Amazon Prime Day, the company’s annual shopping event, will begin at 3 a.m. ET / 12 a.m. PT on Tuesday, July 12th, and extend through Wednesday, July 13th, the company announced today. Because of a previous earnings call, we knew it would be July, but now Amazon Prime customers know when to set their clocks for.
This year’s Prime Day is a few weeks later than last year’s, but it will still take place during the summer, as contrast to the peak of the pandemic in 2020, when Amazon postponed the event until October. If you’re looking for toys, tech, household goods, or just about anything else, it could be one of the finest times to save money outside of the Black Friday/Cyber Monday holiday shopping season. It’s practically a given that you will see some of Amazon’s own items at their lowest prices yet, as well as discounts on a variety of other tech.
Early bird discounts begin on June 21st, with up to 55 percent off a variety of Amazon devices, including the latest Kindle Paperwhite, the fourth-generation Echo Dot, and a variety of other items.
The 48-hour sale will feature “the lowest prices ever” on select products from Beats, Bose, Sony, iRobot, and a number of other well-known brands, according to Amazon.
However, if previous years are any indication, many of the discounts will be in the shape of robot vacuums, noise-canceling headphones, 4K TVs, and other forms of technology. During Prime Day, Amazon will also offer a slew of other deals, including free games through Prime Gaming, discounts on services like Amazon Music Unlimited, and more.
Prime Day deals are accessible to Prime members in the United States, as well as Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom, Poland, and Sweden, as in past years. Amazon also plans to stage Prime Day events later this summer in India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt.
Despite the great publicity surrounding the occasion, Prime Day comes at a difficult moment for Amazon. There have been multiple stories of Amazon’s warehouse workers and delivery personnel labouring in deplorable conditions since the big rush of online shopping during the epidemic and through Prime Day and the holiday season in 2021. As Amazon continues to face more scrutiny from the New York state government over its treatment of workers, the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) is pushing to unionise new warehouses.
While Prime Day will almost surely result in a flood of deals and discounts, it will also increase the burden on warehouse workers and delivery drivers, who have been known to miss breaks to reach quotas. You will have to wait and watch if things change this year, especially with New York getting closer to enforcing Amazon’s output limitations.