Catalog view incorrectly indicating special pricing on a product

Question

I've sometimes noticed (somewhat rare) behavior whereby a product will show a special price in the catalogue view (i.e when browsing through a category), though when you click onto it no special pricing is indicated.

1. The product in-fact does not have special pricing set in the backend, nor did it previously, so this is not a caching issue
2. The special pricing visible in the catalog view is definitely incorrect and not visible on the product page

If I do a full cache refresh, the issue is not resolved. If I do a product save in the backend, it is corrected. Any ideas?

Answer 1

The backend always uses the EAV model to display product and catalog information. If you have flat catalog enabled however, the frontend will use the flat tables. If for some reason this isn't reindexed properly, you will keep stale information in the frontend and cache flushing doesn't help. Only a reindex (followed by a cache flush).