In the EU, a crossed-out "was" price has to be the lowest price the store charged in the previous 30 days. Canada's Competition Act has a similar test. India added its own rule in late 2023, when the consumer regulator published a list of banned dark patterns that includes "false urgency": the countdown timers and "only 3 left" badges that push people to click before they have checked anything.
The rules exist. The badges have not noticed. Every October the Indian shopping sites put on the biggest sale of the year, the banners say 80% off, the family group chat fills with screenshots, and the phone everyone is excited about sold for less in July.
I built detectadeal because I kept getting caught by this and could not find a tool that fixed it for the Indian stores. This is what goes wrong, and what the tool does about each part.
The three ways you overpay
The inflated "was" price. A store lists a kettle at 2,499 rupees for a week, then "cuts" it to 1,299 and calls it 48% off. The kettle was 1,299 the whole month before. Without a record of what it actually sold for, the badge looks real.
The timing. Prices on Amazon.in and Flipkart move several times a day during a sale, sometimes within the hour. The deal your cousin sent at breakfast is gone by lunch, and the "deal" you find at lunch is the breakfast price with a new badge. There is no stable number to compare against unless someone has been writing them down.
The noise. Indian bargain hunting runs on Telegram channels that post two hundred "loot" deals a day. Most are not deals. The few real ones scroll past while you are at work, and the stock is gone by the time you look. So you check five store apps and three channels every day, or you give up and pay whatever the price is when you need the thing.
What a tracker has to do about each one
Against the fake "was" price, the only defence is a record. detectadeal watches Amazon.in, Flipkart, Myntra, Ajio and Nykaa and keeps every price it sees. The deals page at https://www.detectadeal.com/deals refreshes each hour with the drops it has caught, and each one sits beside its own price history, so the "48% off" claim is checked against last week and last month before the buy button. If the "was" price only existed for six days in October, that is on the chart, and you skip it. Browsing needs no account and no card.
Against the timing problem, the hourly refresh is the point. A list that updates once a day is already stale during a sale. Sorting by newest shows the drops from the last hour, which is the window in which they are still buyable.
Against the noise, the answer is to stop reading and let the tool watch. You tell it what you want and the price you would pay, and it messages you on Telegram or by email when something fits, with the product, the price and a direct link. The search understands plain language rather than exact titles, so "noise cancelling earbuds under 2,000" or "1.5 ton inverter AC under 35,000" both work, and the match looks at what the product is, not whether the words appear in the listing. The same request typed into the chat on the site creates the alert once you are signed in. For a specific product you already have your eye on, paste its Amazon or Flipkart link and it tracks that exact listing from then on.
That replaces the channels. The three posts a day that matter arrive on their own; the other hundred and ninety-seven never reach you.
How it works in sale season
The Diwali window, when Amazon's Great Indian Festival and Flipkart's Big Billion Days run at the same time, is both when phones and appliances hit their real low for the year and when the inflated reference prices are thickest. The real deals and the fake ones share a banner.
A few weeks before, set alerts for the handful of things you actually plan to buy, at the price you would be happy with, taken from the history chart rather than the store's "was" number. During the sale, ignore the banners and wait. If an alert fires, open the link and buy. If nothing fires for an item, the sale was not what the banner said. Leave the alert running; prices often fall again a few weeks after the sale, once stores clear stock.
Keep it running after you buy, too. Many retailers refund the difference if the price drops within 7 to 30 days of purchase, and some cards add their own price protection. One support chat usually gets the difference back. Most people never ask, which is why the policy survives.
For anything expensive that was not on the list, give it a day regardless of how good the badge looks. If it is a real low, the chart will still say so tomorrow. The number of things people "need" at 11pm and have forgotten by breakfast is the main reason countdown timers exist.
The deals page itself is worth one look a day, sorted by newest, for things you were not planning to buy but would take at the right price. Two minutes.
What it is not
detectadeal covers Indian stores only. For Amazon.ca or Walmart, CamelCamelCamel and Keepa do the same job and have for years. The site is young, so some products have months of history and some have weeks. It is funded by affiliate commissions on the buy links, which costs you nothing and does not change the price you pay, but you should know it.
The short version
Price history before price. Hourly, not daily, during a sale. One alert instead of three channels. Decide the number in calm conditions and let the tool do the waiting. Most of the money this saves comes from the things you end up not buying. Keep the alert on for a month after you buy, and claim the difference if the price falls.