single customer rating.

Myntra's four kurta listing pages carried 131 distinct listings on 1 September 2026, priced from Rs. 364 to Rs. 1,992 — and exactly one of them sat at its MRP. The other 130 were discounted, with a median of 70 per cent off and 38 listings at 75 per cent or more. When a shelf is uniformly 70 per cent off, the percentage stops describing a sale. Counting the MRPs shows why: there are 102 distinct selling prices across those 131 listings but only 49 distinct stated MRPs, and Rs. 2,199 appears as the reference price on 13 separate listings from different sellers, whose actual prices range from Rs. 435 to Rs. 704. The numbers that do separate listings are the rupee price — 96 under Rs. 1,000, 21 under Rs. 500 — and the rating count, where 52 listings carry 1,000 or more and 33 carry none at all.

We read all 240 answers on Myntra's FAQ on 1 September 2026, and the single most-searched fact about Myntra returns is not in any of them. Five separate answers reach the point where a number belongs and say “within the specified return/exchange period (check product details page for the same)” instead. Myntra's own listing strings say “Easy 14 days returns”, with 10 days on Fine Jewellery and a “Return and Exchange not available” variant, so the window belongs to the item, not to the platform. What the FAQ does commit to is refund speed, and it depends entirely on how you paid: 2 hours to Myntra Credit, 1 day for UPI, wallets and NEFT, 5 days for cards, 7 for netbanking — and 7 to 10 days if you cancelled the order rather than returned the item. Instant Refunds excludes self-ship returns and some PIN codes, the COD fee and donations are never refunded, and a declined return means no refund at all.

We read Crocs listings on both sites on 1 September 2026 — 68 on crocs.in, 50 on Myntra — and matched them only where the model, the silhouette and the MRP all agreed. On clogs there is nothing to choose between the two: the Bayaband Clog is Rs. 3,597 on both at 40 per cent off Rs. 5,995, the Baya Clog Rs. 3,497 on both, the Baya Platform Rs. 4,197 and the Baya Marbled Rs. 3,847. Every difference we found was on a sandal, and they run in both directions: crocs.in is Rs. 1,198 cheaper on the Miami Toe Loop, which Myntra lists at full MRP, and Rs. 949 cheaper on the Brooklyn Low; Myntra is Rs. 600 cheaper on the unisex Baya Sandal and holds the cheapest pair on either shelf at Rs. 1,347. Myntra also publishes rating counts up to 33,005 on the Bayaband line; crocs.in returned none.

MakeMyTrip's offer wall carried 73 cards when we read it on 1 September 2026, and sorting them by the expiry date printed on each one changes the picture entirely. Most of the wall runs to 30 or 31 December. Eight cards expire between 3 and 11 September, and they are almost all airline sales: Etihad Airways on the 3rd, Qatar Airways at up to 30 per cent off on the 6th, AirAsia's Thailand fares from Rs. 12,850 on the 8th, FLY91 cashback on the 9th, and two 11 September bus and multi-category cards. Eleven cards print a coupon code — MMTSPECIAL, PRIMODAY, FLIX15, MEGABUS, RTCNEW, INTRCITY, the four regional bus codes MMTNORTH, MMTSOUTH, MMTEAST and MMTWEST, and VISASIGNATURE — and nine of those are bus offers running to the end of December. Almost no card publishes its minimum spend or rupee cap, and every headline is worded “up to”.

Searching for AbhiBus cancellation charges returns no number, because AbhiBus does not publish one: its FAQ says cancellation terms vary from bus partner to bus partner, and the deduction for your specific bus is shown on the selection screen before you pay. What the site does set is everything around that. The cut-off is when the bus starts from its first boarding point, not yours. Four refund regimes can apply to a single ticket, and three are chosen before payment: the partner's own terms by default; the paid Free Cancellation add-on, which returns 100 per cent of the base fare if you cancel more than six hours out but does not refund its own fee; the ASSURED tag, which adds up to 100 per cent for a bus more than two hours late (claimable even if you travelled) and up to 150 per cent if the operator cancels; and a full refund of the total when the operator cancels the service. Refunds are processed same-day, but take 2 to 7 working days to reach a bank account.

Tata CLiQ's perfume shelf held 28 fragrances on 1 September 2026, from Rs. 413 to Rs. 10,320, and it is not priced bottle by bottle. Twenty-five of the 28 land on exactly five discount rates — 10, 15, 20, 23 or 25 per cent — and which rate applies tracks the brand rather than the price, the size or the category. Every Ajmal core listing is 23 per cent off; every Jaguar Classic is 25; every Calvin Klein, Nautica and Tommy Hilfiger is pinned at 10. The four Jaguar Classic variants all sell at exactly Rs. 3,675 off an identical Rs. 4,900 MRP, and four listings from three different houses — Rasasi, Lattafa twice and Jaguar Pace — all sell at exactly Rs. 4,675 off Rs. 5,500. The deepest routine tier, 20 per cent, holds the dearest bottles on the shelf, so prestige and discount run backwards here.

We read Amazon India's laptop search results on 1 September 2026, logged out — 16 listings, 15 with both a price and an MRP, running from Rs. 38,990 to Rs. 1,29,990 and from 4 to 52 per cent off. Line the discounts up against the review counts and the badge stops looking like a deal signal: four of the five listings at 46 per cent or more had fewer than 25 customer ratings, and one had a single rating, while the most-reviewed laptop on the shelf — an Acer Aspire Lite with 905 ratings — sat at 33 per cent and the second most-reviewed at 11. Discount depth is mostly a brand habit: every Lenovo listing was 36 per cent off or deeper, no ASUS listing reached 32, and the Rs. 1,29,990 Zenbook 14 carried the shallowest badge on the page at 4 per cent. One Lenovo showed an MRP of Rs. 1,49,000, higher than the real price of the dearest laptop here.

We read Udemy's development catalogue on 1 September 2026, logged out and on Indian pricing, and every one of the 22 courses sold between Rs. 449 and Rs. 609 — a spread of Rs. 160 from cheapest to dearest. The struck prices printed above them ranged from Rs. 799 to Rs. 4,229, more than fivefold, and that is the only reason some courses carry an 86 per cent badge and others 35 per cent. Fifteen of the 22 are long-running bestsellers with struck prices of Rs. 3,199 to Rs. 4,229, all showing exactly 86 per cent off. The newer AI and agent courses carry struck prices of Rs. 799 or Rs. 819 and show 35 to 44 per cent — while costing the same or less. The cheapest course on the page, at Rs. 449, shows 44 per cent off; the dearest, at Rs. 609, shows 86 per cent. The badge runs opposite to the price.