Tips for Amazon Prime Day
If you're anything like me, you're obsessed with Amazon Prime, particularly the substantial savings you can get on Subscribe & Save items, the quick shipping, and great Prime-only shows like the hilarious but dark Catastrophe. I was intrigued by last year's first-ever Prime Day, Amazon's huge summer sale event, but ultimately underwhelmed — I just didn't see much good stuff there to get.
There's a LOT of talk about how this year is going to be bigger and better than ever — and Prime Day starts tomorrow! — so I thought we'd discuss it. Did you get anything last year? What's your strategy for this year's sale? (I will note right off the bat that one of the early Prime-only sales is a great deal on the Lumo Lift, which is sort of a fitness tracker that helps with your posture — I like mine but need to be better about wearing it!)
A few tips I'm seeing around the interwebs:
- Know the lingo: In addition to the regular limited-time only “Lightning Deals,” Amazon will also have “Spotlight Deals” that will be the BEST sales of the day.
- Prepare for an all-day event. They're rolling out new deals regularly throughout the day, so check often! (I've heard there will be a new deal every five minutes, which seems a bit insane to me, but the good news is that there should always be something fresh to see, however often you get a chance to check.)
- If you already have the Amazon Shopping App, you can set up “deal watching” to make sure you don't miss a deal — instructions are here. (In my phone app I went to Settings -> Notifications -> “Your Watched and Waitlisted Deals.”)
- Use Alexa. If you have an Amazon Echo, you can ask Alexa, “What are your Prime Day deals?” and find exclusive deals only through Alexa.
Ladies, are you excited? Are you looking for anything particular, like savings on computers, cameras, televisions, or other big purchases? In general, what are your favorite things about Prime Membership?
Psst: if you're NOT a member of Amazon Prime already, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial to get access to the sale — just don't forget to cancel before you have to pay the fee.
Last year’s deals seriously seemed to be based on my purchase/wish lists. The stroller and travel guide that I had recently purchased were on there, along with the others that I had considered. All of the playpens that I was comparing were on there. The only thing I bought on Prime Day was Rosetta Stone Portuguese, and it was a very good deal.
I’ve heard that this year’s offerings will be based on things that you don’t normally buy, to try and get you to venture into different departments.
if that’s true, I suspect it will backfire — I’m not likely to say, impulse purchase home electronics or jewelry just because it’s a good price. OTOH, If I see something I routinely order marked down, I’d definitely stock up.
Prime day was SO STUPID last year. My expectations could not be lower.
I am a huge amazon fan girl, and I agree. It was like all the weird stuff you could get at a flea market. And I don’t like flea markets. That said, this year I have a ton of stuff on wish lists and will be checking to see if the prices go down.
+1
Yup, I checked a few times, and the handful of things I might have considered buying were gone in seconds – and then there was tons of crap I had no desire for.
I don’t think I’m even going to bother checking tomorrow, as I don’t have anything I really need right now, so it would just be a recipe for impulse buys I would probably regret.
Ditto. It was a massive, massive waste of time last year.
Our favorite was a 5 gallon tub of l*be. Really?
The Best thing’s about Amazon Prime is that for $99, you also get all the streameing movies you can stomach, at no extra charge! So whenever I get home OR have my IPAD near a wifi, I can watch movies. I even watched a movie at the Partnership Meeting last week (with my earphone on), b/c it was SOOOO BORING, with all of the numbers and partnership draw’s and other accounting stuff that I could care LESS about! FOOEY! I did like the movie, with Brad Pit in it, no less! The ONLEY thing I recomend is that Amazon get more movies so that I can have more choice. I hope someone in the HIVE works there so they can recomend this to BEZOS, the owner with the bald head. YAY!!!!
I’m a loyal Amazon Prime member and have been using it for years. I received a $10 off coupon and I ordered something from Alexa and it said there would be a $10 discount on what I was purchasing. Well, when I saw the order confirmation email the $10 discount wasn’t on there. My husband called customer service and they said that the $10 discount had a lot of exclusions – even though Alexa said that it was applying the discount when I ordered. After 45 minutes on the phone with customer service, the issue was finally resolved, but I was shocked at how horrible their customer service was. Has anyone else had this experience? They kept transferring him between departments, one guy hung up on him, another claimed there were no managers and then finally put a manager on the phone – it was terrible. I was really disappointed.
Yep. It took me an hour last year to get Amazon to honor a “$30 off a purchase from Amazon Home Services” deal that I purchased on Prime Day. They were giving me the runaround saying that they couldn’t honor it because it wasn’t “fulfilled by Amazon.” Well last I checked Amazon doesn’t employ ANY of the individuals who would fulfill Home Services purchases… making the promotion misleading and useless if not applicable to my purchase.
Email them. Every problem I’ve ever had with Amazon has been satisfactorily resolved with just one email, answered within 24 hours at the most. I just dealt with a somewhat similar issue about a discount code not being applied and they credited it back to me with no problem.
I’ve had mixed success with Amazon customer service over the phone. One phone rep could not have cared less. I hung up, got another rep, and he was very conscientious and followed through on everything he said.
I only ever use the chat or email function and it’s all been resolved painlessly.
I also recently had a nightmare customer service experience with Amazon! It was resolved, but it was a huge headache. The screen on my Kindle was having issues so I initiated a warranty exchange over customer service chat. I left on an extended business trip shortly after requesting the exchange and asked my husband to return the device (of course, he forgot). When I got back I had a reminder email telling me to return my device by July 12. Great– I mail it back on July 5. A few days later I got an email saying I had been refunded $9 (the taxes only) for my Kindle! No warranty exchange, no return credit, nothing.
I thought it was a simple mistake so I called customer service. After about half an hour of being left on hold and transferred through several departments, I received a very condescending mansplain about how the policy requires the device to be returned within two weeks of the request and I was outside that period. When I told the rep for the fifth time that my instructions said July 12 and I returned well within that window, he told me he would have to call me back to see if he can “make an exception.” No, dude, I am not requesting some special exception or a favor from you. The instructions told me July 12, I mailed by July 5, end of story.
I’m also baffled that, even if I had returned the device a couple of days late, their default action was to trash my device, return only $9 to me, and call it a day. The system should reflect an open warranty request. They can’t call or email the customer, or even send the package back to sender? It makes no sense.
All’s well that ends well because they wound up replacing the device. But this customer service experience really shook my confidence in Amazon and made me rethink my dependence on them for such a big portion of our household shopping. Not to mention my dependence on the Kindle ecosystem, which holds basically my entire library for the last three years.
Can’t wait for tomorrow because I’m in the market for a new Kindle. Marshmallow – what a pain! I had a Kindle replaced by Amazon and it was pretty darn easy.
Guess I’m not like you because I do t support Amazon, due to their very bad employee policies.
My friend just posted a great idea: get a few cases of diapers for cheap and donate them to a local food pantry. They’re super expensive for low income families and a great concrete way to help. You can use Subscribe and Save to take off more and then unsubscribe. I’m definitely doing this!