1. Check the Price History
The single most effective trick: look up the product's price history on Keepa.com or CamelCamelCamel.com. Paste the Amazon product URL and see the full price chart. A genuine deal looks like a sharp dip from a consistently held price. A fake deal shows the "original" price was never actually charged — the price chart is flat at the "discounted" price.
Example: A ₹1,999 headphone listed at ₹599 "70% off" — Keepa shows it has never sold above ₹650. The ₹1,999 MRP is a fiction.
2. The 15x Rule for Fake MRP
Amazon India sellers are allowed to set their own MRP. Some inflate it 10–20x to show massive discounts. A useful rule of thumb: if the MRP is more than 10–15x the selling price, it's almost certainly fake. A ₹300 phone case claiming ₹4,999 MRP is a red flag, not a deal.
TazaDeal automatically filters out listings where the original price exceeds 15x the selling price — that's why you see cleaner discounts here than on Amazon's own sale pages.
3. Filter by Review Count
A product with under 50 reviews and a 70% discount is almost always a new listing from a brand nobody has heard of, priced high to manufacture a big discount. The safest deals combine high discount and high review count — 1,000+ reviews means real people bought it at some price, which makes the "original" price at least somewhat credible.
On TazaDeal, use the Reviews filter to see only deals with 1,000+, 2,000+, or 5,000+ reviews. This alone eliminates 80% of the junk.
4. Check the Seller Name
On the product page, look at "Sold by". Amazon Cloudtail India, Appario Retail, and Amazon itself are the most trustworthy sellers. Third-party sellers with names like "ShopDeals786" or "UrbanBazaarKart" are higher risk — not necessarily fake, but worth extra scrutiny.
Also check whether the product is Amazon Fulfilled (FBA) — this means Amazon handles shipping and returns, which significantly reduces the risk of getting a counterfeit.
5. Read the Negative Reviews First
Sort reviews by Most Critical before buying. Look specifically for mentions of: "not as described", "different from photo", "cheap quality", "MRP sticker was different". These phrases pattern-match to fake/misrepresented deals far more reliably than the overall star rating.
A product with 4.2 stars can still be a terrible deal if 30% of buyers are complaining the item looks nothing like what was advertised.