JoeySeven

Was out most of the day,but it looks like I did not miss much.Amazon dropped the ball.


Ended up getting 3-Pack $15 Amazon Gift Cards + $10 Promo Credit $45.Amazon never sent me the promo credit email,so I have to call CS latter.
Bought A few things for our dogs with the 15% off warehouse deal.

kd5

Amazon may have made a bunch of money from the sheeple but Prime Day was lame as shit as far as I was concerned. Nothing I might have wanted had any better deals than the pennies it normally lowers (or raises) on any given day.

Trevor

Lol at all the complainers. They sold a crap ton of stuff, but because they didn't have the specific stuff we wanted on a deep discount we complain. What a country.

Adam Tyner

C'mon, it's garbage like "beard growthers", really long shoehorns, Antarctic Krill Oil, and off-brand...well, everything. Considering how massively Amazon hyped it, what they delivered was embarrassing. That they said "hey, let's sell 20 (or however many) things of manuscript sealing wax" and did indeed sell all 20 doesn't make this the event they pretended it'd be.

Even some of the more compelling things were poorly priced. How many times has Amazon sold the fifth, sixth, and seventh series of Doctor Who on Blu-ray for $20-$30 (outside of a lightning deal, no $100-a-year membership required)? It's a joke that the "lightning deal", limited to Prime members only, was $44.49 or whatever it was.

When it comes to pricing, Amazon is a follower, not a leader, and when they do lead, it's with dreck like Starry Night clogs and airplane seatbelt extenders.

milo bloom

I have the theatrical versions on Bluray (and have been collecting The Hobbit releases on Blu also), but I can't bear to give up the big, beautiful box set of my extended DVDs. I've even thought about finding just the 2 disc extended Blus and putting them in the DVD set so I can keep that.

I saw this deal and considered it, but never pulled the trigger.

BobO'Link

This...

Compared to BF this was nothing but a clearance/overstock sale. Yes, they sold a "crap ton of stuff" but the prices were horrible. I found a *few* things, and ordered some Skylanders for the kids at ~60% off - a great deal, but there were few sales of media, unlike BF when you have a huge selection from which to choose, and those they had were mostly a joke. One DVD set sold out at $.49 less than the normal price. Another was ~$20 *higher* than it sold for just a few months back and *almost* sold out. Most DVD/BR "sales" were from MP vendors *not* Amazon.

Considering the hype "Better than BF" I expected far more. Even the non-media offerings and prices were mostly a joke. I expected to pick up a few Christmas/birthday presents but came away empty handed as, other than those Skylanders figures, there was nothing they offered for anyone I purchase for. Considering the volume of items they put up for sale that's somewhat amazing.

There was a *huge* selection of toys, I purchase for *5* kids ages 1-11, but the prices were typically no better than "everyday" prices at WM, Target, or other Brick-'n-Mortar stores, certainly not BF type prices.

The set of storage containers offered as the "Deal of the Day" was priced the same as a identical/similar set at Big Lots, Sam's, WM, or Target. I believe it sold out in under a hour. There were no "Home and Kitchen" deals worth mentioning. I believe the "best" was a refurbished ice cream maker and it wasn't as good a deal as the one I purchased last BF.

Almost without exception *everything* I might have purchased was priced no better than the same item locally or at many other times during the year. I made the comment several times to a coworker, who was also monitoring the "sale," that I expect to purchase the same thing BF week for the same price or less and not have to store it for 6 months. He purchased nothing and he's *not* a media purchaser. He was looking for some tech stuff (electronics/computers). In those categories I purchased a $1.50 high speed USB3 cable. I *might* have picked up the $75 TV (in spite of it being 720p) for my very non-discriminating wife had I seen it but the LD were not updating properly and depended on a page refresh to see newly added stuff. Still... I fully expect to get a similar set for that price, or less, come November.

It reminded me of going to Hastings recently. I found the store here was reduced to something that looked like a flea market/junk store. I had to *ask* where they'd moved the gaming section and the media sections were less than half the size they were before with the same inflated prices.

BambooLounge

If people don't complain here, then where?

But, I get your point. I think everyone in this thread understands that Amazon is not in the "catering to devoted Blu-ray bargain hunters" game and that the frequenters of this forum, and even the larger sale-centric forums like Slickdeals are niches within niches. The avg Amazon consumer isn't using camelcamelcamel or the blu-ray.com price tracker.

Prime Day was basically the e-retailer equivalent of throwing stuff in an end cap near the register. The target consumer was the person who wasn't looking for a good deal on LOTR, but saw a deal (any deal) and thought, "Eh, why not?"

None of us are those people. So we vent to our own.

DVD Polizei

We are a picky bunch.

Most of the products will be resold on amazon I think.

Michael Corvin

And it's not about being picky. I'm sure all of us had more things in mind than blu-rays. However offering deals on lighting cables and Kindles isn't worthy of "Better than Black Friday" hype.

davidh777

To be fair, their advertising was "more deals than Black Friday," not "better deals." That's pretty much impossible to confirm on either end, but it's hard to argue that there wasn't a large number of deals. They just weren't the kind of product or level of discount we were interested in.

PhantomStranger

I think Amazon crowing about Prime Day is mostly corporate spin for what was mostly a disappointing event. The sales volume was highly inflated by their promo for buying Amazon gift cards.

I was expecting big ticket items like computers and televisions widely going on sale. Someone in corporate decided to market their July inventory clearance as some kind of special event when it really wasn't.

Mike86

That's exactly it. For all the hype about Prime Day I didn't see much of anything on the site that was a really great deal. My mom even said the same thing. Not even in regards to just media products but the sale in general just seemed like a joke. Plus they did tout Blu-ray's and DVD's as some of the sale items and like I said before even the ones they had on sale weren't priced so low that they were worth getting excited about. It was more like, that deal is okay but I can wait on a lot of the stuff.

DVD Polizei

All I wanted was a $50 Prime Membership!

Why So Blu?

So my copy of Kingsman arrives today. It was the only item I ordered through that sale last week. I picked the slowest shipping option to get the $3 digital credit and I just got this this morning:

Not to mention that I used $2 in CC rewards - by the end of all this I would have paid less than $5 for the Blu-ray. At least Amazon still has the best customer service department in the business.

davidh777

Kingsman was the only sale item I got as well, but I picked regular shipping to get it Friday in case I wanted to watch it over the weekend. So no $3 digital credit and no $2 bonus credit, and I still haven't watched it.

mattysemo247

Yeah, I got the same email. The funny thing is mine wasn't even scheduled to ship until sometime next week since it was on back order, but it ended up arriving today along with the $45 in gift cards with the $10 promo credit.

fujishig

Things still sold out, sometimes getting waitlisted within a minute. And it's not like they were randomly putting things on sale, they knew what they were doing. It certainly wasn't targeted to hardcore media buyers or even deal shoppers, but I'm sure it generated a ton of traffic and some press, enough to do it again. Why do you think they're disappointed?

PhantomStranger

Gathering an impression from a couple of different boards, I think the general consensus about Prime Day was that it's mostly a disappointment to long-time Amazon customers.

If their objective was to sign up a few new Prime members, I guess it worked out okay but a company like Amazon has to live and die by its brand in the long run. The hit the brand took amongst some customers wasn't worth hyping it up to net a few new Prime customers. In a viral media world, it is virtually impossible for a company to control its marketing spin these days.

jacob_b

While social media blasted it to no end, they still made money and are doing it again. To us, it was a huge letdown, but to corporate, it was probably a major success as they brought in traffic and money. They got rid of the stuff they wanted to.