The 70% Off That Isn't: How to Read a Discount
A discount percentage is arithmetic performed on a number the seller chose. Both halves of that sentence matter.
Every discount you see is one number divided by another. The lower number is what you pay, and it is real. The higher number is the one worth examining, because nobody is obliged to have ever sold the product at that price.
This is not an accusation of fraud. It is a description of how list prices work, and once you see it, a large share of dramatic-looking discounts stop being interesting.
MRP is a ceiling, not a price
Maximum Retail Price is a legal maximum. A manufacturer prints it on the box, and no seller in India may charge above it. Nothing requires it to resemble what the product sells for.
For categories where street prices sit far below MRP as a matter of routine — small electronics, kitchenware, luggage, clothing — an MRP-based discount tells you almost nothing. A 70% off badge against an inflated MRP and a 20% off badge against an honest one can be the same rupee price.
The number you can act on is the final price. The percentage is decoration.
Compare against the ordinary price, not the badge
The useful question is not "how much off?" but "what does this normally sell for?" Those are different questions and only the second one protects you.
Answering it takes a minute. Open the same product on two or three other retailers. If a phone case is ₹399 everywhere and ₹399 here with a 60% off badge, the badge is describing the MRP, not a deal.
Where the badge is genuinely informative
Discount percentages become meaningful when the reference price is one the product actually held recently. Two situations where that is usually the case:
Fast-moving electronics. Launch prices in phones, laptops and televisions are real prices that real buyers paid. A cut against a launch price is a genuine cut.
Products with stable street prices. Appliances and branded tools tend to sit near a settled figure for long stretches. A drop below that figure is a drop.
You still confirm with the price history rather than the badge, but in these categories the badge at least points in the right direction.
A practical order of operations
Look at the final price first and decide whether you would pay it for this product, ignoring every badge on the page. If the answer is no, the discount is irrelevant. If the answer is yes, then check the price history to find out whether waiting is likely to help.
This ordering matters because it uses the discount as a tiebreaker instead of a trigger. The badge is designed to be a trigger.
If you are shopping a category now, the honest starting point is the listing page rather than a single product: browse current electronics on Amazon, then apply the check above to whatever looks promising.