SAN ANTONIO – It’s prime time for holiday shopping - in October.
Amazon pushed its mega sale event called Prime Day from July to October 13-14, prompting other big retailers to scooch up their Black Friday and other sale events.
Amazon is promising more than one million big discounts.
“We’re going to see a lot of tech deals, home goods and toys, as well, because Amazon is using Prime Day this year to kick off the holiday shopping season,” said Samantha Gordon, deal-hunting guru for Consumer Reports.
Gordon said there’s a method to the premature madness.
“The reason they are doing this is to spread out the load of orders, so shipping doesn’t get slowed because of that like we saw early in the pandemic," she said.
It can be easy to get sucked into the hype, so Gordon said to ignore the impulse to click and buy.
“It’s really good to do research ahead of time,” she said. “Figure out what you want and need now.”
By preshopping, you can put items in your cart and wait for a potential deal to pop. Amazon also offers tools to help snag a deal when it becomes available.
To make sure you’re getting a good price, research prices ahead of time. Browser extensions and sites like camelcamelcamel can search the price history of an item you’re considering.
And, it can pay to check out the competition.
Walmart is getting a jump-start by having its Big Save event Sunday through Thursday. Target is promoting its Deal Days to coincide with Prime Day October 13-14. And, Best Buy announced it’s launching Black Friday on Tuesday. That’s 45 days early, if you’re counting.
“The deals start earlier every year,” Gordon said. “I’ve always said Black Friday starts November first. This year, it starts Prime Day.”
Prime Day deals are only available to Prime members. If you don’t want to commit the cash for a membership, there is a free trial.