On August 5, 2026 we pulled twenty pages of Libas's own product feed - 5,000 entries - and kept the 913 listings that were in stock, carried an image and published both a selling price and a compare-at price. One hundred and thirty-five of them are named Plus Size; 778 are not. Twenty-seven of the 135 plus-size listings carry no discount at all, which is 20.0 per cent, against 30 of 778 on the main rail, which is 3.9 per cent - a five-fold difference in how often a shopper meets a full-price listing. The median plus-size badge is 53 per cent against 64 for the main rail, and the median plus-size price is Rs. 1,559 against Rs. 1,959. This is a difference of distribution rather than a rule: plus-size discounts reach 79 per cent at their deepest, and six discounted plus-size listings are seated here alongside the full-price ones. The likeliest ordinary explanation - newer stock is not marked down - cannot be tested from a feed, and we say so rather than assume it away. Nineteen picks.

Dot & Key prices differently from most D2C skincare brands — we swept its full 149-product catalogue on August 5, 2026 and found exactly one struck-through price on the site. The discounts are real, but they live in codes and cart offers, not stickers: the FLAT15 sitewide code, the deeper COMBO25 on combo packs, a free gift above Rs. 799, two above Rs. 1,099, and an extra 5% off prepaid orders. The combo packs are not themselves a saving — the twin-pack sunscreen lists at exactly twice the single — they simply move the cart into the higher code tier. This guide maps where each offer applies, why the site looks full-price when it isn't, and the checkout order that stacks the layers without one cancelling another.

We ran eight category queries against Croma's own catalogue API on August 4, 2026 and kept the 165 listings that returned a price, a stated MRP and an image. Sorted by median discount, the aisle runs backwards: dehumidifiers 4 per cent off, washing machines 19, air purifiers 22, washer-dryers 23, clothes dryers and garment steamers 28, hair dryers 36. The better an appliance solves a wet-season problem, the less it is discounted - and the less it is reviewed. All 12 dehumidifier listings come from a single supplier group, 10 of them carry no rating, and between a Rs. 2,500 desiccant box and a Rs. 22,500 machine there is nothing. Nineteen of the 24 dryer and washer-dryer listings publish no rating either. The cheapest machine on the site that dries a load of clothes indoors is Rs. 22,490. Twenty-four picks from Rs. 1,754 to Rs. 3,31,170. Croma publishes averages with no review counts, so no pick here is chosen on its score.

We pulled four category slugs from Vijay Sales' own listing pages on August 4, 2026 and kept the 108 listings that returned a price, a stated MRP and an image. Five brands stock the identical 1.5 tonne air conditioner in both 3 Star and 5 Star trim, which makes the cost of that upgrade visible for once - and it varies wildly. Godrej charges Rs. 3,980 for the two extra bands. Voltas charges Rs. 8,509, Bluestar Rs. 9,500, Carrier Rs. 9,700 and Daikin Rs. 12,300. The discounts do not close the gap: 18 of 27 AC listings are 3 Star at a median 38 per cent off against 36 per cent for the 5 Star listings, so the badge is flat while the price is not. Refrigerators are stranger still - the appliance that never switches off has exactly one 5 Star listing in 27. Televisions carry no star rating at all. Twenty-three picks from Rs. 14,999 to Rs. 69,700, with the running-cost assumptions shown.

Amazon's Great Freedom Sale banner advertises up to 75 per cent off headphones. On August 4, 2026 we read 68 headphone listings from amazon.in's own search shelf at popularity-rank, then re-verified all 21 seated picks on their product pages the same day. The claim checks out - and it is structurally misleading. The discount runs exactly inverse to brand equity: Sennheiser's median across four listings is 23 per cent, Sony's is 33 with the flagship WH-1000XM6 at just 20, while boAt's 23 listings - a third of the entire shelf - carry a median 60 per cent against MRPs set with the discount already in mind. The badges above 75 belong to Zebronics and Skullcandy, and the single deepest badge in the read, 86 per cent, sits on a Rs. 139 wired earphone. Twenty-one picks from Rs. 649 to Rs. 39,990, every rating shown with its count, every inflated MRP named as one.

