Amazon’s Prime Day; Should You Participate

Amazon has become the master of fast and free shipping and with the Prime Day savings, you’ll feel like you’re getting the best deal on the items you buy.

It’s an inarguable fact that Amazon’s popularity has grown in leaps and bounds over the past several years. They keep releasing quality products at good prices, they’re expanding their boundaries in terms of what they handle, and they’re still offering some of the best deals on the internet. During the holiday season, they offer great deals during Black Friday and it’s internet-related cousin Cyber Monday. However, during the downtime of the rest of the year, no one was offering much in the way of deals. Then Amazon found a way to remedy that with their Prime Day. Or did they?

Living Up to the Hype

When Amazon launched the first Prime Day back in 2014, it was touted as the day on which Prime members could receive the best deals on the internet, exclusively. It was supposed to be Black Friday in the middle of the summer and was purported to offer the biggest deals Prime members had ever seen. The announcements leading up to that day caused a great deal of hype for the millions of people that belong to Amazon’s Prime membership service.

What we found, however, was that the first Prime Day was somewhat of a disappointment. The deals weren’t all that great and if they were, it wasn’t for anything we actually wanted. Black Friday had proven to be a day of deals on electronics, especially Amazon’s specialty items (which were fewer back then). Prime Day was advertised to be bigger than that, and they weren’t. Sure, if you were in the market for random necessities, they had some good deals, but it Wasnt what anyone was expecting.

Over the past three years, Prime Day has proven to be quite successful for the internet giant, but are Amazon Prime members really getting what they want out of it. Are Black Friday and Cyber Monday still the hot days to shop?

Room for Improvement for Amazon’s Prime Day

As with anything that gets a lot of hype and doesn’t deliver, there is always room for improvement. It’s generally agreed upon that Prime Day needs to take advantage of the opportunity to make it better. People want deals on things they actually want; home goods, clothes, shoes, video games, and electronics. Is it Amazon’s responsibility to deliver?

Consider it a slim to none chance that Amazon is going to do anything more to deliver, considering they’re posting record profits from the day. This means people are shopping, regardless of the lackluster deals. People are believing the hype and signing on to buy things they don’t really need, simply because they’re slightly discounted.

If you’re holding out for the rock bottom prices on TV series blu rays or video games that you’re getting on Black Friday, don’t. Prime Day isn’t the same. So how can Amazon make the claim that it’s a bigger discount day that Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined? Well, they get around the technicalities of that claim by offering MORE discounts on Prime Day, not better discounts.

It may not be what everyone is expecting, but some of the deals are still worth checking out. If you’re looking for $700 off a TV, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the way to go. Amazon will post some of their deals for the day after Thanksgiving in October, and many of them will be worth checking out. However, if you want to beat the throngs of people desperate to crash Amazon’s massive server on Black Friday, check out what Prime Day has to offer.

As Amazon customers, we’ve become spoiled. We can’t argue with that. We’ve become so accustomed to the fantastic deals we’re offered on a daily basis that we were expecting so much more from the past three Prime Days. Who knows? Maybe they’ll do something spectacular in 2018, but you probably shouldn’t hold your breath.