Amazon Prime Day 2023: Checking out the first offers

Every year Amazon hosts a bargain battle for its Prime members. The so-called Prime Day will take place on July 11th and 12th this year. The first offers are already available.

Like Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday, Prime Day is one of the best-known bargain days in Germany. The (online) dealers lure the favor of buyers with numerous offers. Unlike these shopping days, however, Prime Day is organized exclusively by Amazon. Before it officially starts on July 11, Prime members will already receive exclusive offers for various services. TECHBOOK took a closer look at them.

Amazon Prime Day on July 11th and 12th

The bargain hunt starts on July 11 at 00:00. Amazon will then regularly post new offers on its website until July 12 at 11:59 p.m. As in 2022, there are again numerous advance offers available this year, which are mainly campaigns related to in-house services. Amazon advertises this on its promotion page.

Advance offers available now

According to Amazon, Prime members will have a variety of advance offers to choose from as early as June 21. The online retailer lists these as follows:

Amazon Music Unlimited

Prime members who have not yet used the music streaming service Amazon Music Unlimited can test the offer for four months instead of just one free of charge. But even existing customers do not go away empty-handed. They can extend their individual membership to a family membership as part of Prime Day and also use this for four months at no additional cost. Both offers can be found on promotion page.

With family membership, music or podcasts can be streamed on up to 6 accounts and multiple devices at the same time. The regular offer costs 16.99 euros per month – 8 euros more than the individual subscription for Prime members. But be careful, if you no longer want to book Amazon Music Unlimited beyond the Prime Day offer, you should remember to cancel in good time at the end of the test phase. This can be done at any time via the personal settings under “My memberships and subscriptions”.

TECHBOOK says: This offer in particular shows that Amazon, unlike in 2022, is also thinking of its existing customers. They can upgrade to family membership for four months and try out the offer without having to pay extra. The campaign itself is not that special, but at least there is a little extra for new and existing customers in the form of free months.

Prime Gaming

The Prime Day offer in the gaming area is also already available. From July 21st until the end of Prime Day on July 12th, users can access free classic games such as “Prey”, “Baldur’s Gate I”I, “Shovel Knight: Showdown” or “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed”. In addition, Amazon will provide various game content and perks during this period, including for “Overwatch 2”, “Diablo IV”, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2”, “Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0” and “Pokémon Go”. Users can find more details on the Prime Gaming website.

TECHBOOK says: Prime Gaming is one of the offers that many users are not aware of. It is therefore not surprising that Amazon is putting this in the foreground for Prime Day. We do not believe that Amazon will attract a significant number of new customers with the campaign. However, those who already use Prime Gaming will certainly be happy about the free content and games.

Amazon Fresh

With Amazon Fresh, the online retailer offers the opportunity to order groceries and other selected everyday products directly to your home. However, the offer is only available to Prime customers in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich. As part of Prime Day, the retailer is granting a discount of up to 30 percent from July 3rd to 31st. The order is made via Amazon Fresh or via the Amazon App.

TECHBOOK says: Amazon Fresh is an offer that the online retailer struggles with. It doesn’t really seem worth it, since it’s only available in three cities and Amazon doesn’t plan to expand it either. In addition, the range of products available through Fresh is shrinking. With a discount of up to 30 percent, Amazon remains fairly vague on Prime Day. It almost seems to us as if they want to put the service in the foreground, but not make a really good and concrete offer.

Amazon Photos

With Amazon Photos, the online retailer offers its own cloud storage for photos and videos. Prime members have unlimited photo storage and 5 GB of video storage for free. The service can therefore be an alternative to Google Photos and the Apple Cloud. In order to push the offer more, there is a campaign as part of Prime Day. If users download the Photos app by July 7th and upload images or videos to the cloud, they will receive an Amazon credit worth 15 euros.

TECHBOOK says: The Prime Day promotion could be a hidden gem. Because users only receive an Amazon voucher worth 15 euros for downloading the app and uploading a photo to the cloud. This can be applied to the entire range of goods in the shop. An easily earned voucher and an offer that users should definitely strike at.

Conclusion on the advance offers

Last year, some users were disappointed by the Prime Day advance offers. Many campaigns were only aimed at new customers who had never used the services. Existing customers were therefore left out. This year, however, Amazon is positioning itself differently and also includes customers who have already used or are still using the services in question. However, so far there have been no real cracker offers. The actions relate primarily to its own services, which Amazon would like to push more. So it remains to be seen what promotions the online shop has up its sleeve for the actual Prime Day.

After all: The direct comparison of prices should now be a little easier for buyers. Because a law introduced last year obliges Amazon to make the prices and the given, actual savings in discount campaigns more transparent. You can read more about this here: New price information on Amazon – bad for retailers, good for customers.

Requirement for Prime Day

The special thing about Prime Day is the fact that the offers only apply to Prime members. This distinguishes the shopping days from the other promotions such as Black Friday or Cyber ​​Monday. Since the price increase in September 2022, Amazon has charged EUR 8.99 per month or EUR 89.90 per year for Prime membership.

A Prime membership offers a number of benefits to those customers who shop frequently on Amazon. You will also receive deliveries with a goods value of less than 20 euros free of charge and sometimes on the same or the following day. Membership also includes access to the streaming services Prime Music (albeit slimmed down now) and Prime Video. However, there are a number of other benefits that Prime offers. You can read about them here:

Anyone who does not yet have Prime access can try it out free of charge for 30 days and thus also gain access to the Prime Day offers. After the trial month, free access becomes a paid subscription unless customers give 48 hours’ notice in good time. Cancellation is possible online in the Amazon customer account under “My Prime Membership”.

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