Amazon's Great Freedom Sale banner advertises up to 55 per cent off appliances. On August 4, 2026 we read six kitchen searches within the same hour - air fryer, mixer grinder, microwave oven, vacuum cleaner, water purifier, induction cooktop - kept the 94 organic listings that carried a price, a stated MRP and a rating, discarded seven whose MRP was exactly 100 times their price, and repriced all 23 seated picks on their own product pages. The result is that the discount is a property of the shelf rather than of the sale: air fryers run a median 51 per cent off, mixer grinders 47, vacuums and purifiers 45, induction cooktops 38, and microwave ovens just 19. Where four brands hold an aisle, the sticker means something and barely moves; where the shelf is crowded, the sticker is set to produce a badge. One Panasonic microwave was cut by one per cent. One water purifier by 79. Both were on sale.

Every large-appliance listing at Vijay Sales leads with a capacity figure - kilos, litres, place settings - and on August 4, 2026 we read 99 of them across four categories to find out whether that figure sets the price. It does not. What sets the price is a type word buried mid-title. Semi-automatic washing machines run a median Rs. 13,080, fully automatic top loads Rs. 22,990 and front loads Rs. 41,990. Direct cool fridges run Rs. 15,990, frost free Rs. 33,190 and side-by-side Rs. 87,000. The proof sits in one comparison: a 9 kg semi-automatic costs Rs. 12,960 while a 7 kg front load costs Rs. 32,240 - more drum for 40 per cent of the money. Two Whirlpool 235 L fridges were listed at the identical Rs. 26,990, one with an inverter compressor and one without. Twenty-five picks, grouped by the fork rather than the brand. This feed publishes no ratings, so none appear here.

On August 4, 2026 we read 256 Tata CLiQ menswear listings across four queries and mapped every brand to its parent company. Three Indian apparel conglomerates account for 87 of them - a third of the shelf - and each runs its own house discount rate. Raymond's brands sit at a median 55 per cent off with a median price of Rs. 1,122. Arvind Fashions sits at 47 per cent, with a median price of Rs. 3,499 - three times Raymond's. Aditya Birla Fashion sits at 38 per cent. A Raymond cotton shirt costs Rs. 1,012 and a Louis Philippe cotton shirt Rs. 1,714, and the parent company predicts that gap better than anything in either listing. Outside the houses the picture inverts: the three groups cannot produce a rating sample above 21 across 87 listings, while a single Thomas Scott chino carries 374 ratings at Rs. 919. Twenty-six picks, every rating printed with its count.

We ran six monsoon queries against AJIO's own search API on August 4, 2026 - sandals, flip flops, rain jackets, sliders, clogs and crocs - and kept the 413 listings that returned a price, a stated MRP and an image. Then we counted one word. Of the 67 rain layers, 31 say waterproof in the title. Twenty-nine are named a raincoat or rain jacket and say nothing at all about water. Three are windcheaters, which is a promise about wind. And the badges run backwards: the listings that state the claim are discounted at a median of 45 per cent, the silent ones at 53 - the deepest badge in the rack, 72 per cent, sits on a jacket described only by its fit, and the most expensive listing at Rs. 8,059 makes no water claim either. On the footwear side, of 346 listings exactly one mentions anti-skid, quick-dry or waterproof; 98 say slip-on and 45 say open-toe. Twenty-three picks, Rs. 316 to Rs. 8,059. AJIO returned no rating on any of the 413, so nothing here carries a rating pill.

On August 4, 2026 we pulled five AJIO home searches - bedsheet, curtains, cushion cover, bath towel and dinner set - and kept the 308 listings that returned a price, a stated MRP and an image. Then we read the titles for a quantity, and the shelf came apart. Rs. 288 buys either two BIANCA door curtains or one, from the same brand, against the same Rs. 2,399 sticker, at the same 88 per cent badge. Rs. 360 buys any of seven CG HOMES double bedsheets, from 150 TC flat with nothing else to 200 TC fitted with two pillow covers. Rs. 234 buys five Rosarahome cushion covers; Rs. 245 buys two. And the pattern is measurable: of 81 curtain listings, the 62 that state a piece count carry a median 53 per cent discount, while the 19 that state none carry 81. Five bath towels in 49 publish a GSM. AJIO publishes no ratings at all, so this page argues from stated specification and division only. Twenty-four picks, every one priced per piece.

