Consumer Alert: Amazon announces its dates for Prime Day

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) — Your consumer alert came in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. Amazon announced the dates for Prime Day.

Now you may be thinking, “I don’t have a Prime membership so that doesn’t affect me.” That’s not true. Big box retailers Walmart, Target, and Best Buy usually have huge sales at the same time, so everyone can search for great sales in the middle of what is usually the retail summer slump.

Amazon Prime starts at 3 a.m. Eastern on June 21 and lasts until 3 a.m. the next day. Expect big sales on Amazon’s devices like the Amazon Dot, Echo, and the Ring Smart Doorbell.

Need a new vacuum cleaner? Now will likely be the time to get that robot you’ve been longing for.

Personal care items like hairdryers and electric toothbrushes will see deep discounts too.

But it may not be a good time to get that latest and greatest big-screen TV. That’s because there’s a worldwide semiconductor shortage. Simply put, anything with a screen needs one of those little chips to operate.

“We’ve seen some prices go up on televisions, and we could potentially see prices go up especially on newer devices on screens as companies still struggle to scale those," said Nathan Burrow, Senior Deals Editor at Wirecutter. “I think we’ll still see some decent discounts on older tablets, older mobile devices, but the newer stuff we may see smaller discounts or fewer discounts on things of that nature."

It’s important to note that not every deal is a good deal. If you get a great price on a crummy product, what’s the point? That’s why you should check out Wirecutter. The journalists there scour thousands of deals and answer the shopper’s incessant question: What is the best deal on the best product?

Consumer Reports outlined the pros and cons of an Amazon Prime membership weighing costs and benefits. The consumer advocacy group also has a preview of what to expect on Prime Day.

Camelcamelcamel.com is also a really useful tool. This website follows the price history of all products on Amazon. So before you buy, copy the URL and paste it into camelcamelcamel’s search field. It can tell you whether that day’s price is actually the best price.
And don’t forget to follow Amazon on Facebook. Sometimes the company sends out extra deal notifications to Facebook followers.

So I know what you’re thinking. On Prime Day there are lightning deals that may only be on sale for a couple of hours and there’s a limited supply. So if you’re thinking about buying an item, immediately put it in your cart. Then check wirecutter or camelcamelcamel. You have 15 minutes to do your research before your sale item is removed from your cart.

And that’s your consumer alert.