The Amazon Prime Day 2020 date is being postponed, according to a new report, but an avalanche of the best Prime Day deals are expected to launch in August.
This is good news about Prime Day 2020 for both consumers eager to see big sales and manufacturers that need to start making money again. It just won’t happen in its usual place of mid-July, according to Reuters.
A one-month Amazon Prime Day delay sounds reasonable, as people have been putting off making big purchases. But, come August, there may be pent-up demand for what manufacturers have sitting in their warehouses while essential goods are prioritized.
Having the Prime Day date in early August could allow extra time for economies to recover and buying habits to return to normal, yet not ride into Black Friday 2020 deals territory, another invented online shopping period that Amazon heavily relies on.
When it does land, we’re expecting to see another raft of discounts for Amazon’s own-brand Echo speakers and smart displays, Fire Sticks for the TV and Fire tablets, and a widening of savings on its smart home wares – like the Ring camera.
When will Amazon Prime Day happen? What Prime Day sales are expected in 2020? How can you get the best discounts in August (you’ll have to subscribe to Prime, but you may not have to pay for it with our advice below)?
We’re here to help answer those questions while official details are still in the offing.
Amazon Prime Day 2020 date: will it be delayed?
The official Amazon Prime Day date is reportedly in August, although no one knows the specific date or, more likely, dates. Well, maybe Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos knows.
Last year’s Prime Day deals lasted 48 hours, so there were two full days of discounts, and we expect something similar in 2020. Amazon has historically picked a Monday to start the deals and Prime Day usually runs through Tuesday.
If August is indeed the month, that leaves one of four (or five) choices for the start of it: August 3, August 10, August 17, or August 24. The fifth choice? That’s August 31, which is also a Monday, but Prime Day would then extend the sales into September.
We would have initially thought it would have happened on July 13, or possibly the week before on July 6, but as it stands we’re fully expecting things to slip later in the month or not at all.
As soon as we catch wind of the Prime Day 2020 date, we’ll be sure to update this page so you can prepare your Amazon wish list.
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Is Amazon Prime Day postponed this year?
That seems to be the case, although, on the record, Amazon has only stated “Prime Day 2020 has not been announced,” according to an Amazon.com retail page.
The shift from July to August was reported by Reuters, with the official cause being the coronavirus outbreak. In some parts of the world, Amazon has been limiting the number of items it ships, often prioritizing essential goods.
But, keep in mind, having no Amazon Prime Day date is not out of the ordinary. The company doesn’t announce the date until mere weeks ahead of the kick off, when it teases a fraction of its deals list. So, even if it were July, we still wouldn’t know today.
Prime Day 2020 deals list: what will be on sale?
The Amazon Prime Day deals list, while a mystery until the deals go live, quite often follows the same trends every year, so we can safely assume what to expect.
The best Prime Day 2020 will almost certainly feature deep discounts on Amazon’s own tech. We’re talking about Kindle deals, Echo price drops, and Fire TV discounts.
We’ve also seen Prime Day become known for amazing laptop deals, no matter what you’re interested in. That includes cheap Chromebooks, Windows laptops and a few Apple MacBooks. Now the latest MacBook Pro is on sale, expect it to go fast.
Then there are the staples of every major online shopping event: 4KTVs, DNA kits, and video doorbells – expect all of those to be reduced in price, too. It doesn’t hurt that Amazon owns Ring, a video doorbell line it discounts heavily each year too.
How to shop on Prime Day in 2020
1. Check out our deals predictions and, eventually our Prime Day deals list
There are also too many deals available on Prime Day. It’s never a problem finding discounts, it’s always an issue of figuring out what deals are worth your money. That’s why we always set up a curated list during the 48-hour sales marathon.
We spent some good time last Black Friday thinking about smart ways to shop on Amazon – they’re still some great Prime Day tips and tricks.
2. Amazon Prime Day has historically required being a Prime member, so be sure to have a subscription on Prime Day
Amazon started Prime Day in 2015 as a clever way to drive up its Prime subscription count, and this online shopping marathon – conveniently opposite Black Friday – accomplished just that.
You’ll need to sign up for Prime (you can get a free 30-day trial), which comes with two-day free shipping and Prime Video access, among other smaller perks. In some cities, Amazon has rolled out free one-day and same-day shipping on certain items.
3. Create a wish list to curate what you want, as there will be loads of deals
You’re also going to want to create a wish list ahead of time, which will let you sort out what you want and how much everything costs. This will give you a head start. You’ll be able to see which deals dropped in price and which did not.
