Amazon Prime Day Promo Codes FREE and Deals New Zealand ☆ December 2023

When is Amazon Prime Day 2020?

As mentioned earlier, Prime Day 2020 this year is much later than usual. It's going to start at 12am AEDT on Tuesday, October 13 and go on till 6pm on Wednesday, October 15.

This is rather unusual as Amazon Prime Day is usually a midyear sale held annually in July. It's also usually on a Monday, and ends the next day on a Tuesday. But then this has been an unusual year, to say the least, and the sale begins on a Tuesday instead.

That said, it's good to know that the sale didn't get canned outright for the year and it gives Aussie Prime members the opportunity to save on big ticket items like cameras, drones and lenses. It's also a great time to start your Christmas shopping this year, but you can always wait till Black Friday, when Amazon again offers some massive bargains.

There's a good reason Amazon users bought more than 1.75 million items in 48 hours last year and that reason, of course, is Amazon Prime Day.

Year on year, the flash sales event - which acts as something of a Black Friday spin-off - gives Amazon Prime customers exclusive access to major deals and discounts on tech, electronics and more, breaking more than a few sales records in the process.

Last year, Amazon Prime Day became the largest shopping event in Amazon history; the company sold over 100,000 laptops, 200,000 televisions, 300,000 headphones, 350,000 luxury beauty products and more than one million toys.

But navigating thousands of offers is not an easy task. To help you prepare for Amazon Prime Day 2020, we've picked up some hints and tips from previous years' sales and will continue to curate the best deals and information for you as the day draws nearer.

What is Amazon Prime Day?

Amazon Prime Day first took place on July 15, 2015, marking the anniversary of the company by chief executive Jeff Bezos. At its inception, Prime Day was indeed a day-long flash sale of wanton products (primarily tech and electronics) but it has become much larger and longer in the years since.

To participate, users must be signed up to Amazon Prime, the £79-a-year subscription service that gives users access to free, unlimited one-day delivery on many items, as well as Amazon Prime Video, Prime Music, Prime Reading and early access to deals.

It's believed roughly eight million people subscribe to the service in the UK, and over 100 million worldwide. Last year Amazon claimed to have sold 175 million items worldwide during the Amazon Prime Day sale... that's billions of dollars in sales. And the important thing is that can be a great way of getting a great camera deal and other bits of photographic kit. So what exactly is Prime Day and why is it so important? Amazon Prime Day is an annual event, which started in 2015 in the US as a way of celebrating Amazon's 20th birthday. The sale is open to anyone who is a member of the Amazon Prime service - that gives you a whole range of services, including Prime Video, Amazon Photos, priority shipping, and much more for a fixed monthly fee. But it's worth remembering that there is a free 30-day trial for Amazon Prime - so if you sign up for that at the right moment (and cancel later) everyone can take advantage in Amazon Prime Day camera deals - and not have to pay the subscription fee. Amazon gains lots and lots of new Prime subscribers through Amazon Prime Day every year (there are currently over 150 million members worldwide). We'll hunt down the best buys and list them right here as soon as the big sale kicks off.

When is Amazon Prime Day 2020?

Amazon has confirmed that Prime Day 2020 will take place on Tuesday, October 13, starting one minute after midnight, with fresh deals updated all the way through to the 14th at 11:59pm.

Though Prime Day typically takes place on July 15, the American retail giant decided to postpone the sales event this year.

In an official statement, Amazon confirmed: "This year we'll be holding Prime Day later than usual, while ensuring the safety of our employees and supporting our customers and selling partners."

Support small businesses with Amazon Prime

Prime Day is back with a very important twist this year - namely, an initiative to support small businesses selling on Amazon in the UK.

From now to October 12, Prime members who spend £10 with select small businesses on Amazon will earn £10 to spend on Prime Day.

To get to know some of the SMBs currently included in the offer, you can browse their products here.

How does Amazon Prime Day work?

You need to be an Amazon Prime member to get access to the best deals. If you're not yet a member, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial, which can be canceled at any time thereafter.

Typically, there are two types of deals:

1. Those that last for a full day, or two
2. Lightning deals, which are activated at a specific time and last until the stock of that particular product has run out.

You'll have to be on the ball to reap the rewards, though - new deals are released as often as every five minutes and many sell out quickly.

What deals can we expect?

