At this point, Amazon’s July Prime Day should be called “Prime Week.” This latest manufactured shopping holiday is supposed to last for four days through Friday, July 11, exhausting our collective eyeballs with big red percentage stickers. If you weren’t tired of the number of tiring deals posts crowding the internet, Amazon’s extra-long shop-a-thon has already dealt us a fair share of discounted products that stretch what any sane person would consider a good buy. Same as it ever was.
Already, Prime Day 2025 landed itself in a round of controversy. Momentum Commerce, a retail management company that handles Amazon, Walmart, and Target sales for a number of big-name brands like Lego and Crocs, claimed tariffs and other factors had led to a dearth of sales of around 41% on July 8 compared to the first day of sales last summer. That would be a huge drop in what is normally the online retail giant’s biggest shopping day of the year. Momentum CEO John Shea told Bloomberg that the extended shopping event could have resulted in less “urgency.” Customers are less likely to slam that buy button if they think there could be a better deal around the corner.
Amazon disputed those claims, telling Forbes that Momentum’s numbers were “highly inaccurate” since the firm couldn’t see the bigger picture happening behind the scenes. On its surface, Amazon is pleased as punch with how many people have been hitting the buy button on the platform. Hell, even Momentum claimed sales of its products were up 477%. Amazon regularly claims Prime Day has grown yearly since it started its shopping event in 2015. Even after Amazon supposedly dropped using its “Nessie” algorithm—which the FTC alleged let the retail giant fix prices for independent sellers—shoppers are inundated with too-good-to-be-true deals where retailers inflate the supposed MSRP of their product before the big sales date to make a deal seem bigger.
4. Its average price is about $200. Over the last year, the same vacuum was available for $149 in November, December, March, April and May.
The same vacuum is available right now for $149 at Best Buy, Macy’s, Lowe’s, and Ace Hardware. pic.twitter.com/iuWNMt8TTl
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) July 8, 2025
For instance, if you look at the price history of a Razer Kishi Ultra mobile controller, you’ll see the device has been on sale for between $130 and $120 since at least mid-November 2024 through April. That makes its current price of $100 not as staggering a deal as its sticker suggests. This Shark Steam & Scrub Steam Mop suggests it’s 29% off for Prime Day, but a quick trip down memory lane shows the device has been regularly sold for $127, not $150 as currently listed. It’s a similar story for many of SharkNinja’s products across Amazon. An Insignia 50-inch LED 4K TV says it’s on sale for $170, or 43% off, but the television has rarely if ever sat at $300, according to Amazon’s own and outside price trackers.
That’s not to say all deals are bad. Most Apple products on sale are at their lowest prices compared to MSRP. A Logitech G Astro A50 gaming headset is 17% off and is sitting at $250, which could be a good deal for some gamers. But there are very few products you can get on Prime Day that won’t be on sale again for a similar price. You can use sites like CamelCamelCamel or Amazon’s own Rufus AI chatbot to get a short history of the product’s price over time. Some sellers are even more underhanded with these sales tactics. A six-pack of swing-top bottles that claims it’s nearly 20% off on Prime Day normally sells for the same price year-round. We see this tactic with numerous lower-priced products.
Some products have been cheaper on previous days. The Nex Playground family-friendly game console is on sale for $200 now, but it had been at $100 for months before June. It sat at a low of $180 back in May. Similarly, these Skullcandy Crusher wireless headphones claim to be 46% off and $123 for Prime Day, but the same device was $100 in December last year.
The Acer Nitro V gaming laptop with an RTX 4050 and Intel Core i5-13420H CPU is sitting at $650, but Amazon’s Rufus shows that it was previously going for $625 back in April. The price fluctuations haven’t been helped by U.S. tariffs enacted by President Donald Trump back in April. An MSI Katana A15 gaming laptop currently is on sale for 16% off, or $1,089, but the same machine was $880 in early December last year. Who knows if we’ll ever see those low prices again, as both companies previously raised costs across the board to deal with wild tariff price swings.
All Amazon shoppers should be cautious about any big red percentage icon on any product, no matter if it’s an Amazon Basic item or that shiny new pair of headphones you’ve been eyeing for months. It’s clear consumers are still trained to swipe through page after page on Amazon’s overhyped shopping event.
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