The Fake Discount Index, October 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 1,016,104 listings from 136 retailers on a single day, 19 October 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

31.3% of everything we checked — 318,042 listings — was showing a discount. That is not Black Friday. That is an ordinary Monday in October 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
Watches	1,376	42.1%	27.1%
Power tools	36,786	33.3%	38.5%
Headphones	208	27.8%	0%
Lighting	2,529	27.7%	7.4%
Printer toner & ink	3,148	26%	0.1%
Pet supplies	283	25%	6.4%
TVs	711	24.4%	1%
Laptops	3,666	24.3%	0.2%
Vacuum cleaners	2,366	22.9%	2.8%
Clothing	1,851	14.4%	10.9%
Footwear	1,075	4.7%	4.9%

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 (1,043 listings)	100%	44.8%	31.6%
Retailer B (5,327 listings)	81.8%	50%	43.4%
Retailer C (80,298 listings)	99.9%	25.7%	0.1%
Retailer D (901 listings)	76.7%	29.4%	13.9%
Retailer E (274,962 listings)	79.5%	24.2%	9.9%
Retailer F (2,064 listings)	49.7%	37.5%	9.1%
Retailer G (1,165 listings)	43.1%	16%	1.6%
Retailer H (2,260 listings)	46.6%	13.5%	0%
Retailer I (1,591 listings)	34.9%	12.8%	0.2%
Retailer J (5,744 listings)	13.6%	31.8%	2.7%

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	2.1%	20%
Corsair UK	3.6%	21.3%
Peugeot Saveurs UK	5.9%	21%
Argos	6.6%	20%
John Lewis	7.9%	30.3%
Kärcher UK	9.2%	10%
Kaiia the Label	13.6%	31.8%
SharkNinja UK	25.8%	22.5%

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 19 October 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.