Prime Day

Oh no, Amazon ran their own hype with comparisons to Black Friday. They fully deserve any kicking around they get.

If they had knocked $30 off a Paperwhite, I would have bit. For whatever reason they didn’t put it on sale. Twenty dollars off probably would have made me click “buy.”

I checked the sale several times and nothing jumped out at me, but to be fair there is little I really want these days. I just don’t buy stuff anymore. I’ve reached that age.

If they had knocked $30 off a Paperwhite, I would have bit. For whatever reason they didn’t put it on sale. Twenty dollars off probably would have made me click “buy.”

I checked the sale several times and nothing jumped out at me, but to be fair there is little I really want these days. I just don’t buy stuff anymore. I’ve reached that age.

Ha, yeah :)

Eurogamer actually did say the Witcher 3 was going to be on sale. They had this article up the day before Prime Day: Prime Day 2023 Day 2: best gaming deals in Amazon's sale | Eurogamer.net

I don’t know if that was just a UK thing, or if it didn’t happen, or if it did happen or what, but there was at least a reasonable cause for someone to expect Witcher 3 to be on sale.

That sale was really bad. If it wouldn’t have been hyped up as a “Black Friday in July”, I think it would have went over well. All of the amazon goodies sold out really quickly. I was going to pick up an Amazon Echo for 129, but it was gone already by 9am CST.

The thing that really sucked about it, was that there was seemingly no easy way to just search within the prime-day deals.

The thing that really sucked about it, is that 15 isn’t a prime number.

I kept an eye out for a Fire TV discount to replace a cranky old Roku, but nothing. Somehow I expected more than discounts to the crap that wasn’t moving anyway. Wow, a Kindle only .5" bigger than my phone? Now that I think about it, I’m surprised they didn’t try to blow out their stock of Fire Phones. Nor were there any special discounts on digital music or books, or much of any physical movies, music, or books, either. Instead it was gobs of high-margin accessory crap and refurbs at a “dazzling” 20 to 30% off.

They deserve all of the mockery they are getting.

It was a very effective ploy to get people to sign up for the 30 day Prime trial. CNN Money, CBS News and ABC News were acting as free advertising engines, spouting off about this every chance they got, with CBS News even having a slide-show on their front page of the “top 31 items you’ll see on sale for Prime Day!”

The deals were disappointing, to say the least. 20% off Clorox Wipes! 51% off a vinyl turntable! 15% off a 2-pack of underwear!..screamed my Amazon front page. There were a couple of things I was interested in, but even the wait-list was full before I even knew it was for sale. The Pico projector sold out and filled up the waitlist in 3 minutes (!!). I wasn’t going to take off of work to sit there clicking “refresh” for a door-buster.

I think I’ve been spoiled by the Steam Summer Sale, where they don’t sell out and every “flash sale” has something I’m at least a little interested in.

On purpose so you would browse the mostly useless deals I’m sure.

Diego

I got a 256gb SSD for eighty bucks. I’m satisfied.

They had pretty good deals on Game of Thrones and Arrested Development, but I didn’t end up buying anything. Xbox One was supposedly 20% off but it was a bundle I wasn’t particularly interested in and I’m dubious about the amount of discount it really was.

I’ve heard that a big reason this flopped was that the other resellers through amazon didn’t really go with it… they didn’t really offer the kinds of deals to make it live up to its potential, because no one really knew what was gonna happen.

No clue if that’s true or not, but it sounds believable.

Isn’t Amazon notorious for pricing anything however they want, everyone else be damned? Or is that limited to very specific areas like books and their app store?

Actually i was going to say this shows the limits of Amazon’s reach as far as pricing goes. If they really were powerful enough to set Black Friday prices at any day, that would reflect the kind of pull they had over the whole supply chain. Instead they were only able to eek out sub 10% discounts on things people wanted and large discounts on chinese stuff no one cares about.

If Amazon was limited by the suppliers, it makes it all the more mystifying that they didn’t offer more of their own products at a discount. Why not offer the Paperwhite or the Voyage at a discount?

The reviews are mixed anyway. A lot of grumbling about the items offered, but Amazon claims it took more orders on Prime Day than it took on Black Friday. They’ll do it again and probably do a better job of it, and I’m sure we’ll all check it out. I don’t think they hurt themselves with it.

I’m glad to hear that it was an underwhelming sale.
Because I completely forgot about it.

I’m pretty satisfied with Amazon’s regular prices anyway. I’m always buying a shit ton from them, sale or not.

That said, as big a fan as I am of Amazon, I would have hoped they could have pulled off a better sale considering all the hype.

There was one charger I wanted for my upcoming through-hike, but I checked the Prime-day price versus the “regular” price and it was $.64 less. Blah.

We’re going to call this “Fail day” next year.