Though there are quite literally millions of deals to shop each Prime Day, Amazon has been known to follow a formula with its biggest offers.

For Prime Day 2020, we expect to see a massive push for Amazon's own products, like the Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick and Alexa Voice Remote. The company sold more them over last year's two-day period than it ever had before, giving them a fantastic incentive to do the same again.

Kindles and Fire tablets regularly top the most-searched-for and purchased gifts of Prime Day, too, so it wouldn't be a bad time to start thinking about Christmas presents.

Additionally, 2019's most successful Prime Day deals included a LifeStraw Personal Water Filter, the Instant Pot DUO60 and 23andMe health and ancestry kits, so you can expect to find a large number of trend-led tech deals on offer.

Price-wise, tech products almost always receive the most drastic price cuts - you will find a key product within most categories reduced by 50 to 80 per cent. Last year, Toshiba Smart TVs were reduced by hundreds of pounds, select styles of Levi's jeans were less than half price, and top-rated beauty products were up to 60 per cent off. There truly is something for everyone.

Prime Day deals -- what will be on sale?

Amazon

Amazon Prime Day is chock full of deals across the entirety of Amazon's catalog, meaning no one person can sift through them all alone. Discounts and sales will also go live throughout the 48-hour event, so while some products may be on sale for a full day, others may only be discounted for a few hours (or while supplies last). That means you won't want to wait too long after seeing a price drop to buy an item on your list.

As far as deal variety goes, Prime Day is always unpredictable. There's no guarantee that a certain item will go on sale. However, the devices that are most likely to go on sale during Prime Day are -- you guessed it -- Amazon devices. Echo speakers, Fire TV devices, Kindles and other Amazon-made products typically fall to all-time-lows during Prime Day, making it arguably the best time of the year to buy them.

Amazon just announced a number of new Echo, Fire TV and Eero devices, too. While we probably won't see steep discounts on the newest models (most aren't even shipping before Prime Day), there may be deals that save you money when you buy more than one device at a time. As for the rest of Amazon's devices -- things like the Echo Studio and the Kindle Paperwhite -- you'll likely be able to cross them off your list (and save a ton) on Prime Day.

That being said, 2020 is a strange year because Prime Day is much closer to Black Friday and Cyber Monday than ever before. Amazon's devices tend to be deeply discounted after Thanksgiving as well, and we expect to see some sales during that time as usual. However, it's impossible to know if the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales will be as good as those during Prime Day. When it comes to Echo speakers, Fire TV devices, Kindles and the like, we recommend crossing them off your list early in the holiday shopping season by taking advantage of the discounts on Prime Day.

The rest of the deals are a mixed bag. There's a bit of everything on sale during Prime Day, which means you'll probably see a bunch of discounts you're not interested in before you get to the good stuff. In the tech space, past Prime Days have brought good sales on TVs, monitors, portable SSDs, microSD cards, mobile accessories, headphones, speakers, smart home and kitchen tech (looking at you, Instant Pot) and more. We've also seen deals on brands like Apple, Microsoft and Samsung. This year in particular, we could see extra deals on work-from-home essentials.

How to make the most of Prime Day 2020

Inna Kot via Getty Images

If you're going to participate in Amazon Prime Day, there are things you can do ahead of October 13 to maximize your savings (and minimize headaches). First, sign up for Prime if you're not already a member and be sure to check out the offers available to new Prime subscribers. Amazon has special prices for students and those with EBT/Medicaid cards, so you may be eligible for a discounted membership rate.

Next, make a list of the items you hope to buy during Prime Day. Yes, this requires some thought, but you'll thank yourself for doing it. There's always the chance that you'll stumble upon a great deal on a fancy electric toothbrush and impulse-buy it, and that's ok. But now more than ever, most people want their dollars to stretch as far as possible and making a list of items you want to get for others (or for yourself) will help you stick to script. Either use Amazon's Wish List feature or write your list down so you can use it to search for the important stuff during the event. You can also sign up to receive alerts when a product goes on sale.

If you'd rather not contribute to the Prime Day madness, you can still find great savings online. Retailers like Walmart and Best Buy will likely be holding their own 'anti-Prime Day' sales events that you can shop instead. These retailers may even match some of Amazon's deals, but given the breadth of its catalog, that may only be the case for big-ticket items.