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Amazon Prime Day was a Bust for Deal Hunters!

By on July 15, 2015

prime-day-fail

Heard all the negative buzz about Amazon Prime Day from consumers posting on Twitter? They aren’t wrong. Here’s why Amazon Prime Day was mostly all hype and a pretty terrible deal for consumers.

Prices on Amazon’s own products were worse or no better than previous sales.

  • The Amazon Echo was originally offered to Prime subscribers at $99. Today’s “Prime Exclusive” $129 price was $30 more expensive.
  • The Fire TV Stick was originally offered to Prime subscribers at $19. Today’s “Prime Exclusive” $24 price was $5 more expensive.
  • The 6″ Kindle was on sale for $49 already earlier this year. No price reduction in the sale price. The same goes for the Fire HD 7 at $79.

Many Lightning Deal categories were flops. Our Top Three Worst include:

  • Toys: There were few noteworthy toy deals. The majority products were actually priced higher than previous sales, either on Amazon or a 3rd party retailer. Toys that were cheaper than previous sales were usually within $1 of the last sale price.
  • HDTV’s: Prices on the highly anticipated TV sales were solid, but availability was poor. Selling out in mere seconds, the stock of those doorbusters was likely significantly lower than Black Friday. In addition, Amazon failed to include a significant number of additional television models within the sale.
  • General Electronics: Electronics deals were significantly underwhelming, specifically because other retailers have run lower prices in previous sales. Similar to HDTVs, stock on the best deals (like the Bose SoundTrue headphones for $80) ran out quickly each time the deal refreshed.
  • Dishonorable Mentions: Women’s apparel / accessories, housewares and computers / accessories.

pathetic-prime-day

Who won on Amazon Prime Day?

  • Anyone that used Amazon’s general offers / category wide discounts instead of Lightning Deals.

The 35% off one grocery item was good, if stacked with the 5% off w/ Subscribe & Save promotion. The extra 15% off Warehouse Deals was also a never before seen general percentage off coupon. The $10 promo credit w/ gift card purchase was also a very strong offer.

Product categories that benefited from discounts included men’s shoes / accessories (the extra 30% off discount made for some great prices on Ray-Bans and athletic shoes) as well as baby gear (the 25% off Graco and Britax promotion was excellent on car seats and strollers).

  • Anyone that shopped at the Microsoft Store, Macy’s or Newegg.

Microsoft launched some very strong sales on laptops today beating Amazon’s prices, most of which sold out within a few hours. Macy’s launched an aggressive clearance sale and free shipping site-wide on all orders, a promotion that was even better than their Black Friday shipping deal. Newegg’s deal offerings were scattered, but offered some killer deals on home theater gear and backpacks, all of which beat Amazon’s prices.

  • Anyone that avoided Walmart.com.

Walmart’s online sales were even worse than Amazon, despite attempting to garner attention by picking a fight with Amazon on the company blog this week. The majority of the sale prices matched existing deals in the clearance section prior to today; most of the “Rollbacks” were insignificant.

  • The Twitterverse

As mentioned earlier, Twitter users had an absolutely blast picking apart Amazon’s pseudo Black Friday in July. Here’s a sampling of our favorites:

About Mike Flacy

Editor-in-Chief for The CheckOut. During my free time, I love to write about pop culture, home theater, digital photography, social media, mobile technology and cool gadgets!

One Comment

  1. william anderson

    July 17, 2015 at 3:57 am

    I like my impression of amazon prime day the best.
    “its like showing up at a garage sale at noon”

    Reply

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