My top Amazon Prime Day tips to help you secure the best deals

There are just a few hours left until Amazon Prime Day gets going, but with the retailer promising thousands of discounts on everything from tech to home appliances to beauty for 48 hours only, it can all get a little overwhelming.

I’ve been covering Amazon Prime Day for seven years – which is almost as long as the event itself, so I know the tips and tricks for making the best of the sale. I also know the pitfalls of Prime Day, and how customers can really sniff out the best savings to become champions at shopping in any large-scale online sale event, including Black Friday.

To help you navigate this year’s offers, I’ve put together a handy list of my top Amazon Prime Day tips, so you can ensure you’re getting the very best deal and aren’t left paying more than you should. From comparing prices on rival sites to the fake discounts you should ignore, here are my top pointers for Prime Day.

1. See if you can get an Amazon Prime free trial

There’s nothing worse than navigating to one of our many Amazon Prime Day guides, only to realise you can’t actually secure any of the deals. Amazon Prime Day is a celebration of its Prime members, so you’ll need a Prime subscription to access any of the savings.

Amazon Prime costs £8.99 per year or £95 per month. If you’re not already a Prime member, you might be eligible for a free 30-day trial of Prime. It’s only available to Amazon customers who have never been a Prime member before, or haven’t been a Prime member in the last 12 months.

If you’re between the ages of 18 and 22, you can also get an even longer six-month free trial, as well as half-price memberships, meaning you’ll pay just £4.49 instead of £8.99 per month. 

2. Make a wish list

It’s easy to go feral during the Prime Day sale, buying everything you probably don’t need because it has a nice red label. But remember a deal isn’t a deal if you don’t actually need it. I recommend making a wish list of the things you’ve been eyeing up over the years but have struggled to afford. Write down how much it costs right now, so you can compare the price on Prime Day.

I’ve been waiting to buy a new fly screen for the summer, for example, and really want a new Kindle. If it goes down in price by an amount I’m happy with, I’ll buy it.    

3. Compare the price of the product against other retailers

Amazon can be a little sneaky sometimes by adjusting the RRP of its products. It reportedly changes the prices on its website 2.5 million times per day, so you can never really be sure if the original price is the price that the manufacturer is charging. I recommend doing a quick Google search to see how much it costs at other retailers.

For example, if I’m looking for a new iPad, and it’s currently on sale at Amazon, I’ll check Apple’s website for the original price, just so I know that the apparent discount is legit. If it is, I’ll head to other retailers such as Argos, John Lewis & Partners, Currys and AO.com to make sure it isn’t the same price (or cheaper) there. If it is, I might consider shopping at the other retailer if it offers better perks, such as a longer warranty.

4. Be wary of electric toothbrush deals

Amazon is notorious for increasing the RRP of leading electric toothbrushes to exorbitant prices, then discounting them by upwards of half price. Watch out for these – the discount isn’t usually as good as it sounds. We’ll be highlighting real electric toothbrush Prime Day deals in our handy guide.

Some of the more expensive brushes bounce up and down in price, spending exactly two weeks at full price, then two weeks at half price – rinse and repeat. Again, check other retailers for the actual price of the electric toothbrush and make a call. You’ll still find good savings on Oral-B and others, they just won’t be as big as Amazon might have you think.   

5. Use Amazon price history tools

It’s sometimes difficult to know if a deal is actually one exclusive to the sale. Maybe that TV or laptop you’ve been eyeing up has been discounted to that price for weeks before Prime Day even started. Maybe you still want to buy it, maybe you don’t, but it’s still nice knowing if something is actually a Prime Day deal or not. 

Use Amazon price history tools such as CamelCamelCamel, which can illustrate how prices on Amazon can change. These tools give you historical data on a product’s lowest and highest prices, giving you an idea of whether it’s something you should pick up now, or leave until it goes down even further.

6. Watch out for no-name brands

There are a host of no-name brands on Amazon that churn out poorly-made products, such as laptops, just so the manufacturer can make a quick buck during Prime Day sales. It will usually have a steep discount slapped onto its price but the machine will most likely have really bad specifications.

Less tech-savvy individuals could get caught out by this because of how difficult it can be to decode the technical jargon of a laptop. The IndyBest team will only focus on solid laptops from well-respected brands in our guide to the best laptop Prime Day deals, so try not to get caught out. This applies to every product category on Amazon, but particularly so for laptops.

7. Check out the IndyBest Prime Day liveblog

The IndyBest team aren’t just curating guides of the best Prime Day deals, but we’re also running a nifty rolling liveblog from now all the way up until midnight on Wednesday 17 July. The liveblog is captained by a team of IndyBest deal experts, who will be busy rifling through a torrent of discounts on offer to bring you the Prime Day deals worth caring about.

You’ll also find more shopping tips on the liveblog, and even more coverage across our entire directory of Amazon Prime Day shopping guides.

From coffee machine deals to mattress offers, find out more about Amazon Prime Day 2024 here