Hello, friend! How's your shopping doing? I really tried to find good deals on Amazon, but...
I could not find one single good deal for an item that I already wanted to buy for myself.
But looking at the competition proved to be a great idea!
For just âŽ99 Just got myself a Seagate 6TB External Hard Drive from Bol (Image Below, Clicking on it takes you to their website), an European company that also operates in The Netherlands, where I am physically located, without having to sign up for Amazon Prime (âŽ5.99 / month if you already had their free trial before) or feel the stress of the countdown timer they placed besides their price tag. On top of that I grabbed a âŽ10 extra discount because I had a gift card to use with them! ð
I also found a pressure cooker "on sale" for just "another two hours" while browsing amazon.de (the one that serves my region) with a countdown timer that felt more like a time bomb besides the price tag and which would block me from adding the item to my favorites...
Funny enough, after more search, I found out they had other pressure cookers (like THIS ONE) in the same price range that were larger, of a better quality and at regular price. So, besides having no pressure to buy it now, it shows that the sale price is not really discounted if you look at the competition inside their own website! ðą
Then, there's the hype of publishers all over the internet trying to convince you that it's a great deal to buy a "flagship" phone or tablet on sale "almost for the price of a medium range model". Even though they have a valid perspective, if you were already looking for a flagship device, the discount loses much of the value when we think about the not so massive differences between the compared models (making you a victim of an up-sell no matter what) and the fact that the models on sale will be outdated pretty soon and they likely have piles of them they need to get rid of anyway, before the next versions are released in a couple of months by Samsung and other manufacturers...
The question that I can't stop making is why don't they give real discount on items that were already a good deal to start with? Well, of course you know the answer. Years ago we had awesome deals offered to us on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Then, they created this culture of getting anxious to buy what you don't need on those days just because it should be a great deal.
Yes, lots of good deals back in the old days, because they did not have enough technology to plan their stocking as well as they do now, meaning they'd frequently get stuck with unsold items that had to be sold at all cost to free up space for the Christmas's shopping season.
Now, with advanced methods of stock control and consumer's behavior analysis and more accurate predictions, that need is much lower nowadays, meaning the chance for a good deal is also slimmer. On top of that, of course, lies the fact that many more of us buy on line these days, and offering a bunch of cheap items on line is not as productive as in a physical store, since you don't have to walk through the full priced items to reach the sale pile in the back corners...
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There's still another 24 hours of sale at Amazon Prime Day 2019, but I feel it's very unlikely anything will justify spending the extra ⎠5,99 (if you had their premium service for free before you have to pay for the first month in full, in advance; "fair enough" if you find something you really wanted in the first place). I tried the Amazon Prime program for free once and I ended up not using it even to watch TV.
What about you? Did you find anything that was worth your time? Please share in the comments below, so perhaps we can buy the same item(s) if we like the deal(s) too! ð