Amazon’s Prime Day Wasn’t a Big Deal – Lazy Man and Money

You may have noticed that I haven’t written about Amazon’s “Big Deals” Prime Day that just passed. Over the past few years I have often written a post about all the things I buy. This year two things were different:

1. I don’t need a lot of stuff. We actively try to get rid of things.
2. I haven’t seen many good deals.

Even though we are in the process of getting rid of stuff, I was still looking for a few things. I’ll come back to that in a moment. I want to deal with the second part first. It turns out I wasn’t alone in not finding many good deals. Geoffrey Fowler of the Washington Post wrote this we were played by Amazon (gift item). He looked through the last 50 non-grocery items he had purchased in the past six months and compared their prices to their Big Deal daily prices. He would have saved 0.6%. It’s important to note that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, so his harsh criticism speaks volumes about the Washington Post’s credibility in independent journalism.

Many people find that Amazon raises prices before Prime Day, making the discount seem bigger. He also found this. However, he also noted that there were actually some deals. That’s another reason to discriminate and use online tools that track prices over time. For example, I use CamelCamelCamel to look at past prices. Even better, I have a Firefox plugin (Keep that gives me a price history right on the Amazon page. (They have a plug-in for every major browser, so you don’t have to switch to Firefox.)

With the useful information I had, I kept an eye on a few things. My wife wants a new phone and watch for her birthday/Christmas. Her current Samsung Galaxy (S22, maybe?) is acting strange. Her Fitbit Charge decided it would rename itself to Fitbit No Charge. Her birthday is too close to Black Friday to get things at that time, so if there was a good deal now, I was ready to pounce.

I had checked out the latest Google Pixel Watch 4 for her. She runs a lot, and that should be a strength for the watch. Google has systematically downgraded its Fitbit products over time. I think it’s an attempt to push people towards the Pixel Watch. One of the reasons I wanted the latest Pixel watch is because it’s the furthest from the original unmitigated disaster of the original Pixel watch. The battery life on that watch was about 6 hours – and that’s in power saving mode, even in sleep mode. There was a runaway process that was eating up GBs of data every day. It must be something related to my Google accounts because no one else seemed to report this problem and their customer support couldn’t resolve it.

The only problem is that the Pixel Watch 4 officially launched on October 9 – after Amazon’s Big Deals. They had the previous generation on sale for $170, just under half of the new model ($350). The new one should be better in some ways, but I don’t know if it’s worth double the money. If she decides to upgrade, the trade-in program values ​​the Pixel Watch 3 at $140. I saw there was a used-like-new one for $130 and decided I’d take a chance on that myself.

The Pixel 3 sold for $249 before the event. Now that the event is over, it’s back to $199. So the $30-70 savings for the brand new one was definitely a good deal.

I was tempted to buy an updated Samsung S25 Galaxy, but the deal was on an S25+, which is physically larger and has more storage. None of these things move the needle too much for my wife, so the “deal” wasn’t really one. I’m also thinking about getting her a Pixel phone, which will match the watch a little better. There was a small deal on the Pixel phone, but I think Google will offer something better on Black Friday. I’ll be keeping an eye on the prices of both the S25 and the Pixel 10.

Here’s what else I got on the “Big Deal” days:

• A $50 Chipotle gift card – It came with a $10 Amazon credit
• V8 Energy Peach Mango Energy Drink – 24 Cans – At $6 with some stackable coupons this was a steal
• Four more food items with great Subscribe and Save discounts

Finally I got one HUION Kamvas 13 (Gen 3) Drawing tablet for my 11 year old. The MSRP is $249, and I got it for $199. After the event, the price was $224 when you clicked on a coupon. According to the reviews, it is an entry-level device, but also good enough for a professional. He should benefit greatly from it – if he uses it at all. I don’t think the technology is changing on it, so it could cost him all through high school. If not, it’s because he uses it so often that he wants a larger tablet for more drawing space.

I keep telling myself that I need to learn to draw. There are plenty of videos on YouTube. If he doesn’t use it, there’s a chance I will.

The deal saved me about 10% and I paid with my Amazon credit card and chose the slow shipping option to get 7% back instead of the usual $5. That’s enough to offset the sales tax.

As you can see, the offers weren’t that great, but I never expected that. Amazon has done a great job of destroying most of the competition in online shopping so they don’t necessarily have to offer the best deals anymore.

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