Amazon Prime Day will have "more deals than Black Friday"

by Mark Tyson on 6 July 2015, 12:06

Tags: Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN)

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Amazon has turned the promotional zeal dial up to 11 today to announce its first ever Prime Day. This one day shopping event is, it claims, "filled with more deals than Black Friday," and it will be "one of the biggest deals extravaganzas in the world". The catch is that you will have to be an Amazon Prime member to participate and one day is pretty short for a sale which will include a multitude of even shorter 'lightning deals'.

Lightning deals every 10 minutes

Prime day takes place on 15th July. Amazon says there will be exclusive deals on electronics, toys, video games, movies, clothing, patio, lawn and garden, sports and outdoor items and more. It is a global event "offering more deals than Black Friday," exclusively to Prime members. There will be "thousands of Lightning Deals" starting from midnight BST with new deals throughout the following 24 hours – as frequently as every 10 minutes.

Alongside the sale, Amazon will be holding a PrimeLiving photo contest (share a photo of your happiest moment) with a grand prize of $10,000 in Amazon gift cards for the best entrants from Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. No purchase is necessary to take part in this contest but again, you have to be a Prime member and can only submit one entry per Prime account.

Amazon Prime for £59 until midnight on 8th July

If you aren't already an Amazon Prime member in the UK you can now sign up for £59 for the year. The offer will save you £20 on a year-long membership. Your membership will auto-renew at £79 but you can cancel that renewal at any time up to that date.

The above two events have been put together to celebrate Amazon's 20th anniversary. Amazon.com opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995.

HEXUS Forums :: 26 Comments

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Posted by shaithis - Mon 06 Jul 2015 12:14
“more deals than Black Friday”

Shouldn't be too difficult as far as the UK goes…..
Posted by Saracen - Mon 06 Jul 2015 12:14
Whoop de do.

For existing Prime members, fine. For those tempted, fine. For me, being neither …. yawn.

Oh, and if I had been tempted, they'd have lost me instantly at “auto-renew”. No way in hell. I refuse point blank to do that for ANYTHING.
Posted by Jowsey - Mon 06 Jul 2015 12:30
Saracen
Oh, and if I had been tempted, they'd have lost me instantly at “auto-renew”. No way in hell. I refuse point blank to do that for ANYTHING.

There's a button in the options that toggles it off. Same with absolutely every online subscription based service that doesn't have a defined end point, I believe.

Then again I'm not one of those muppets that forgets what he has ‘going on’. People who signed up to Amazon prime free trial where it explicitly states that it lasts for a month and then whine when it takes the subscription due after the free month shouldn't be allowed a refund. Not implying you are Saracen as you are very clearly aware of where your data is at, and I imagine if people were as careful as you a lot of unsavoury companies would have failed a long time ago. But that's the loudest complaint I hear about auto-renew subscriptions. Granted, I don't know a huge deal about the method in which prime renews (I don't have it and have never allowed it to even get close to it's auto-renew period) so perhaps they don't attempt any communication at all. Not even an e-mail the week before. In which case that's some very poor practice from Amazon but it doesn't excuse people for forgetting where they've entered there bank details and who they have gave licence to charge said bank details!

Edit: On topic, I won't be buying anything from them as them having a ‘sale’ further perpetuates the issues I have discussed before. Staff overworking and reportedly pathetic pay and razor thin margins producing no profit but an endless stream of cash which fuels a ravenous need to expand. To list some.
Posted by Michael H - Mon 06 Jul 2015 12:37
The deals will be available to those on the prime trial as well, so if you buy something from amazon between now and then (even if it's something cheap like a single book) and opt for a free trial of prime, you can immediately go and choose not to continue from the prime options, and it will continue until the end of the 30 days and not continue even if you then forget about it.
Posted by Saracen - Mon 06 Jul 2015 12:52
Jowsey
There's a button in the options that toggles it off. Same with absolutely every online subscription based service that doesn't have a defined end point, I believe.

Then again I'm not one of those muppets that forgets what he has ‘going on’. People who signed up to Amazon prime free trial where it explicitly states that it lasts for a month and then whine when it takes the subscription due after the free month shouldn't be allowed a refund. Not implying you are Saracen as you are very clearly aware of where your data is at, and I imagine if people were as careful as you a lot of unsavoury companies would have failed a long time ago. But that's the loudest complaint I hear about auto-renew subscriptions. Granted, I don't know a huge deal about the method in which prime renews (I don't have it and have never allowed it to even get close to it's auto-renew period) so perhaps they don't attempt any communication at all. Not even an e-mail the week before. In which case that's some very poor practice from Amazon but it doesn't excuse people for forgetting where they've entered there bank details and who they have gave licence to charge said bank details!
I guess my lack of tolerance of auto-renew comes from an experience a few years back with a large and supposedly reputable insurance company with whom, when renewing, I explicitly stated, three times, it was a one-off payment and NOT to be auto-renewed, only to have them try to auto-renew it 12 months later, after I'd taken out a policy with someone else as the ‘auto-renewal premium’ they quoted was …. erm …. excessive. The credit card company reversed the charge after I complained and explained …. and played them the recording of the renewal conversation in which I had repeatedly rejected auto-renewal, and the insurer had agreed. The insurer then threatened court action to recover the premium, at which point I told them “play me the recording you say you have of the conversation, and if I didn't reject auto-renewal, I'll pay you. Failing that, see you in court, and you can play it for the judge. And if you can't or won't play your recording, that's fine too …. we'll use my recording”.

At that point, they decided not to pursue the matter. Shame, because I was looking forward to it. ;)

My concern is that auto-renew is fine if it suits you, and you want it. For some, the advantage is (like with insurance) you're assured continuity of cover, if you forget. However, the price of that is that you emphatically aren't assured a reasonable premium, as in my experience (in which I nearly halved their quote with a single phone call to a broker), and may well be in for a nightmare of a fight trying to cancel.

Auto-renewal is, in my view, too much of a golden opportunity to get yourself stitched up, even by apparently reputable companies. Would Amazon? I doubt it. But I object to the practice, on principle. My view is if I want to renew any service, I'll renew it. I don't want ANY company just assuming I'll renew any annual subscription.

It is, if you like, an aspect of the same reason I vehemently objected to Scan adding Scansure onto web orders by default. If I want it, I'll add it. Ditto auto-renewal, be it Amazon or car insurers. Offer it, by all means. But don't do it by default. If doing so isn't yet illegal, it certainly ought to be … just like adding insurance to computer bits or holiday travel now is.

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