Unless you had been hibernating yesterday, you would have heard about Amazon holding a one day sale, called PrimeDay for all its Prime members. It was billed by Amazon as bigger than Black Friday.

Well if you follow Amazon’s website you will know that prices fluctuate daily, hourly and even by the minute. Based on what I have seen over the recent years, the best deals often occur the week before Black Friday or randomly in December. Personally, I did not think the deals on offer yesterday were better than Black Friday.

These big day sales seem to offer old stock mixed with a few reasonable headline grabbing items. In fact, I noticed with PrimeDay, a percentage of electrical items from 7 months ago still being flogged. And then there was the endless cables, power adapters, power this and power that.

The next aspect of the sale was the discount being claimed. It was often overstated. Instead of using the discount from the lowest price it had been on sale on Amazon, the discount shown was typically off the RRP, or close to it. Is Amazon alone in the practice? No not at all. Nearly all online shopping stores and the high street participate in this way.

However, that is not to say it is all doom and gloom. There were several decent items available, and so long as you were actually going to buy it, then whatever amount you saved was a bonus. Also, an older electrical item is not to be discarded just because of its age. A decent pair of headphones will always sound good for example. For example the AKG K702 headphones were £110. That is unbelievable. These headphones were once over £330 and sound terrific. Another example. The original Pebble Smartwatch was being offered at £64.99 in 3 colours. The black had 40% of the stock redeemed and the red 44% redeemed. FitBit offered the Charge HR and Surge Smartwatch at its lowest prices to date. If Haribo Teddy Bears were your favourite sweet there was a good deal on a 3KG bag. That was so so so tempting 🙂

Personally, I decided to give Amazon Fire TV Stick a go. I was planning on buying this so the fact I saved a few pounds was a bonus. My wife had seen a box set of DVD’s at the weekend. I told her not to buy it just in case it was in the PrimeDay sale. It was and it was £14 less and this was the lowest price it had ever been on sale. The discount shown was also correct too.

The winners are clearly Amazon. Not only did the create a huge spike in sales on a single day but they also probably sold loads of Prime memberships leading up to PrimeDay. A true masterclass of marketing by Amazon! For example Amazon sold 35,000 Lord of the Rings Blu-Ray sets in 15 minutes and a Kate Spade handbag was sold out in a minute. However, not all shoppers were happy as Reuters reports – http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/15/us-amazon-com-primeday-idUSKCN0PP2WH20150715

So did you bag a bargain? And if so what did you buy?

Below are some tweets by frustrated shoppers –

thank you @Amazon for the crappy garage sale of the Internet. I recommended this sale to my boss… #unhappyPrimeday http://t.co/NnQpav7GU0—
Grayson Stream (@GraysonStream) July 15, 2015

https://twitter.com/Marasovs/status/621352899487010820

https://twitter.com/j_c_fitz/status/621514537288769536

https://twitter.com/charlerk/status/621514177786589185

https://twitter.com/zachheltzel/status/621501103390068737

Sources – reuters.com/wired.com/twitter.com