Picture a pair of noise-canceling headphones marked 40% off on Tuesday morning, complete with a red badge, a countdown timer, and a crossed-out price that looks impressive. Now picture the same headphones selling for that exact price three weeks ago, back when nobody had said the words "Big Deal Days." Consumer Reports has described both situations in its Prime Day guide: prices that haven't moved get promoted as exclusive savings, and some merchants return an item to full price about a week before a sale, then drop it back to the discount it carried for weeks or months. Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days runs from 12:01 a.m. Pacific on Tuesday, October 6, through Wednesday, October 7, and Target and Walmart have scheduled sales that overlap it. You have three days to learn what the thing you want costs on an ordinary Wednesday, because that number is the only honest benchmark available. The discount percentage is the seller's version of the story, the price history is the record of what happened, and when the two disagree, the record wins.
Who Is Running a Sale, and When
Amazon's event is a 48-hour, Prime-members-only sale across more than 35 categories, and the freshest offers show up as "Today's Big Deals," which refresh at midnight, 8 a.m., and 1 p.m. Pacific while supplies last. Prime costs $14.99 a month or $139 a year, with a free 30-day trial if you're eligible. Target's and Walmart's sales cost nothing to join, which matters if you only want one or two items.
- Target Circle Deal Days: Tuesday and Wednesday, the same two days as Amazon, with up to 40% off thousands of items in fashion, beauty, home, toys, and tech. A free Target Circle account is required, and paid Circle 360 members get select deals a day early, on October 5.
- Walmart Fall Deals: a full week, from 12 a.m. ET on Monday, October 5, through Sunday, October 11, with no membership needed. Walmart's announcement page lists up to 40% off tech.
- Best Buy and other big retailers often schedule sales around Amazon's, according to Consumer Reports, so check their deals pages before you pay anyone.
"Up to 40% off" describes the single best discount in a category, not the typical one, so read it as a ceiling. Target also says anyone who joins Circle between September 27 and October 5 gets 15% off a first purchase.
Run the Price Check Before the Timer Starts
Amazon now puts a Price History link right next to the price on product pages, and on eligible listings it can show 30, 90, or 365 days. You can get the same answer by tapping the Alexa for Shopping icon on a product page and asking "Is this the lowest price recently?" Alexa for Shopping will also watch an item for you: set a target price and it notifies you when the price drops, or, if you switch on Auto-Buy, it purchases the item automatically once it hits your number. Set the alert on the three or four things you actually want, and leave Auto-Buy off unless you've already settled on the exact model, because it will buy a mediocre discount as readily as a good one.
A second opinion costs nothing. Consumer Reports points shoppers to Keepa, which comes as a browser extension and a phone app, and to CamelCamelCamel, which works in a browser or as an extension. Both let you look at the price history of almost any item sold on Amazon, which is exactly what you need when a listing says "Was $129.99" and you have no idea whether it was ever sold at that price.
Three things are worth reading off any chart:
- The lowest price in the past 90 days. Compare Tuesday's price to that figure, not to the crossed-out list price.
- A sudden climb in the week before the event, the pattern Consumer Reports warns about. If the line jumps up on September 29 and falls back on October 6, the "sale" is mostly stagecraft.
- How many times the product has already touched the sale price. A price it has hit repeatedly over the past year is its normal low, which makes it fine to buy but not special.
So does the percentage on the badge mean anything? Only as a hint to open the chart, which is where the real answer lives. The chart has limits too: a product that launched a few weeks ago has almost no history to check, Amazon's graph describes Amazon's pricing rather than what Best Buy or Walmart charged last week, and a 90-day low is not necessarily the floor, since Consumer Reports says TVs, for one, see their biggest discounts around the holidays.
There is a legal yardstick for all this, though it won't help you at checkout. The Federal Trade Commission's Guides Against Deceptive Pricing, which date to 1967, say a "was" price makes a legitimate comparison only if it's the actual, bona fide price at which the item was offered to the public on a regular basis for a reasonably substantial period of time. The guides' own example is a retailer who lists a pen at $10 for a few days, "cuts" it to the usual $7.50, and advertises "Were $10, Now Only $7.50," which the FTC calls a false bargain. Those guides define what counts as deceptive, but they don't screen a tag before it appears on your phone at 12:01 a.m. on October 6, so the check is yours to run.
The Model Number Is the Real Product Name
Lifehacker has pointed out that many electronics sold during Black Friday are doorbusters or retailer-exclusive models produced specifically for the shopping season, and it's smart to assume the same habit applies to any big sale. A "Hisense 55-inch TV" is not one product. PCMag's TV expert, Will Greenwald, advises shoppers to consider the specific model rather than the brand, because every manufacturer sells a range of sets that differ in features, performance, and quality. So copy the full model number from the listing, search it on the manufacturer's site, and read a review of that exact set before you trust the headline price. With laptops, line up the processor, memory, storage, and screen on the listing against the configuration you read about, since two machines sold under one family name can differ on every one of those. A cheaper price on a different model is a different purchase, not a deal on the one you researched.
Buy last year's model. PCMag notes that popular TV lines are refreshed every year and the improvements are often fairly minor, so an older set at a lower price gets you most of the picture for less money, and the same logic holds for most other gadgets on a yearly cycle.
TVs get their own rule, though. Consumer Reports' Prime Day guide from June called TVs the one category worth waiting on, with the biggest discounts coming around the holidays. If the price history shows a set already sitting at its lowest price, buy it. If the discount is merely decent, hold off until Black Friday, which falls on November 27 this year. Whatever you buy, check the return window before you pay, because it can be shorter for electronics than for clothes, and a mismatched model number is only a small problem if the item can still go back.
Cross-Shop Before You Commit
Consumer Reports notes that you'll often see similar pricing across different stores during these events, so the cheapest checkout isn't automatically Amazon's. Loyalty programs and store credit cards can bring a better price or easier returns, and shipping costs and delivery windows differ from one retailer to the next. Same-day delivery or in-store pickup can also make a slightly higher price the better choice, particularly for a charger or a cable you need before the weekend. Add the item to your cart in the Amazon app now and tap Save for Later, a trick Consumer Reports recommends, so you have a baseline price to compare against once the sale begins.
Limited-inventory deals add pressure, and that is the reason to finish your research before the sale starts, not during it. Consumer Reports explains that with Amazon's Lightning Deals you have only 15 minutes to check out once the item is in your cart before it's released to the next shopper, and a Join Waitlist button appears if you miss one that sold out.
A Ten-Minute Plan for Today
Pick the three things you would buy this month anyway, whether or not anyone was running a sale. Write down each one's current price and its 90-day low from the chart, along with the exact model number, so you can compare against the real product instead of a similar one. Set a price alert at a figure you'd be happy to pay, joining Target Circle first if Target is on your list, and then stop shopping until the event starts. When an item reaches your number at the right model, buy it and move on. If it doesn't get there by Wednesday night, close the tab and let the countdown timers run without you: Black Friday is about seven weeks away, and nothing on your list will have gotten worse.