Get ready for more of the big, blue cargo planes flying around Polk County.
Amazon Prime Day, one of the biggest shopping times of the year, will start at 3 a.m. Monday and will end Wednesday at 2:59 a.m.
Prime Day started in 2015 as a way for Amazon to celebrate its 20th anniversary and to encourage more customers to become Prime members.
Membership includes many advantages, the most noted of which is free two-day delivery on millions of items and even free one-day delivery on more than 10 million others. The membership also includes Prime Video, which offers original movies and documentaries by Amazon and thousands of movies and television shows.
There are other advantages as well, which can be found on the Amazon website (www.amazon.com). Prime memberships are $12.99 per month, or $119 per year (plus taxes).
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Prime Day started out as a one-day event, usually held in July each year – except for last year, when it was moved to October because Amazon was working to meet the day-to-day demands of delivering COVID-related products.
Prime Day prices are available to Prime members only – but Amazon makes it easy to become one: It’s free to join for the first 30 days. You can even register on Prime Day and become eligible for discounts, even if you cancel at the end of the one-month trial.
After last year’s Prime Day sale, Jeff Wilke, CEO of the company’s worldwide consumer division, said it was “a record-breaking event for small and medium businesses worldwide, with sales surpassing $3.5 billion — an increase of nearly 60% from [2019]. We’re also proud that Prime members saved more than $1.4 billion, and we look forward to providing more opportunities for our selling partners to grow and customers to save throughout the holiday season.”
In advance of Prime Day, Amazon has already started offering some deals. Among them (with the usual price in parenthesis): Blink Mini Home Security Camera, $20 ($35); Samsung Galaxy Watch 3, $249 ($400); 70-inch JVC MAW795 4K TV — $548 ($697).
The best discounts, however, come on Amazon’s own products. The company is offering a two-pack of its Echo Dot speakers for $50, which normally sell for $100. The larger Echo, usually selling for $200 in a two-pack, is now $100.
To find the deals, simply visit the aforementioned Amazon web site. Since other sites and brick-and-mortar stores may have competing offers, you might check with those sites too.
Whatever the case, an uptick in big, blue cargo planes seems imminent.
Lonnie Brown can be reached at LedgerDatabase@aol.com.
