What to buy during Amazon Prime Day

Where you will find the steepest discounts

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, and my Legacy Retirement Group dot Com phone line.
At about seven thirty nine in the morning, we find
ABC News Technology reporter Mike Tbuski. Mike, it is Amazon
Prime Day for the next now what four days?

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Yeah, they're really stretching the definition of the word day here,
but yes, this is Amazon's annual sale that takes place
in the middle of the summer. It's been going on
for about ten years at this point. It got started
as a one day sale back in twenty fifteen and
then has since expanded. Originally it was two days, and
then it kind of became twice a year. Now they
are expanding to four days, and this is a pretty

(00:33):
big deal because the more time allows this company to
break in more business. Adobe Analytics predicts that by the
end of this week online spending we'll search to about
twenty three point eight billion dollars as Prime Day gets underway.
But of course, the caveat to all this, guys, is
that Amazon's success with Prime Day has spawned a lot
of competitors from Walmart, Target, Old Navy, Best Buy. They

(00:56):
all hold sales around this time of year, so that
Surgeon online spending might not be all on Amazon.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
During Prime Day interesting and the top things that people
look for at least I feel like that we've been
sort of pushed or ingrained or was like smaller like
consumer electronics, the tablets, laptops. I mean, how many AirPods
have you lost and purchased in your life? I mean
those things tend to just jump out of your ear.
So headphones, you know, every day essential is like electronics

(01:25):
like that.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah, So generally, good rule of thumb on Prime Day
is that tech, cosmetics, and apparel are going to see
the steepest discounts. And when we talk about tech specifically,
generally speaking, we talk about like the ancillary stuff, the headphones,
the chargers, that type of thing. It's generally where you're
going to see a lot of discounts. Mainline smartphones and

(01:47):
laptops and that sort of thing are not going to
see as steep discounts. However, this year, just in sort
of scrolling around on the front page of Amazon, I'm
seeing a Samsung Galaxy S twenty five Ultra. This is
the top of the line Samsung smartphone with a twenty
seven percent discount for Prime Day. You can get this
thing for about nine hundred and fifty bucks. It usually
goes for about thirteen hundred bucks. I'm also looking at

(02:10):
a Sony sixty five inch four K TV. This is
the A ninety five K series, the Bravia XR as
it is known, one of the nicer Sony TVs that
are out there. This is now for the next nineteen hours,
they say fifty seven percent off. This thing normally goes
for thirty five hundred dollars. You can get it for
under fifteen hundred, but again only for the next nineteen

(02:32):
hours or so. That's a really steep discount that's really
going to be interesting. And then of course you mentioned earbuds.
Amazon's own tech devices usually see really steep discounts during
Prime Day. Normally, their Echo buds, which is kind of
their entry level earbuds, go for about fifty bucks. Well,
today you can get them for under fifteen so a
pretty significant seventy percent discount there. But of course we

(02:54):
also have to shout out some of the other sales
that are going on Best Buy has sales. As we
said around this time of year, you can save two
hundred and eighty dollars, they say on a Dell Inspiran
touchscreen laptop. This has the Intel I five chip in it,
and that is normally about a six hundred and thirty
dollars laptop, so you can get it for just under
three hundred and fifty bucks. Generally speaking, if you're in

(03:16):
the market for tech, give this a look, Give any
of these websites a look, because there's going to be
something out there that might appeal to you.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, and you mentioned Walmart, Target, best Buy all kind
of getting in on the action, and it's it's it
likens me to like a Black Friday after Thanksgiving type
of sale.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
That actually is why Amazon kind of started Prime Day
to begin with. They saw as an online retailer that
the lead up to the holiday season was already taken
by pretty much all the main big box retailers, so
they decided to stake their claim in the middle of summer,
which was not a time that we normally associate with
big sales or anything like that, and they rode that

(03:53):
to huge success. What is interesting, though, is all these
competitors that have sprung up. We were talking about Best Buy, All,
Lie little Bit there, Target, Walmart, others. There's this study
from Numerator that I was able to find that finds
that thirty five percent of people who shop during Amazon
Prime Day last year also shopped at Target during that time.
Thirty five percent of people who shopped at Prime Day

(04:14):
last year also shopped at Walmart during that time. So
there's not as there's not a ton of brand loyalty
here when it comes to scoring the best deal. People
are just looking to save some money. It doesn't really
matter if they do it on Amazon or Target or
Walmart or wherever else.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Now do these retailers do the old trick where they
market up in order to market down and you don't
really actually save anything.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Well, the thing with a lot of these tech devices
is that the price is kind of set by the brand, right, Dell,
the MSRP is two hundred and thirty dollars on this
Inspiraan laptop, and then you know they're they're kind of
you know, having this sale to basically attract a lot
of attention. But the real money maker here is subscriptions. Right.
The whole reason the Prime Day exists is so that

(04:57):
people sign up for Amazon Prime. You can take advantage
of this sale if you don't, and that has always
been the case and Amazon has ridden that to huge success.
You get a lot of other stuff when you sign
up for Prime, but there is some maybe cause for
worry when it comes to Amazon. Here. That same Numerator
study found that eighty six percent of people who shop

(05:17):
during Prime Day last year already had an account. So
they're kind of running out of people to sign up
new Prime Day subscriptions with. So that means they either
have to find a new audience or raise prices.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
I quote Steve Martin in the Jerk, it's a profit deal. Yes,
So do you have time to give me thirty seconds
on this electric Volkswagen you drove?

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Yeah, that's right. So if you harken back to the
nineteen sixties and seventies, you might remember the Volkswagen micro bus.
It's often associated with like woodstock and counterculture and big
flowery shirts and all this type of thing, but at
its core that vehicle was an early minivan. Right. It
was a van, but it was a little smaller as
a micro bus. There is a new one and it

(06:02):
is all electric. Volkswagen calls it the id Buzz and
it is also very much a minivan. Right. It's got
sliding doors, it has three rows of seats. You can
fold the seats down. They even come with little canvas
bags in the trunk that you can remove, which are
very handy. This does the sort of practical car thing
really really well. I moved within the last week. This

(06:23):
thing was able to take a bunch of tables and
bookshelves and boxes and whatnot, able to handle that very
very well. And then I took it down the beach
and I have to say about two dozen people stopped
me at chargers or from the sidewalk, even rolled down
their windows in traffic to share memories of old Volkswagens
that they had cool. That is the sort of draw
of a vehicle like this. Again, EPA rates about two

(06:45):
hundred and thirty four miles of range. The one I
had was sixty eight thousand dollars. You're gonna have to,
you know, quick, decide for yourself whether the nostalgia is
worth that extra price premium. It is certainly an attention
getting vehicle.