HACKER Q&A
📣 reaperducer

Did you buy anything during Prime Day?


HN seems to be a mix of people who love deals, but also hate Amazon, I wonder if any HN'ers bought anything during this year's Prime Day, and what they got.

I looked around and didn't see anything I needed, but I also noticed that some of the brick-and-mortar stores around me were also running sales promoted to coincide with Prime Day, so I scored a bundt cake at a local bakery for half off.


  👤 ipaddr Accepted Answer ✓
I purchased an air purifier two days before. Price 120 on sale for $85.

I checked yesterday. Some model on sale for 109.99 for prime day.

Avoid prime day. The real discounts happen on other days.


👤 Festro
A desk fan, because it's hot.

Most items on Amazon just aren't worth it anymore. The cut Amazon takes goes too far into margins that only the products with the highest margins (lowest production costs) remain on the platform. I assume the desk fan I'm getting is going to be cheaply built, but I don't need it to be amazing for a simple job.

Some big brands are worth buying from on there, but they must either have a deal with Amazon or only discount a small amount. And then typically the discount they do give will be echoed elsewhere at some point.

Prime Day is not a good time for a bargain. Black Friday is still okay, but again only really for big brands.


👤 mdcds
No. I buy things when I need them and don't spend time looking at deals.

👤 Normille
No. Nothing of interest to me. The missus bought a case of cat food as it was cheaper than Tesco!

I think a lot of the deals are pretty bogus. I noticed four things on Prime Day deals that I'd previously bought. When I checked my purchase history, it turned out I'd paid less for 3 out of the 4 than the Prime Day deal price.

A lot of people don't realise [I certainly didn't] that Amazon [or presumably Amazon's algorithms] vary the prices of items they sell all the time and often by significant amounts. I use CamelCamelCamel [0] to track the prices of things I'm interested in and viewing their price tracker graphs can be a real eye-opener.

[0] https://camelcamelcamel.com/


👤 PaulHoule
No. Prime Day is where deals too lame for Arstechnica's Dealmaster go to die. (e.g. Dealmaster frequently runs the exact same "deals" that are always on sale, like Amazon Fire Tablets, for months at a time.)

👤 throwaway889900
I got an amazon gift card because there was a promotion for $12.50 credit, and then with the prime card that's an extra $3 credit. So basically a free $15 for spending money on money I'll eventually spend anyways.

👤 achairapart
I only look at the warehouse deals section, where often there is an additional 20% discount. At the end I bought 3 items, nothing expensive, but still at less than half the full price.