5 Amazon Prime Day Sales Traps to Avoid

Steer clear of effort-intensive, complicated promotions like mail-in rebates or discounts that require you to take a survey and give up much of your personal info. One of Amazon’s perks this year is a stamp-card-style promotion that offers members a chance to get $10 for use during Prime Day. In previous years, we’ve reported on similar promos in which a person would have to spend $10 to get $10. This one is a little more complicated. Here’s how it works: Buy a Prime-eligible item costing at least $5 to collect a stamp, listen to a song on Prime Music to collect another, stream a show on Prime Video to collect a third, and borrow an ebook to collect a fourth. Then you get a $10 credit for use during the event. If you’re a Prime member and you’re already planning to do two or three of those things anyway, have at it. If not, we’re filing this one under “not worth the effort.”

Amazon dominates Prime Day, but it’s important to remember that you can find other options out there. We expect to see competing sales from Best Buy, Target, and Walmart—as well as from many other retailers. This is especially pertinent for shoppers without an Amazon Prime membership, as you can often get Amazon-matched prices from another store without the cost of signing up. Shop around!

Brands you’ve never heard of aren’t inherently bad. But if they’re selling stuff on the cheap, they’re probably not spending money on a number of things that matter—things like research and development, customer service, and quality control. Knockoff brands may also lack “refund and repair infrastructure,” says Wirecutter senior staff writer Lauren Dragan, which means that “if something goes wrong with the thing you buy, and it’s outside of Amazon’s 30-day return policy, you have literally nobody to contact.” Lauren adds, “There are no warranties, either.”

On the other side of the coin, you might be tempted by trendy products whose social media ads are inundating your feeds. But not all of them are high quality or perform as well as they claim. In our tests, we’ve found that “millennial cookware” such as Our Place’s Always Pan, Caraway’s Sauté Pan, and Equal Parts’s Essential Pan don’t seem built to last. And Pashion Footwear’s convertible shoes didn’t pass muster in our tests.

When is a deal not a deal? When the “before” price is artificially inflated to make it seem like you’re getting a bigger discount than you really are, or when inflation is driving prices so high that it’s difficult to divine what a good deal even is. Jacked-up pricing is a big issue right now “in a number of product categories, from kitchen and bedding to fitness and outdoor entertaining,” says Wirecutter Deals senior editor Nathan Burrow. Nathan suggests looking at the past year of pricing for an item: If the price has been steadily rising for some time, that probably means costs have been affected by inflation rather than pumped up just for Prime Day.

Another deal mirage to look out for: obsolete tech reduced to rock-bottom prices. Often, last-generation laptops with underpowered processors and older no-name TVs are being discounted because newer, better models significantly outperform them.

This year, Nathan expects to see more “dubious deals” on TVs—Amazon is already offering a slate of sales on Fire TV models, a line we don’t recommend for most people. He also suggests being wary of Apple Watch Series 3 deals if you’re looking for a true smartwatch experience. “At this point,” he explains, “you’re better served taking advantage of a slightly higher sale price on a newer model that will better meet the needs of most people, like the Apple Watch SE—we recommend the Apple Watch Series 3 at this point only as an elevated pedometer.”

In several product categories, if you can hold off past Prime Day to make your purchase, there’s a good chance you’ll be rewarded with an extra discount of about 5% to 10% off. “Late August and early September will see the best pricing since Memorial Day on bedding and mattresses,” Nathan predicts. “And if you missed May sales, outdoor gear is also nicely discounted if you’re able to wait until close to the end of the season—say, late August or early September.”

Large appliances are one category, though, where you may want to purchase in July, which is a month when they often have some of their best pricing. However, “this year inflation is driving higher appliance prices relative to what’s typical,” Nathan says. One more thing to keep in mind: Some states offer tax-free shopping weekends in August, so if you’re eyeing a qualifying large purchase, that difference in the total cost could be worth the wait.

This article was edited by Ignacia Fulcher and Annemarie Conte.