We read Tata CLiQ's serving bowl, dinner set and glass tumbler shelf on 2 October 2026 - 108 listings - and the discount badge turns out to be a brand policy rather than a deal. One brand has eleven listings and shows exactly 25% off on every single one, across a 2.9x spread in price. Another shows exactly 5% across four, and four more listings show exactly 13%. The badge also tracks price tier almost perfectly: the ten listings showing 5% off include the four dearest things on the shelf - among them a Rs. 31,349 porcelain dinner set - while the 65% badge sits on a Rs. 389 tumbler set. We publish the stated MRP as a multiple on every card, 1.05x to 2.88x. And the evidence is thin throughout: only 39 of the 108 listings publish a rating, the largest count seated here is eleven, and nothing above Rs. 5,000 publishes one at all. Twenty seated.

Laundry baskets are one of the few shelves that state their own size, so we read Amazon's on 2 October 2026 - 99 listings - and divided by it. Thirty-six listings print a capacity in litres, and the price per litre runs from Rs. 2.89 to Rs. 28.49 - a 9.9x spread on a shelf whose ticket prices look similar. Fabric foldables own the bottom and rigid plastic the top, and the ticket price will not tell you which you are getting: Rs. 997 buys 35 stated litres of Nilkamal plastic, while Rs. 999 buys 100 stated litres of Zollyss fabric. Three listings state 60 litres at Rs. 293, Rs. 949 and Rs. 1,149. We also flag what the badges hide - four Solimo listings display an identical 4.5 from 3,281 ratings, and one Rs. 729 basket states an MRP of Rs. 72,900, exactly one hundred times its price. Twenty-two seated.

Myntra's apron shelf looks like one of the flattest price lists online - 32 listings between Rs. 304 and Rs. 719, a median of Rs. 404. Then you notice that 14 of the 32 are packs of two, three or four, and nothing in the shelf price says so. Divide by the piece count the titles themselves print and the spread opens from 2.4x to 7.1x: a four-pack at Rs. 403 works out at Rs. 100.75 an apron, one rupee below the Rs. 404 that the median single apron costs. The evidence is thin and partly double-counted too - four brands display a rating count identical to the digit across their colourways, including three listings all showing 4.4 from 54, and 12 of the 32 listings publish no rating at all. We print the per-apron price and the stated MRP as a multiple on every card. Twenty seated.

We read Amazon's whole 'fairy lights for home decoration' shelf on 1 October 2026 - 40 listings - and divided each price by the length the listing itself prints. The rate runs from Rs. 7.97 a metre to Rs. 116.33 a metre, a 14.6x spread on one page. Cheap tickets are not cheap light: a Rs. 99 listing is four times the rate of a Rs. 85 one, because it is three stated metres against 35 feet. Fourteen of the forty state a maximum retail price of exactly Rs. 999, at selling prices from Rs. 85 to Rs. 699. And all four listings whose stated MRP sits below their own selling price turned out to be multipacks whose MRP is simply the price divided by the pack count - one of which, divided properly, is the cheapest light in the read at Rs. 6.37 a metre. Twenty listings seated.

We read Amazon's whole 'artificial flowers for decoration' shelf on 1 October 2026 - 40 listings - and divided each price by the piece count the listing itself prints. The rate runs from Rs. 3.96 a piece to Rs. 329, an 83x spread, while the tickets behind those two numbers are Rs. 198 and Rs. 329. A 'piece' is not a fixed unit on this shelf, so every card here names what its unit actually is. One seller holds ten of the forty listings and nine of them state a maximum retail price of exactly Rs. 1,200, at prices from Rs. 248 to Rs. 669 - which is how one number produces badges from 44% to 79% off. And one tile states Rs. 32,800 against a Rs. 328 price: exactly a hundred times, and the only 99% badge on the shelf. Twenty listings seated.

We read Amazon's whole 'door mat for home entrance' shelf on 1 October 2026 - 40 listings - and converted every stated size to square feet. Sixteen of the 19 sized listings are in centimetres and three are in inches, so a 40 x 60 cm mat (2.58 sq ft) and a 16 x 24 inch mat (2.67 sq ft) are the same thing while the numbers look two and a half times apart. Converted, the shelf runs Rs. 74.62 to Rs. 204.44 a square foot, median Rs. 134.71. One brand's eight tiles are all 40 x 60 cm and nearly all Rs. 348 or Rs. 349 - yet they show 30% or 50% off depending on whether the stated MRP says Rs. 499 or Rs. 699. And the most-reviewed mat on the shelf, with 22,781 ratings, carries the smallest badge and the dearest rate.

We read Myntra's whole clothes hanger shelf on 1 October 2026 - 32 products - and divided each price by the piece count the listing itself prints. The rate runs from Rs. 12.47 to Rs. 149.50 a hanger, while every ticket on the shelf sits between Rs. 209 and Rs. 699. Two bits of arithmetic the cards do not do for you: one seller lists a pack of 18 and a pack of 15 at the identical Rs. 454 against the identical stated MRP, and another lists two packs of six that publish the same 423 ratings at Rs. 289 and Rs. 479. Plus the oddest MRP habit we have found: 15 of the 32 listings state a maximum retail price exactly equal to their own selling price, so they show 0% off and never appear in a discount sort. Seventeen seated.

