Camera deals or just “candy and insoles”… Will Amazon Prime Day be a boon or another big flop?
posted Monday, July 11, 2016 at 2:58 PM EST
I've been an Amazon Prime member for a few years now, and am badly in need of a few pieces of tech gear, so I was really starting to get excited about Prime Day coming up on July 12. But then my colleague William Brawley reminded me that last year's Prime Day was widely considered an enormous letdown for buyers, and the social media backlash against Amazon was widely reported, including this article from CNN Money. Based on these reactions as well as comments posted on our coverage of the event, there was little in the way of interesting deals and, as one buyer tweeted, just "deals on candy and insoles" and nothing buyers really seemed to want.
Our favorite tweet cited in that article is from a user stating: "When I die I want whoever's responsible for #AmazonPrimeDay to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time." Another user had this to tweet: "Everything is either sold out or junk." And perhaps the cremé de la cremé, yet another user tweeted: "Now whenever something in my life goes wrong or I have a bad day, I'll say I had a #primeday."
#AmazonPrimeDay is a horrible sale with misleading promotion. all these deals on candy and insoles. where's the stuff we want? @amazon
— Mortgage Freeman (@inf) July 15, 2015
"When I die I want whoever's responsible for #AmazonPrimeDay to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time." - Unknown
— Mmmm, tasty (@HitEm20) July 15, 2015
Ouch!
With Prime membership generally regarded as a good value for the $99/year pricetag, and with the enormous amount of promotion leading up to the day itself, it's a bit surprising to see the event add up to such a PR failure as last year's surely seemed to be. Amazon responded via social media to say that they stagger deals throughout the day to "make sure the fun will last through tonight" but for many shoppers there was apparently little in the way of fun.
In terms of camera deals, we posted this piece for you last year, showcasing a few decent deals but nothing much to write home about. We got two reader comments, both expressing dissappointment in the sparsity of available camera-related deals, and so many deals expired quickly that we felt the need to go back into the piece during the day and add a disclaimer.
(Perhaps Amazon saw the writing on the wall before Samsung mysteriously dissappeared from the enthusiast camera market.)
So here's hoping for all our sake that Amazon got the message and will offer Prime members a better shot at deals on gear than last year. After all, while my kids certainly like candy, and perhaps I need to buy a pair of insoles from time to time, that's really not what people are looking for on a major "deals" day.
Stay tuned, as we'll get the ball rolling for you early tomorrow with a post of any camera deals and photo-related accessories that do pop up, and we'll keep it updated throughout the day. And who knows, maybe that terrific price on a camera model or lens you've been dreaming about will turn up! (And when it does, click on the link and snatch it up right away.)