Some discounts are genuine. Most of the ones you see online are structural — they exist to make a price feel like a decision rather than a number.
Telling them apart takes about thirty seconds.
The four tests
Does it end? A real offer has a date, and after that date it stops working. If the countdown resets or the banner is identical next week, the price is just the price.
Is it the same on everything? Genuine discounts are decided product by product. A sitewide, permanent, identical percentage is a formula.
Does it survive checkout? The honest test. A real discount changes the amount you actually pay. A decorative one is a number next to a number.
Is there a floor to it? Real offers have caps, minimums and exclusions, because a business has to limit what it is giving away. An offer with no conditions is usually not giving anything away.
| Signal | Real | Furniture |
|---|---|---|
| Expiry | A specific date | “Today only”, every day |
| Coverage | Some products | Everything, always |
| Cap | “Up to ₹100” | None stated |
| Minimum cart | Stated | None |
| Enforced where | At checkout | On the page |
What a genuine offer looks like from the inside
Ours is a code with a percentage, a maximum discount, a minimum cart value, an expiry date, and a usage limit. It is validated when you enter it and validated again when the order is created, so a stale code stops working rather than quietly succeeding.
Those constraints are what make it real. An offer nobody bounded is an offer nobody costed.
Why we do not run a permanent sale
Because a permanent discount is a price. If everything is always 20% off, the 20% is not a concession — it is the margin structure, and the higher number is decoration.
Running one would also require the struck-through price we deliberately removed. Why we do not show a struck-through price →
Where discounts genuinely exist in this category
Bulk. Real, and for a straightforward reason: fifty copies of one design costs less per unit than fifty separate designs. That is a saving that actually exists. Bulk discounts explained →
Seasonal offers with an end date. Real when the date is real.
Nothing else, mostly. On a made-to-order item there is no clearance, no old stock and no end-of-line. The things that create genuine retail discounts do not exist here.
What to do with a code you are offered
Use it if it works and it has not expired. Do not let it decide the purchase — a 10% saving on the wrong gift is not a saving, and a code is designed to compress the decision.
⚠️ The number on the page is advertising. The number at checkout is the transaction. Only one of those is enforceable, and it is worth reading before you pay.
Frequently asked
Are online gift discounts real? Some are. A discount with a real expiry, a cap and a minimum is real; a permanent sitewide percentage is a pricing structure.
How do I tell quickly? Check whether it ends, whether it is on everything, and whether it changes the amount at checkout rather than on the page.
Do you run discounts? Yes, bounded ones with a real expiry, cap and minimum, enforced at checkout rather than displayed on the page.
Why no permanent sale? Because a permanent discount is just the price, and running one would need the fake “before” number we removed.
Are bulk discounts real? Yes. Fifty copies of one design genuinely costs less per unit than fifty separate designs.
Part of our guide to what a photo magazine costs. See also: why we do not show a struck-through price and hidden costs in personalised gifting.
No permanent sale: Photo magazines from ₹499 · All 11 keepsakes