We read four Amazon festive shelves on 1 October 2026. On three of them a large share of listings state a maximum retail price below their own selling price, which makes the discount field useless. On the agarbatti shelf that number is zero out of forty. The median badge here is 21.5% and 29 of the 40 listings are at or below 30% off - against 70% on fairy lights and 65% on artificial flowers. Mangaldeep shows 6%, Shubhkart 1%, Patanjali 1%. The exception clusters neatly: all five of the deepest badges on the shelf, from 52% to 85%, belong to unbranded kilo combo packs, one of them computing from a stated Rs. 1,899 on a Rs. 290 item. Plus why we are not ranking this shelf per gram.

We read Myntra's whole candle shelf on 1 October 2026 - 28 products - and divided by the piece counts 16 of them print. The cheapest candle here is Rs. 2.68 and the dearest is Rs. 2,599, which is not one league table: a tea light and a three-wick jar are different purchases, so we compare within type. Inside the tea light band alone the rate still varies 2.8x. One pair settles the pack-size question outright: two Artisyn tiles share a pool of 2,965 ratings and sell 20 and 50 tea lights at Rs. 89 and Rs. 134 - Rs. 45 for two and a half times the candles. And seven listings state an MRP exactly equal to their own price, so they show 0% off and never surface in a discount sort.

We read Amazon's whole mattress protector shelf on 1 October 2026 - 16 listings - and matched them on what they publish. Three rating pools cover seven of the cards, so the shelf is really about 11 products, and one of those pools holds 135,180 ratings, the largest count we have found on any Indian shelf. Two tiles in that pool are both priced Rs. 552 and both publish 4.3 from 135,180 - yet one shows 51% off and the other 35%, because they state different MRPs. Identical money, identical reviews, sixteen points of badge apart. Plus two listings stating a maximum retail price exactly one hundred times their own price, both displaying 99% off, and the two results that turn out to be baby bed protectors.

We read Tata CLiQ's own home listings on 1 October 2026 and kept the 36 that are lighting. One brand, Homesake, holds 17 of them, shows every badge from 55% to 87%, and carries all but one of the shelf's reviews - 14 rated listings averaging 1.5 to 4.2, most of them in the mid-threes. Eleven listings state an MRP divisible by 500 - Rs. 10,000, Rs. 5,500, Rs. 2,500 - against ragged selling prices like Rs. 1,343 and Rs. 479, and all eleven belong to that same brand. Everything else on the shelf, from Kapoor Lamp Shades to FOS Lighting, discounts 7% to 59% and publishes no buyer feedback at all.

We read Tata CLiQ's own bath towel listings on 1 October 2026 - 22 of them, including one brand's terry range in six box sizes. Price them per piece and the twelve-piece box is the cheapest on the shelf at Rs. 88.25 a piece - and its own title says it contains four hand towels and eight face towels, no bath towel at all. The two-piece box at Rs. 449 holds the same two bath towels as the Rs. 1,399 four-piece. Stated GSM does not track price either: a 220 GSM towel at Rs. 760 sits beside a 500 GSM one at Rs. 674, and only 5 of the 22 listings print a GSM figure at all. Ten carry reviews; the largest count is eight.

We read AJIO's bath towel, hand towel, bath mat, door mat and bathrobe shelves on 30 September 2026 - 152 distinct listings - and grouped them by aisle. The five median discount badges read 29.5% on hand towels, 36.5% on bath towels, 44% on bath mats, 59% on door mats and 75% on bathrobes. Not one of the 28 bathrobes sells at less than 67% off. The reason is in the MRP column: the robe shelf states a median MRP of exactly 4.00 times its selling price, where bath towels state 1.58 times. AJIO published no star average and no rating count on any of the 152 listings, so the badge is the only differentiating number a buyer gets - and one seller holding 25 of the 39 door mats prices them anywhere from Rs. 120 to Rs. 369 a mat behind badges that move the other way.

We read both study-table shelves on the same afternoon, 30 September 2026 - 48 listings on Amazon and 41 on Tata CLiQ. Amazon's median is Rs. 2,399 and Tata CLiQ's is Rs. 5,799, but that gap is stock mix rather than price: Amazon's four cheapest listings are folding bed tables and it has 19 listings under Rs. 2,000 to Tata CLiQ's one. Eleven pairs on Tata CLiQ's shelf share an identical price and MRP because they are one desk in two finishes, and 24 of its 41 listings are a single brand - so 41 results is nearer 30 products. And the evidence gap is the widest we have recorded: Amazon's largest rating count here is 8,632, while every rating count on Tata CLiQ's shelf fits in the list 1 to 5.

We read Amazon's whole 'dustbin' shelf on 30 September 2026 - 47 listings, 14 of them boxes of garbage bags - and divided the 33 real bins by the capacity they print. The cheapest litre on the shelf is Rs. 25.90, on a 25-litre plastic bin at Rs. 647. The dearest under Rs. 1,000 is Rs. 139.80, on a 5-litre steel bin at Rs. 699. That is a factor of 5.4 for the same job, and the discount badges point the wrong way: the bin advertising 28% off costs Rs. 25.90 a litre and the bin advertising 70% off costs Rs. 119. The most-rated listing in the entire read, with 10,715 ratings, is a Rs. 170 bin that goes in a car cup holder. Twenty-four bins seated, every price read the same afternoon.