What you need to know about Amazon Prime Day

Amazon Prime Day 2018 is coming! If you haven’t heard of it before it’s like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but in July and it’s put on by Amazon. Actually, 2017 Prime Day sales were higher than both of those shopping holidays in the previous year.

This 36-hour shopping event starts July 16, 2018 at 6 p.m. PDT and it is for Amazon Prime members only. Amazon says it will offer more than a million deals this year. Some of the deals last the whole 36 hours and others are lightning deals that expire after a set amount of time.

Prime Day Deals

While we won’t know the exact deals until the day gets here, there are some things to keep in mind.

• Based on years past, we expect Amazon to start with strong deals on its own products like the Echo or Kindle devices.
• There are typically a lot of tech deals, but not much from Apple or Google.
• Manufacturers use these types of sales to offload unsold stock of last year’s models, so you if you are OK with that you will likely find some great prices on things like TVs and cameras. If you want the most current versions it is best to wait until the holidays or end of the year for better discounts.
• Now that Amazon owns Whole Foods they will be incorporated into Prime Day. They are offering Prime members a $10 credit to use during the 36-hour Prime Day when they spend $10 or more at Whole Foods between July 11 through 17.

Buyer Beware

As with buying anything online, don’t get sucked into the hype. Take some time to research the product and the advertised price. Some aren’t as great of a deal as they are made out to be or the same thing can be found for less at other times of the year.

You also need to make sure the product is coming from a trusted retailer. Always check the reviews!

There are sites such as Wirecutter that will do the work for you and provide a list of the best deals. Their editorial team looks for products that have the best price over the past 90 days and are available from a trusted retailer. They will be posting the products they feel are true deals at on their website. Last year out of 24,000 deals, only 112 made the cut for their editorial staff.

Thrifter is another site that can help you weed through all of the deals to find the best ones.

If you aren’t an Amazon Prime member yet this might be the time to sign-up, new members get their first 30-days free. While the deals are marginally better if you are a Prime member, faster shipping is the true value, as well as the other built in benefits such as Amazon Video, Music, and Photo storage.