The struck-through price above a deal badge is a number the retailer picks, and on five listings checked for this site in the past week it was a price no seller was charging. On an 83-inch Samsung S90H OLED, Amazon’s $4,297.99 list sat between Samsung’s own $5,299.99 MSRP and the $3,499.99 Samsung was actually charging, so the 23% badge measured against neither.
A list price, an MSRP and a street price are three different figures, and only one of them is money anybody will take today. Telling them apart takes about thirty seconds on the manufacturer’s own store page.
What a list price is, and what it is not
An MSRP is the price a maker suggests at launch. It is set once, usually printed in a press release, and it often stays fixed for months while the real price moves underneath it.
A list price is the retailer’s own reference number on its own page. Nothing requires it to match the maker’s MSRP, and nothing requires any seller to be charging it on the day the badge appears.
A street price is what the item costs right now at a named seller. It is the only one of the three a buyer can act on.
Samsung publishes two prices for the same TV
Samsung’s product pages carry both figures in the page data, under the keys msrpPrice and currentPrice. For the 83-inch S90H on October 20 those read $5,299.99 and $3,499.99.
The MSRP is the stationary one. The same split runs through Samsung’s whole 2026 OLED table: the 77-inch S90H shows $3,699.99 against $2,499.99, and the 65-inch shows $2,699.99 against $1,499.99.
The gap between those two fields is wide enough to change a story. On the 77-inch S90H the MSRP field read $3,699.99 while Samsung’s own current price was $2,499.99, a difference of $1,200 on the same page.
That error overstated the gap to the maker by $1,200. Reading the rendered page rather than the price data is all it takes.
One television, four different prices
The TCL 55QM6K is the clearest case on file. TCL’s January 2025 press release gives a $799.99 launch MSRP for the 55-inch size.
TCL’s own store then shows $649.99 struck through with $549.99 beside it. Amazon’s list price reads $599.99, and Amazon charges $498.00.
That is four published prices for one television, and $599.99 is the only rung with no seller standing on it. The 75-inch QM8L works the same way, where a $2,999.99 Amazon list implied a 50% cut while TCL’s own store had already crossed that number out and was asking $1,599.99.
A percentage with nothing behind it
Some listings print a saving with no anchor at all. A Bose QuietComfort listing carried a 39% badge and no list price, which implies a reference near $588 against the $359 Bose publishes for that SKU.
The Sonos Beam (Gen 2) points the wrong way entirely. Its $499 listing carried a percentage-off tag, yet Sonos priced the Beam (Gen 2) at $449 in its own 2021 announcement, so the current price is $50 above launch.
A percentage is a ratio, and a ratio is only as good as its denominator. It is the least trustworthy figure on any listing, because it sits furthest from a number somebody has to honour.
The thirty-second check
Open the maker’s own store and search the exact model number, not the family. The 55QM6K and the 55QM64L are separate lines, and a QM8L price says nothing about a QM6K.
Read the maker’s live price rather than its struck-through one. Samsung, TCL and LG all publish both figures, and the struck-through number is the MSRP, not what the store will take.
Then look for the launch price in the maker’s own press release. TCL and Sonos both put theirs in writing, and that is what settles whether a current price is a cut or a rise.
Treat a percentage with no anchor as no information. If a listing will not name the price it is discounting from, nothing about the saving can be checked.
What none of these pages publish is when a list price was last charged, or by whom. Retailers do not date their anchors, and makers do not log the days an MSRP applied.
Every figure here was taken from a maker or retailer page between October 18 and October 20, and prices can change without notice.
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