We checked 40 Lightning Deals. Five were real.

01 / The numberFive out of forty.

At mid-afternoon on Friday, Amazon UK had 40 Lightning Deals live. We ran each one through the same checks every deal on this site has to pass: at least a fortnight of recorded price history, a reference price capped at what the product has genuinely sold for, a deal price meaningfully below its usual price, and a live check of the product itself rather than the deals feed.

One in eight. The other seven carried the same countdown, the same “% claimed” bar and the same red badge as the five that were real. Nothing on the page distinguishes them. Only the history does.

02 / The receiptsAmazon's percentage next to the real drop.

Five from the “not really a deal” pile. Amazon's badge is measured against the price it was listing immediately before the deal. “Usual” is the median of the product's recorded daily prices over the last year. “Real drop” is the deal price against that.

The toiletry bag is the cleanest example: a “21% off” badge on a product that costs £11.99 on an ordinary Tuesday, offered at £10.99. The saving is real. It is one pound, not 21%. The £521 power station is the same shape at a different scale — 18% off a listed price, 13% off what it normally sells for, which is a fair price for a good product and not the event the countdown implies.

None of this is illegal, and we are not suggesting it is. A reference price only has to be a price recently charged. That is a lower bar than “the price it usually sells for”, and the gap between the two is where these badges live.

03 / The real onesWhat a genuine low looked like today.

Two of the five, to show the other side of the ledger:

• DOQAUS Bluetooth over-ear headphones — £23.99. Usually £30.66; 23% under its verified reference of £31.14. Amazon's badge said 8%, which undersold it — the listed price had already drifted down before the deal. The history said more than the badge did.
• Y·J&H 650 ml insulated bottle — £9.60. Usually £12.99, 26% under. A modest product at a genuinely unusual price, which is exactly the kind of deal the countdown format is honest about.

Both became ordinary DropSignal deals with their own page, chart and score, and both carried a Lightning Deal badge with the end time — and both were gone by ten o'clock.

04 / Near missesReal drops that didn't make the cut.

A price can be genuinely low and still not be something we'd put in front of you. Two from today:

• SuperHandy electric utility wagon — £585.22. 28% under its reference, usually £801.99. It failed on score — 47 against a bar of 50 — mostly on popularity and thin recent history. A real drop on a niche product; we list it with the reason rather than pretend it isn't there.
• HOMCOM twin 20 L kitchen bin — £48.99. 16% under its usual £59.49. Below its normal price, but not by enough to be a standout. Fair, not exciting.

05 / The honest gapThe ones we couldn't call.

Nearly half of today's deals got no verdict, for two reasons we think are worth being open about.

Too little history. Many Lightning Deals are on products listed weeks ago. With fewer than fourteen days of recorded prices, “usual price” doesn't mean anything yet, so we say “can't tell” rather than guess. That is inconvenient and correct.

A price we couldn't confirm. The deals feed said one price; a live check of the product said another — higher. Feed prices are hours old. When the two disagree in the direction that would flatter the deal, we don't publish a verdict on a number the page isn't showing.

06 / MethodHow we counted.

• Amazon's UK Lightning Deals feed, pulled at 11:50 and checked hourly through the afternoon.
• Each live deal evaluated against its own recorded price history (via Keepa), using the published DropSignal methodology: history-capped reference, median test, 14-day minimum, live product check.
• “Genuine low” means it cleared every gate and was published as a normal deal. Counts marked ~ are from the afternoon's verdicts and moved slightly as deals started and ended.
• Products in the receipts are named because the numbers are matters of record; we have no view on their quality.

The live version of all of this — every deal, every verdict, updated hourly — is on the Lightning Deals page. The longer explanation is in Are Amazon Lightning Deals actually good deals?

07 / Next FridaySame time, new receipts.

This is the first edition, so five out of forty is a single data point. Over a few weeks it becomes a rate, and the rate is the interesting thing: is it always one in eight? Does it change before Prime Day, or in the run-up to Black Friday? We'll keep counting and publish the tally here every Friday. If you want the real ones as they appear rather than a week later, the strongest go to the free Telegram channel through the day.