The Fake Discount Index, November 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 1,731,119 listings from 915 retailers on a single day, 1 November 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

27.2% of everything we checked — 471,590 listings — was showing a discount. That is not Black Friday. That is an ordinary Sunday in November 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	2,362	37.7%	24.3%
Power tools	11,203	33.5%	39.7%
Printer toner & ink	3,663	30%	2%
Sofas & furniture	711	30%	12.4%
Clothing	1,760	29.7%	22.2%
Headphones	415	28.9%	7.5%
Air fryers	106	28.9%	17.9%
Lighting	2,049	28.5%	11.2%
Fragrance	326	28.5%	20.6%
Mattresses	655	27.3%	2.7%
Laptops	3,682	26.6%	0.8%
TVs	1,359	25.4%	6.7%
Pet supplies	1,371	25.1%	14.3%
Vacuum cleaners	1,005	24.3%	3.9%
Footwear	621	21.1%	2.4%

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 (25,214 listings)	98.9%	53.3%	63%
Retailer B (592 listings)	99.2%	48%	46.1%
Retailer C (8,207 listings)	85.5%	55.6%	56.5%
Retailer D (1,024 listings)	100%	44.6%	31.3%
Retailer E (1,132 listings)	66.8%	64.4%	46%
Retailer F (5,327 listings)	81.8%	50%	43.4%
Retailer G (4,683 listings)	81.7%	50%	42.3%
Retailer H (356 listings)	71.3%	52%	40.4%
Retailer I (635 listings)	95.9%	37.6%	43.3%
Retailer J (3,669 listings)	95.9%	36%	17.2%

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
Yachew	0.1%	33.5%
GS Workwear	0.3%	50.3%
The Game Collection	0.8%	16.9%
Printerbase	0.9%	12%
Corsair UK	1%	14.6%
Go Outdoors	1.3%	10%
Proviz	2.1%	20%
UK Medi	2.2%	17.5%

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 1 November 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.