The Fake Discount Index, September 2026: how much of UK online retail is permanently "on sale"

What we measured

Every morning we download the full product catalogue of each retailer we work with and record two numbers for every listing: the price you would pay today, and the "was" or RRP figure the retailer shows beside it. This report covers 1,630,976 listings from 136 retailers on a single day, 30 September 2026. It is not a survey or an estimate. It is the retailers' own numbers.

A discount is only meaningful if the higher price was real. So rather than asking whether a saving is "fake", which is a judgement, we measure two things a reader can check for themselves: how much of a retailer's range is on sale at once, and how big the typical claimed saving is. A shop with a third of its range reduced is having a sale. A shop with 100% of its range reduced has a pricing structure, and the "was" price is a number nobody was ever asked to pay.

The headline

43.5% of everything we checked — 709,371 listings — was showing a discount. That is not Black Friday. That is an ordinary Wednesday in September 2026.

Where the claimed savings are biggest

By product type, across every retailer that sells them. "Half off or more" is the share of listings claiming a 50%+ saving.

Category	Listings	Typical claimed saving	Half off or more
Power tools	36,335	33.6%	40%
Watches	2,115	30.9%	17.5%
Lighting	3,647	27.7%	4.7%
Pet supplies	358	27.5%	3.9%
Laptops	30,088	27.5%	0%
Headphones	832	27.5%	0.1%
TVs	2,303	27.5%	0.2%
Printer toner & ink	14,922	27.5%	0%
Vacuum cleaners	2,393	20.5%	2.7%
Clothing	1,811	14%	7.1%
Footwear	987	4.5%	1.4%

The retailers where everything is always reduced

Ranked by how much of the range is on sale multiplied by the typical claimed saving. Only retailers with at least 200 discounted listings are ranked. Retailers are anonymised in this edition; the underlying data is available to journalists on request.

Retailer	Range on sale	Typical claimed saving	Half off or more
Retailer A (1,037 listings)	100%	44.6%	31.6%
Retailer B (5,327 listings)	81.8%	50%	43.4%
Retailer C (209,583 listings)	100%	27.5%	0%
Retailer D (209,577 listings)	89.7%	30.6%	0%
Retailer E (83,056 listings)	99.9%	26.1%	0.2%
Retailer F (898 listings)	76.7%	29.4%	13.5%
Retailer G (273,948 listings)	79.5%	24.1%	10.1%
Retailer H (2,438 listings)	46.2%	37.5%	8%
Retailer I (1,143 listings)	59.6%	14.3%	0.5%
Retailer J (2,336 listings)	47.9%	13.3%	0%

The honest end of the table

Retailers where most of the range sells at full price, so a discount when it appears is more likely to mean something.

Retailer	Range on sale	Typical claimed saving
Proviz	4.2%	20%
Kärcher UK	6.1%	17%
Peugeot Saveurs UK	6.6%	20.9%
Corsair UK	7.4%	24%
Kaiia the Label	16.5%	33.3%
Hughes	31.7%	13%
SharkNinja UK	33.6%	21.1%

What this means for you

A "was" price tells you almost nothing on its own. What tells you something is the price history: what the product has actually sold for over the past weeks and months. Every product page on this site shows that history, and you can set a watch to be told when a real drop happens rather than an advertised one.

Method and use

Source data is the retailers' own product feeds, captured on 30 September 2026. A listing counts as discounted where the RRP or "was" price exceeds the selling price. Medians are used throughout so a handful of extreme listings cannot skew a retailer's figure. We publish this index monthly. Journalists and researchers are welcome to cite it with a link, and can request the full dataset at hello@pricedropuk.co.uk.