What the Tech? Prepare Yourself for Amazon Prime Day
After postponing its big shopping event in July, Amazon is set to release bargains again on Prime Day being held Tuesday and Wednesday, October 13th and 14th.
Last year’s Prime Day was bigger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday in terms of products ordered by Prime customers. Amazon said last year’s event sold over 175 million items.
But will you find better deals on Prime Day? It depends. Here are a few things you should probably do over the weekend if you plan to shop on Prime Day:
● Amazon suggests Prime members should download the Amazon app. Of course, the company wants you to install the app on your phone because you’ll likely spend more money, but the app does make it easier as many of the best deals sell out quickly.
● Set up notifications within the app to get a text message when any item you’ve added to a list has a huge price drop. The Amazon app will send notifications of price drops on products you might be interested in based on your previous activity.
● When checking the lightning deals, you can view “upcoming” deals. Prime members get early access to lightning deals so you can see what’s about to go on sale and even add it to a “watch list”. This way, if the sale doesn’t begin for several hours, you’ll get a reminder when it is available for early access.
● You can also search for those deals by entering “Sneek Peak” in the Amazon product search bar.
● If you know exactly what you want, copy and paste the Amazon product’s URL into the website www.camelcamelcamel.com This website shows the price history of most every item available at Amazon. I’ve found it to be helpful in buying a product at, or near, its lowest price. You can sign up to be notified if the item hits a certain price. I wouldn’t recommend depending on this during those fast lightning deals of Prime Day.
● Prime Day prices are for Amazon Prime members but if you do not have a $120 annual membership, you can sign up for a 30-day free trial membership which will get you the Prime Deals and free shipping (provided you haven’t done that before).
● Amazon is supporting local small businesses. Shop U.S. based small businesses by category or region and spend $10 between now and October 12th, Amazon will give you $10 to spend on Prime Day.
Don’t forget, many online retailers including Walmart, Target, and Best Buy will have their own 1 or 2-day sales events to compete with Amazon.
