Waiting for the Diwali Sale? The Calendar Moves, the Price Mostly Does Not

From today, the festive calendar runs like this: Navratri from October 12, Dussehra on October 21, Dhanteras on November 6 and Diwali on November 8. Dhanteras is the day a very large number of Indian households buy something substantial for the house, and every seller of a large appliance in the country has that Friday circled. Between now and then you are going to see the word SALE attached to massage chairs more or less continuously.

People ask us in September whether they should buy now or hold out for the offer. It is a fair question and it deserves a straight answer rather than a nudge, so here it is. Wait if the waiting buys you something. On a massage chair, the thing most people are waiting for is the part least likely to move.

In India the manufacturer or importer sets the MRP themselves. It is not audited, it is not a market price, and on a category like this it is frequently set with the discount already planned into it. So a chair listed at ₹4,99,000 and struck through to ₹1,79,000 is not telling you the chair is worth five lakh. It is telling you the seller would like to sell it for one seventy nine, which is very often what it was selling for in August too.

You can test this yourself without any special knowledge. Take two or three listings you are considering, screenshot the landed price today, and look again on Dhanteras. Not the percentage. The rupee figure you would actually transfer, including delivery, installation and GST. Most of the time the two screenshots are closer than the banner implies, and occasionally the festive price is higher because the free installation quietly became a line item.

Compare the amount that leaves your account, not the percentage next to it. One of those two numbers is a fact and the other is a decision somebody made in a marketing meeting.

We do not publish an MRP to slash, which is why our pricing is on request. A quote comes back within 24 hours with the model, the delivery and what is included, and that figure is the same figure in August as in November. That is a position, not a boast: it means we have nothing dramatic to offer you on Dhanteras, and you should factor that into how you read the rest of this article.

The discount is theater. The logistics are not, and they move in the wrong direction for a buyer who leaves it late.

• Stock and finish. A massage chair is not restocked overnight. The champagne Z95 Elite and the tan Z91 Plus are the two that go first every year, and the honest outcome of waiting is often not a better price but a different color than the one you sat in.
• Delivery and installation slots. A Z90 Pro ships in a 198 × 76 × 85 cm carton at 113 kg gross, and the Z91 Plus in a 197 × 76 × 85 cm carton at 124 kg. Two people, a stairwell and a doorway. In Diwali week every logistics crew in Jaipur is already carrying somebody's fridge up somebody's stairs, and the calendar fills from the outside in.
• Bank and EMI schemes. These are the one festive offer that is usually exactly what it says, because the cost is carried by the bank and the card issuer rather than by an invented MRP. If something is going to save you real money in October, it is more likely a card scheme than a price cut.
• The installer's attention. A first installation should include somebody showing the household how the body scan works and what the intensity levels do. On a compressed festive schedule that walkthrough is the first thing to get shortened.

None of that argues for panic buying in September. It argues for separating the decision from the date. Decide which chair, at leisure, while there is still one of each on the floor to sit in. Then time the delivery to suit the house.

There are really only three windows, and they trade off against each other in a predictable way.

If you are buying for yourself, the second row is the worst of the three and it is the one most people take. If you are buying as a gift that has to be in the house on a specific morning, the second row is the only one that exists, and it needs to be started in the first week of October rather than the last.

Most festive-season enquiries we get are people buying for their parents. It is a good gift and it lands well, and the failure modes have nothing to do with the chair. They have to do with the room it arrives into.

Measure before you order. A full-size chair needs a wall it can live against permanently, a socket that is not shared with the television and the inverter, and clearance in front for the leg rest. The Z91 Plus slides forward as it reclines and sits about 5 cm off the wall, which is what makes it the one we suggest for a flat rather than a bungalow. And if the house has a lift with a narrow door, find that out in September, not on the morning the truck arrives.

The other thing worth saying out loud: a surprise is lovely, and an unannounced 106 kg surprise in a drawing room that had no plan for it is a fortnight of quiet resentment. Tell them. Better still, bring them. Older parents almost always want to sit in one before they accept it, and the first session should run on the lowest intensity for ten minutes so that nobody decides on day one that the machine is too much for them.

Come and sit in the chairs this month while the floor is quiet and there is time to run a full program on each. We do not do home demos, so the showroom is the only place that question gets answered properly, and fifteen minutes settles more than a fortnight of comparison tables. Then decide on the model. Hold the date if the festival matters to you, and put a committed delivery and installation date in writing before Dussehra rather than after it.

And if the honest answer is that you want one in the house for the function and not for the next five years, do not buy anything. Rent it for the week. That is not us being modest about our own catalogue, it is the difference between a decision you will still be happy with in 2029 and a very large object bought on a deadline.