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Amazon announced Thursday that its latest Prime Day sales event is scheduled for July 12-13. The company says the event will begin at 3:00 a.m. EST and will run for 48 hours in 20 countries. As in past reruns of the event, you’ll need to be a subscriber to Amazon’s Prime service to access the offers.
The annual promotion primarily boosts sales and Prime subscriptions for Amazon during a relatively slow time of year for its e-commerce business. The event is often filled with lots of junk sales, in that many of the items can be found for similar prices year round, and many of the offers available apply to relatively generic products. That said, there are usually a few rough diamonds. Good deals often rival prices you normally find around the holidays, plus various discounts on products you might buy anyway.
Amazon hasn’t given too many details on offers it will be promoting, but noted that many of its own gadgets and services will be discounted ahead of the event and that “select products” from the likes of Sony, Bose, Beats and iRobot will be discounted. will see cuts during the promotion. The company also said it would make more than 30 video games available at no additional cost through its Prime Gaming platform.
Every year around Black Friday, Prime Day, or just any ordinary day, Amazon comes under fire for ill (and sometimes illegal) treatment of workers, aggressive union-breaking tactics, smear campaigns, and recently lying to Congress about using seller data, one of the many misdeeds of the company. In recent years, striking Amazon workers around the world have stopped working during several tent pole events due to poor protection from COVID-19, unfair and low wages, tax evasion in several countries and unsafe work environments, just to name a few. . Amazon’s opposition to unions and worker protection hasn’t prevented a successful union campaign on Staten Island, while other labor movements in the company are brewing worldwide.
Little has changed for employees who are critical of Amazon’s practices. Still, the company has begun ramping up efforts to spotlight small businesses to address some of the criticisms that Amazon sellers have expressed. This year, Amazon is rolling out a sweepstakes rewards system for supporting small businesses and a Prime Member stamp card that will earn you $10 toward a future Amazon purchase. The sweepstakes will run from June 21 to July 11 and give customers the chance to win for every $1 they spend on qualifying small businesses. Amazon says prices range from a trip for two to the next Super Bowl, to VIP passes, to unnamed music festivals in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
With the stamp card, you will receive $10 once you complete the following four actions between now and Prime Day: stream Prime Video, listen to Prime Music, borrow a Prime Reading or Kindle Unlimited book, or add one to your library and create a Prime Shipping Qualifying Purchase.
You can also check out the Amazon app on your phone to see your recommended products that you can sign up for deal notifications. These are based on your shopping history and liked products.
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