A living calendar of every Amazon India sale in 2026: Mega Deals Days live 13-16 August, the Great Indian Festival expected to open in early October and run through Diwali, then Black Friday and year-end events. Includes buy-now-or-wait guidance per category, the bank-offer stack, and past-year timing. Re-verified weekly; expected windows become official dates the day Amazon announces.

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 eighty-three mixer grinder, gas stove, induction cooktop and water purifier listings on croma.com on 13 September 2026 and seated twenty-four, pricing each one against the spec its category is sold on. Two shelves, two different worlds. Induction is priced by the watt: four single cooktops from 1,350W to 2,200W sit inside a Rs. 126.30 to Rs. 190.43 per-100W band. Mixer grinders are not: the same arithmetic spans Rs. 279.80 to Rs. 1,373.20, and an 1,100W Bosch at Rs. 8,599 undercuts a 750W Preethi at Rs. 10,299. Gas stoves climb at every rung — Rs. 999.50 a burner on a two, Rs. 1,237.25 on a four. And the two cheapest water purifiers carry the two worst ratings on the page.

We read fifty-seven vacuum cleaner, steam iron and air purifier listings on croma.com on 11 September 2026, priced from Rs. 749 to Rs. 86,990. The badge on this shelf identifies the brand, not the saving: Philips's eleven listings run a median 13%, Dyson 8%, LG 13% and Xiaomi 13%, while DREAME's eight run a median 42% and up to 86%. Five DREAME robot-vacuum MRPs end in 998 and each is exactly twice a round Rs. ...,999 figure. Two Croma steam irons here share a specification and an MRP and sell Rs. 300 apart — and the cheaper one rates 4.1 stars against the dearer one's 2.6. Only 33 of 57 listings carry any star rating.

We read sixty-five vacuum, iron and air-treatment listings on vijaysales.com on 11 September 2026; twenty-six were vacuum cleaners, priced Rs. 2,990 to Rs. 72,999. The same Dyson V12s Detect Slim Submarine is listed twice, both against a stated MRP of Rs. 62,900, at Rs. 55,900 and Rs. 59,900 — four thousand rupees apart on one site on one afternoon. Two other products in the read are duplicated too. The deepest badge across all sixty-five listings is 53%, and within vacuums it is 40%, where Croma's vacuum shelf that same afternoon reached 86%. Vijay Sales publishes no star ratings at all.

We read all three electronics chains' air-purifier shelves on 11 September 2026 — 15 listings at Croma, 12 at Reliance Digital, 14 at Vijay Sales — and found five models on more than one of them. No chain wins them all: Reliance Digital is Rs. 400 cheaper on the Eureka Forbes 270, Vijay Sales Rs. 1,509 cheaper on the 355, and Croma Rs. 2,259 cheaper on the Philips AC4221/60 — every comparison against an identical stated MRP. The Dyson HushJet is Rs. 29,900 at one chain and Rs. 29,899 at the other, badged 14% off and 0% off. Two of the three publish no customer ratings at all.

We read both steam-iron shelves on 11 September 2026 — 21 listings at Croma and 25 at Vijay Sales — and found seven irons on both. Vijay Sales is cheaper on five of them, by Rs. 40 to Rs. 500; Croma wins the Havells Athena by Rs. 131 while claiming the smaller discount; and a Philips is identical to the rupee at both. Two Bajaj irons carry exactly the same badge at both chains — 50% and 48% — while selling Rs. 200 and Rs. 170 apart, because each retailer states a different MRP. Croma publishes ratings on 18 of 21 irons; Vijay Sales publishes none on any of 25.

We read three Reliance Digital aisles on 8 September 2026 — microwaves, refrigerators and washing machines, twelve listings each. The entry price on the whole shelf is a Rs. 6,490 20-litre solo microwave, less than half the cheapest washing machine here. The microwave aisle is also the most discounted, at a 27% median against 23% on fridges. Two things are worth knowing before you sort by price. First, the two cheapest ‘refrigerators’ at Rs. 7,990 are door panels — accessories, not fridges; the cheapest real one is Rs. 11,000. Second, the discount is a brand policy: BPL runs a 49% median and owns the three biggest rupee gaps here, while IFB's front loader shows 1% off and Whirlpool's fridge 6%. And none of the 36 listings carries a rating.