In July, HealthKart ran one code across its Workout Essentials Sale: GETX, an extra 15% off. That is no longer how the site works. As of August 4, 2026, HealthKart has split the discount into seven brand- and range-specific codes, each capped and each valid on a different shelf — and GETX has been reassigned to TrueBasics. Point the old code at a MuscleBlaze cart today and nothing happens. This guide maps every live code to the products it actually applies to, with the exact 'Get @ Rs.' prices HealthKart prints on its own tiles: SAVE for Workout Essentials, BIOX and MBX for the two halves of the Biozyme range, FUELX10 for Fuel One, VTL for HK Vitals skin care, RCSS for Ronnie Coleman, and GETX for TrueBasics.

We pulled 25 Vijay Sales category pages on August 3, 2026 - 568 in-stock products with prices, stated MRPs and images, from a Rs. 499 kettle to a Rs. 309,990 television. Rather than sort them by discount, we sorted them by the number that actually governs a shopping list: the floor price of each category, meaning the cheapest thing the shop will sell you in it. Those floors are far more uneven than most people expect. Only eight of the 25 categories have anything at all under Rs. 2,000. Fourteen are reachable by Rs. 5,000 and 20 by Rs. 15,000. A microwave starts at Rs. 6,490, a refrigerator at Rs. 8,940, a fully automatic washing machine at Rs. 14,790, a tablet at Rs. 16,999, a dishwasher at Rs. 25,960 and a laptop at Rs. 39,990. Twenty-four picks arranged as a ladder, with the entry model of each category set against what the money above it buys. These pages publish no ratings, so nothing here carries a rating pill.

We pulled Hammer's own product feed on August 3, 2026 and got 197 listings, 70 of them in stock with images. This is not a price story. It is a buying guide: 24 picks organised by product line - earbuds, over-ear headphones, wired and neckband, smartwatches, speakers and the small wellness shelf - and inside each line seated by the job you would actually buy the thing for. Gaming on a phone, taking calls on a street, a train commute, a day at a desk, a week of meetings, a room that needs filling with sound. The pattern that makes this necessary is that Hammer keeps putting two different tools at one price: the Airflow Go and Airflow Neo are both Rs. 599, one built for 40ms latency and the other for two call microphones. Two headphones sit at Rs. 1,799, one for a desk and one for a bag. Every specification quoted here is the brand's own, and where a listing states nothing - no earbud publishes an IP rating - we say so.

We pulled Tata CLiQ's own marketplace search on August 3, 2026 across six kitchen queries and got 376 in-stock listings with a price, a stated MRP and an image. Only 163 of those showed a customer rating with the number of reviews behind it, and that became the filter: every one of these 23 picks carries both, quoted on the card. The page is ordered the way you would actually furnish a kitchen rather than by discount - the pressure cooker first, where the decision is capacity not brand, then the three pans that cook nearly everything a household eats, then the appliances in the order they earn their counter space, then the storage and carry kit nobody writes on a list. Rs. 149 for a gas lighter to Rs. 5,330 for a 19 L OTG. We name where a review count is only three or five people, we say which pick most readers should skip, and we check each discount against what that brand normally offers before calling it anything.

We read Croma's own product API on August 3, 2026 across six categories - water purifiers, air purifiers, geysers, chimneys, vacuum cleaners and dishwashers - and got 119 listings. Sorted by discount, the top of that list does not mix. Every one of the nine badges at 60 per cent or above is a vacuum cleaner, all nine from three brands, and all four listings claiming a stated MRP of Rs. 1,00,000 or more are robot or cordless vacuums selling between Rs. 24,999 and Rs. 49,999. Inside one brand, DREAME's Rs. 24,999 machine claims a list price Rs. 1,00,001 higher than its Rs. 46,999 one. Meanwhile the dishwasher aisle runs from 4 to 35 per cent, every IFB is between 4 and 7, and every Bosch is between 16 and 25. Twenty-four picks from Rs. 2,999 to Rs. 75,190, ranked on litres, place settings and airflow rather than percentages. Croma shows a review count on none of the 119 listings, so nothing here carries a rating pill.