I know a lot of the other blogs and sites are encouraging purchases on Amazon, rightly so if you account for the great 20% off offers that Amazon has in partnership with American Express. However, do note that the best savings on items (especially electronics) are sometimes actually found at Amazon’s competitors like B&H Photo. For example, B&H Photo is matching or beating all of Amazon’s prices while also providing a tax free way to shop for most of us not living in the NJ/NY area.
Take this 4 TB Western Digital External Hard Drive I was looking at for example:
It is 86.22+ tax on Amazon.com, while on BH Photo it is only $85 with no taxes for most customers. Just a minute’s worth of time probably saved me around $10.
And also some of what Amazon is selling at lower prices, is actually not at a lowest price possible even for Amazon. So do be aware that there are apps out there like Honey, which monitor prices and tell you if they are at an all time low or relative low. All you have to do is save those items to your droplist at Honey. And then monitor those prices on the graph
And of course there are always apps called Earny and services like Citi Price Rewind, which automatically send money back to you if the prices were to drop after your purchases.
So what do I think the best deals on Amazon are right now?
- Amazon Devices (Kindles, Echo Dots, Fire TV etc) in conjunction with the AMEX Offer
- Free Honey Nut Cheerios Box
- AMEX 20% off with the usage of 1 MR Point at Checkout for gift cards, and other purchases.
- Amazon Audiobook service – Audible @ $5/month
- Amazon’s Subscribe and Save service where if you order 5 or more items you get 15% off
Bottom Line:
It pays to shop around before you buy stuff on Amazon or just wait until the price drops a little farther. Don’t get carried away with Prime Day and buy everything you possibly can because it’s being advertised as 30-40% off. It’s very likely that you can find a better or equal deal sometimes. Make sure to check out B&H Photo in particular before buying electronics because the taxes may make it more expensive on Amazon. And always check SlickDeals and the subsequent comments sections of the posts there to understand if these are really good deals or not.
