Prime Day will start on July 16 at 3 p.m. ET (noon PT) and will run through July 17. This year the sale will last 36 hours — up from 30 hours in 2017 — with more than 1 million deals exclusively for Prime members around the world, plus select deals at all U.S. Whole Foods Market stores.
Amazon Prime Day deals are only available to users with an Amazon Prime account. Prime is a subscription service offered by Amazon that includes free two-day shipping on many items sold on the site, as well as access to a huge library of streaming TV shows and movies and a helpful little assistant called Alexa. If you don’t have an Amazon Prime account you can snag a 30 day trial and get to shop this sale! I LOVE my Prime Account- it helped me cut the cord on cable!
If things are like previous years savings appear in a few different categories — price cuts, promotions and Lightning Deals. Price cuts will be your more stable discounted offers, with the only stipulation being limited supplies. A good example of this from last year is the top-selling 55-inch TCL 4K Smart TV, which was meant to be deeply discounted all day, but quickly sold out. But the year before they had stocked well on Instant Pots and they sold all day long deeply discounted. I will post these deals as soon as they become available as most will be available for atleast an hour or so.
Promotions are less about goods and more about services, meaning they are far less likely to sell out. You’re likely to see lower prices on Amazon Video, Music, and deep savings on Amazon devices such as Fire HD tablets, Kindle Devices, and Alexa-enabled tech. It’s a great time to grab Amazon Devices and usually box sets of media items.
How To Get Lightning Deals
Lightning Deals are sales with special Prime Day pricing. They typically offer a heavy discount, but they come and go quickly- sometimes in seconds because of limited stock. Users are required to complete their purchase within 15 minutes and if they don’t the item is put back available. If the entire stock of an item is sitting in shoppers’ carts, you can join a waitlist for that specific item to become available again, and receive a notification if the item has been made available. Then you will have 15 minutes to purchase it.
On the day of the event, go to the daily deal page and sort by “upcoming deals.” This will give you the chance to get prepared for a deal before it goes live. You can also check by category- if you are looking specifically for toys or household items for example. Just because you’re being proactive doesn’t mean you’ll be lucky enough to nab all of the savings you want. You’re competing with thousands of people for a limited quantity, so don’t feel too bad if you miss out on something you wanted.
How Can A Frugal Chick help?
I should be at my computer the moment Amazon Prime Day begins at 3 p.m. EST on 7/16. And other than a few hours the night of the 16th I will likely JUST be at my computer until it ends.
Any deal that I think will last a few hours I will post on the website. If I see lightning deals that I think are exceptional I will post them in A Frugal Chick’s Holiday Shopping Facebook Room. It’s the only way to get the links out fast enough that people could possibly get the deals. Some of them last only minutes and by the time I got a post done they deal would be expired.
If this year is like previous years we won’t be blown away by any unique deals. We call it the Amazon Yard Sale for a reason- you can usually grab great deals on socks, a coffee pot or key chain but probably not on a hoverboard or laptop (although the TV deals are usually STELLAR). It’s a day (and a half) of surprises for all of us!
Laura says
Oh yes. Those posts will be linked in the Facebook room!
Cindy Rumsey says
You say any deal you think will last a few hours, youll post on the website. Will you also post on your FB page? I know you say you’ll post on FB if it is a lightning deal.