4. Snap up the best Prime Day 2020 deals before they’re gone
The numbers don’t lie. Last year’s Amazon Prime Day stats gave us insight into what sold in big quantities nearly 12 months ago. It’s shocking, really.
The retailer shipped 100,000 lunchboxes, 100,000 laptops, 200,000 TVs, 300,000 headphones, 350,000 luxury beauty products, 400,000 pet products, 650,000 household cleaning supplies, and more than one million toys.
We often find the best deals to go in a matter of minutes, at which time Amazon rolls out a waitlist for those who were just behind the curve.
- See the best selling Amazon own-brand devices right now
- See the best TV deals on Amazon
- This is the top-selling fitness equipment on Amazon to help with self-isolation
How competitive were Prime Day deals at Amazon last year?
A price monitoring company called Minderest (as reported by PR Newswire) compared prices of 566 of the most in-demand products over Prime Day to see how they stacked up against rivals stores listed on Google Shopping.
58.05% of them were cheapest on Amazon UK, compared to a massive 81.9% in the US where Amazon is annihilating the competition on a regular basis.
If anything, that UK figure is a testament to how competitive the UK market it is and we did notice other stores having big sales of their own around Prime Day and a lot of price matching happening too.
It’s also a solid reminder to double check prices elsewhere on Prime Day (we always do this before highlighting a deal for you) as you might get a better deal from the likes of John Lewis, Currys and Argos.
Amazon devices, as expected, got the best deals with an average 45% reduction on their RRPs compared to 37% in 2018. According to audience research from Numerator, 65.8% of surveyed shoppers said they were extremely or very satisfied with the deals available.
Last year’s best Amazon Prime Day deals
Amazon Prime Day 2020 is undoubtably going to be different than any other as the date shifts to later in the year. But we suspect many of the deals will mirror what we saw last year.
Last year Prime members were snapping up products throughout the 48-hour event with over 175 million items sold. That’s more than Amazon sold on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.
That’s why we’re re-posting some of the top deals from last year’s Prime Day event. It happened in mid-July, meaning some products may change (for example, if there’s been a sequel launched since), but the low prices should match come Prime Day 2020.
What did Amazon’s rivals do on Prime Day?
Currys kicked of its ‘Black Tag’ event before Prime Day and it was still going for a few days afterwards too. Out of all the other stores, we’d probably say Currys gave Amazon the biggest fight for TVs, laptops and gadgets. Currys’ wide selection of home white goods beat out Amazon too, although Amazon has never really focused on those as much.
John Lewis deals were very popular for Google Home products (not sold on Amazon) and while it was generally price-matching rivals rather than coming up with its own deals, we were happy to send you its way due to most items coming with a free minimum two-year warranty at no extra cost.
Having to pay for delivery on items under £50 was a bit off-putting though on cheaper items and shows a key area where John Lewis are lagging behind the times a little on the UK online retailscape.
So much shopping is done on mobile now either via a browser, or by using a retailer’s own app. According to AppsFlyer (as reported by PerformanceIn), the top 100 retail apps took a bit of a beating during Prime Day, not only were new installs down, 53% of them had a decrease of in-app purchases.
And seeing as Amazon’s app got through the sale without freezing all the time like it did last year, it’s not great news for rival apps.
Overall, more people shopped via mobile at Amazon than ever before on Prime Day. Gone are the days when people tended to browse more on mobile, then fire up the laptop when they got home to actually finish the transaction. And to be fair, on Prime Day, you can’t really afford to wait that long due to the risk of deals selling out.
Did anything go wrong on Prime Day 2019?
Actually, yes. The UK start at midnight was a complete flop. Amazon’s site didn’t crash or anything like that, but the deal prices that were supposed to go live as soon as the sale started simply didn’t.
So despite us, and the rest of the informed media, prepping a huge amount of content to launch around midnight to tell you about the best deals of the sale, we were left scratching our heads as all the old prices were still showing.
It took until around 4am for the proper prices to come through, which was a massive disappointment to any keen shoppers who wanted to dive into the sale before heading to bed. It was a seriously poor start from Amazon and we’re still shaking our heads in disappointment. You have to hope it’ll up its game for Black Friday.
If you decided to wait until the morning to check out the Prime Day deals then thing’s were running much more smoothly. We didn’t experience any other technical problems on Amazon’s site or with the mobile app for the rest of the sale either.