Amazon's "Early Prime Access" Sale Starts Tomorrow, But a Study Found Discounts Aren't Always What They Seem

Workers at an Amazon Fulfillment warehouse, shown Monday, July 8, 2019 in Shakopee, Minn., say they’ll hit the online retail and entertainment giant with a brief strike next Monday. They’re targeting “Prime Day” _ one of Amazon’s biggest days of the year _ in a continuing push to improve pay and working conditions for the facility’s heavily East African workforce. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)

Amazon’s “Prime Early Access” sale starts tomorrow and runs through Wednesday. It’s like an early Black Friday sale, where certain things are discounted for Prime members. It’s the first time they’ve done a second Prime Day-type sale in one year. Actual Prime Day was back in July.

A new study found Amazon deals aren’t always as good as they seem though. So make sure you’re really getting a good discount before you buy.

When stuff’s on sale, it also lists the original price crossed out. But the study found some Amazon sellers basically just make those old prices up.

They looked at a bunch of different vacuum cleaners and found over a quarter of sellers had pretended to offer a discount when the “sale” price was actually MORE than what the vacuums would usually cost.

In other words, something might normally sell for $200. But they’d claim the retail price was $300, and offer it at a fake discount of $250.

It happens with vacuums a lot for some reason. But they also saw it with other products like digital cameras, blenders, drones, and books. You can dive deeper at EurekAlert.