The Amazon Prime Deal Days two-day sale began on Tuesday. Big retailers Walmart and Best Buy began their October sales the same day. Target is holding a week-long sale that started on Monday.

I’ve been giving lots of advice about how to best capitalize on the competing sales, and I’ve heard from some of you. You’re saying I’m making shopping too complicated. Guilty as charged. I advise checking price histories, stacking coupons, using shopping portals. All that research wears me out as well.

So in this Consumer Alert, I vow to show you a way to wade through the deals more easily. Let trusted product testers at sites like Consumer Reports and Wirecutter do the work for you.

“What Wirecutter’s deal team does is to find deals that are legitimately on sale as opposed to pseudo sales or straight-up fake mark-downs that we see a lot during the year, but particularly during big sale events like Amazon Prime Day,” said Kaitlin Mahar, a staff writer at Wirecutter.

Fake mark-downs by third party sellers are rampant on Amazon Prime Deal Days page. For example, I was thinking about getting some cute earbuds for my daughter that looked like a great deal. They are on sale for $19.99 and are listed as 75 percent off. The deal lists the original price at $79.99. But before I hit the buy button, I checked camelcamelcamel for the price history. And it shows that the earbuds have never sold for $79.99. In fact, the list price is usually $29.99. So yes, they are on sale for 33 percent off, but it is not the markdown it claims to be.

“Out of the seven million or so deals that we saw last Prime Day for example, we posted about 1 percent of those,” said Mahar.  “It takes a group effort.  Our team is on it round the clock constantly. Not just looking for the best deals but also searching for price matches from other retailers so that if you have a particular store that you prefer to shop from you’ve got options.”

So, on the deals pages of Wirecutter and Consumer Reports, you can chose from products they’ve tested and recommend, and they’ve already done the work of checking camelcamelcamel or Keepa to determine whether the markdown is real.

Click here to link to Wirecutter’s deal page. Click here to link to Consumer Reports’ favorite deals. Click here for Consumer Reports’ best deals on home products. And, click here for Consumer Reports’ best deals under $100.

It’s important to note that neither Wirecutter nor Consumer Reports will take any money from manufacturers, so you can trust that their reviews are real and not bought. That’s important when you’re spending your hard-earned money.