Maximize Savings: Your Guide to the Best Amazon Prime Day Deals

The day after Thanksgiving – otherwise known as Black Friday – has often been seen as a bellwether in many traditional retail businesses to indicate if they’ll turn a profit for the year and by how much. Not so long ago, people would line up in the early morning hours for the deals offered by retailers competing for their almighty dollar.

Other than that, there are precious few real shopping events throughout the year. You might be able to get a deal on last year’s model of TV in the weeks before a certain Big Game on the gridiron in February, and every holiday, it seems like there’s a mattress sale, but prices may be down at other times regardless of sales.

Amazon has some great value propositions they provide as a business, but one might argue that their great superpower outside of massive logistics operations is marketing. Amazon Prime Day has two distinct pluses for them: it gets you to subscribe to their membership and it’s a sale when no one else is traditionally having one. They own your eyeballs for that 48-hour period.

We’ll go over what Prime Day is, give our best guess as to when it might happen, share some thoughts as to what you might expect to see and give you some tips for knowing a good deal when you see one.

What Is Amazon Prime Day?

Prime Day is a sale exclusively for Amazon Prime subscribers. It’s another value add for Prime members who, for the privilege of paying Amazon $12.99 per month or $119 per year, get access to faster delivery, the company’s streaming video service, unlimited access to select Kindle e-reader titles and exclusive deals including access to this sale.

Prime Day started July 15, 2015 in celebration of Amazon’s 20^th anniversary. Anyone familiar with Amazon knows that there’s always a deal of the day. That day they tend to have several more of these featured deals than usual. In addition to that, there are lightning deals throughout the day. These deals are offered for short periods of time and often feature limited stock at an ostensibly deep discount. There are many full pages of lightning deals across all Amazon departments.

When Is Amazon Prime Day?

No one outside Amazon knows yet when Prime Day will be this year. Amazon publicly said in its first quarter earnings call that it’s scheduled to take place at some point during Q2 this year. Because Amazon’s fiscal calendar lines up with the calendar year, that leaves May or June. According to multiple sources, third parties who sell through Amazon are being requested to have their products into Amazon fulfillment centers anywhere from the end of May through mid-June depending on their region across the globe.

Last year after being forced from their more traditional July timing by the pandemic, Amazon did a Prime Day in India in August and in 19 additional countries October 13 – 14. (Oh yeah, Prime Day is a misnomer. It’s been a 2-day event since 2019.)

Of course, we’re not privy to Amazon’s plans, but if they chose to do one big Prime Day as they have in the past, that would seem to support the sales event taking place either in the week leading up to or the week following Father’s Day in the U.S. on June 20.

Prime Day Deals: What To Expect This Year

The deals for Prime Day are generally in all departments. Given this, they can be big-ticket items costing hundreds or thousands of dollars all the way down to lower ticket items like shampoo and toothpaste.

Amazon usually pre-announces a few of the bigger deals in the days leading up to Prime Day. These might be a TV or a robot vacuum. Other things often advertised in these early announcements are the Echo devices and Kindle e-readers and tablets. The thing about the devices from Amazon is that they’re perpetually on sale. These are loss leaders designed to get you to buy more stuff on Amazon. They’re great devices useful as speakers, video players or smart home hubs, but you’re just as likely to get a deal in November as you are on Prime Day.

3 Tips For Getting The Best Prime Day Deals

Although the timing of and deals associated with Prime Day change from year to year, there are three major tips you can use to employ the smartest shopping techniques. While one of these is specifically about Amazon, the other two could apply for any sale.

1. Sign Up For Amazon Prime

You do have to sign up for Amazon Prime in order to take advantage of Prime Day deals. If you find the idea of paying an entry fee to get into a sale seems unconscionable, I do have some good news. You can get a 30-day free trial. Just make sure you cancel at the end if you don’t want to be charged $12.99 per month or $119 per year.

Or you might decide you like the benefits that come with your Prime membership. It’s up to you. This isn’t an Amazon commercial. It’s just about getting you the deals you deserve.

There are special memberships for students and low-income individuals as well, so be sure to look into those. Finally, if you haven’t been an Amazon Prime member in the last 12 months, you can sign up for the trial again.

2. Set A Budget

There was some low-key smart financial advice dispensed every once in a while on the TV show “The Office.” One of my favorite episodes is the one where Oscar Martinez participates in the costume contest where first prize is a coupon book. He does the runway walk in his normal business attire as “the responsible consumer.” His point is that in order to maximize the savings from the book, you need to spend some absurd amount of money.

Yes, you may be getting a deal (or not, but we’ll get there in a minute). But do you really need three 64-GB flash drives or the foot massager with eight rotating jets? Maybe you do. I’m not saying don’t get it, but set a budget for yourself and prioritize.

3. Check Competitor Prices

Sales rely on psychology. They want you to think you’re getting a great deal and a lot of the time you are, but a lot of the time you aren’t. You’re left with two questions. The first is whether you’re getting a deal at all. And then, are you getting the best deal?

In order to help you with this, I like two extensions for your web browser:

The Camelizer allows you to see the price history of any item on Amazon so you can see the peaks as well as the troughs and determine whether you’re getting a good price or if you can get it lower by buying at some other point.

There’s also no doubting that Amazon no longer owns Prime Day. While competitors like Walmart may not be able to use that branding, they consistently run their own internet sales to compete with what Amazon is doing. But checking retailers across the internet when the deal may be time limited can be difficult. This is why I like Honey.

After you sign up for the account and download the extension, Honey will look across the internet at its participating retailers to make sure you’re getting the best possible price on the product you’re looking at. It also helps you find coupon codes and earns you points in the Honey rewards program.

The Bottom Line

Prime Day, like any sale, can be an excellent way to save money, provided you actually know you’re getting a deal. Always make sure you check competitor prices. Set a budget and stick to it to help you avoid impulse purchases.

We’ll close by saying that one of the best things about online shopping is the sheer convenience of it all. You can get almost anything without leaving your house. On the other hand, this miracle has a flip side in that it makes it really easy to spend more than you wanted to. If you’re a person who feels the need to curb online shopping, you may want to avoid Prime Day altogether.