Philips is 15 of the 33 air fryer listings we kept from Amazon's search results on 6 September 2026 — and it is not on the shelf at one price. The 4.2-litre 2000 Series appears three separate times at Rs. 7,175, Rs. 7,390 and Rs. 7,930, each with its own badge and its own rating pool, with a fourth 4.2 L Philips at Rs. 8,199 — while a different Philips 4.2 L sits at Rs. 4,706 with 5,904 ratings. Two Philips 6.2-litre listings are priced at Rs. 34,763 and Rs. 40,464 against a same-capacity Philips at Rs. 6,495. The shelf runs Rs. 2,126 to Rs. 40,464 at a median 40% off, per-litre costs run Rs. 644 to Rs. 1,811, and five listings claiming 99% off had MRPs stated at 100 times their selling price and were excluded from every figure here.

We read 46 in-stock air conditioners from Croma's own search API on 4 September 2026 — 42 split units, four window units. The shelf runs Rs. 26,490 to Rs. 55,090 at a median of Rs. 35,642 and a median 28% off. Holding capacity constant at the 1.5-ton size that is 29 of the 46 listings, the 3-star median is Rs. 37,740 and the 5-star median Rs. 49,990 — a Rs. 12,250 premium for one efficiency grade, and the badge gets shallower as you pay it. The discount is a brand policy rather than a markdown: Carrier and LG badge 41–50% while Croma's own label badges 12–28%, and both land near Rs. 33,000. And the ratings are unusable — a median of three votes per listing, with 17 perfect 5.0 scores, 15 of them from fewer than five people.

We read both air-conditioner aisles the same morning — 36 Amazon listings and 46 from Croma's own search API, on 4 September 2026. The gap sits in one size: at 1 ton the shelves are Rs. 250 apart (median Rs. 32,740 against Rs. 32,990), while at 1.5 tons Amazon is Rs. 4,990 cheaper (Rs. 34,500 against Rs. 39,490). The more useful finding is that each retailer publishes one field you cannot use, and it is a different field. Croma's star ratings sit on a median of two votes, with 27 of 35 rated listings under ten. Amazon's MRP field is broken on six of 36 listings — four showing an MRP exactly half the selling price, and one showing Rs. 30,99,100 against a Rs. 30,991 machine, rendered as “99% off”. On Amazon, read the reviews and ignore the badge; on Croma, read the price and ignore the stars.

We read 127 in-stock listings from six of Vijay Sales' own category pages on 4 September 2026 — fans, air fryers, chimneys, geysers, dishwashers and air purifiers. The shelf runs Rs. 1,799 to Rs. 72,990 at a median of Rs. 10,999 and a median 36% off, but the single number that matters is which aisle you are in. Fans and air fryers run a median 44% off; chimneys 40%, geysers 37%, air purifiers 21% and dishwashers 18%. Every one of the eight deepest badges on the whole shelf is an air fryer, topping out at 76%. At the other end, two Dyson HushJet purifiers are marked down by one rupee and Rs. 43 from a stated Rs. 29,900, and an IFB dishwasher by 2%. None of the 127 listings carries a customer rating.

Croma's washing machine searches, read on 3 September 2026, hold 104 models running from Rs. 4,994 to Rs. 3,31,170 at a median of Rs. 22,592 and a median 20% off — large appliances discount nothing like clothing does. Twenty-one models are under Rs. 15,000. Croma's own label holds the price floor in all three formats: Rs. 8,090 for a semi-automatic against Samsung's Rs. 9,990, Rs. 12,790 for a fully automatic top load against Whirlpool's Rs. 17,070, and Rs. 23,990 for a front load against Whirlpool's Rs. 32,990 — a Rs. 9,000 gap. It also runs the aisle's deepest median discount at 38%, against LG at 18%, Samsung at 17% and IFB at 15%. The three deepest badges on the aisle, at 71%, 59% and 53%, carry one rating, none and one; the two most-rated machines are discounted 19% and 26%.

Amazon's vacuum searches, read on 3 September 2026, put four different machines on one shelf. Of the 47 listings we kept, 17 are 12V car dusters and handhelds — six under Rs. 1,000 — and they are what drags the aisle's median price to Rs. 4,298. The cheapest machine that will actually clean a floor is a Eureka Forbes Compact at Rs. 3,199. Robot vacuums run Rs. 14,998 to Rs. 59,998 at a median 58% off, with badges up to 74% resting on stated MRPs as high as Rs. 1,69,999. The household machines with the most ratings discount least: Eureka Forbes' Quick Clean DX (3.9 from 26,651) is 18% off, Philips' PowerPro (4.3 from 22,896) is 22% off, and the Eureka Forbes Compact is 3% off. Six further listings claiming 99% off stated MRPs at 100 times their selling price and were excluded from every figure here.