Insider Hacks and Secrets for Shopping on Amazon

If you missed Amazon's Prime Day sale this summer, don't despair — you get another shot this year to shop deep discounts. Amazon's two-day Prime Early Access Sale will run Oct. 11-12. While Prime Day shifted to October in 2020 amid the pandemic, this is the first time the company has run a second Prime-only sale in the fall ahead of the holiday shopping season.

If you're determined to up your Amazon Prime game for the event, we think there are items better left on Amazon's digital shelves, even as our e-shopping list is longer than ever. It takes a lot of trial, error, and skepticism to be a savvy Amazon shopper, but these shopping tips can help.

Related: Things You Should Never Buy on Amazon

When is a deal not a deal? On Amazon, it's when a product is listed at a sale price, but has previously reached a much lower price — and likely will again. You can spot these dubious discounts with Camelcamelcamel, a price tracker "that will tell you at a glance if the item frequently goes on sale, if it never goes on sale, or if it goes on sale like clockwork on Prime Day and Black Friday," said Kristin McGrath, editor and shopping expert at Offers.com. "This gives you a fuller picture than Amazon's own price-drop labeling. Amazon's product listing may say something is $20 off, but could be using a high price that is rarely used. Camelcamelcamel gives you real pricing of an item, so you can see if the 'sale' price is actually a good price."

Related: Amazon Brand Products That Shoppers Love

If you're paying for Amazon Prime monthly, it may be more important than ever to switch to the annual plan. For the first time since 2018, Amazon has raised its Prime membership fees. If you pay monthly, the price has gone from $12.99 to $14.99 a month, while an annual subscription has gone from $119 to $139. Paying another $24 may not seem bad, but monthly subscribers will be out $180 to enjoy the same benefits all year. If you aren't a frequent Prime user, the monthly plan does allow you to start and stop your membership on demand, but that takes some discipline. In fact, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, a Chicago firm, has found that "only a very small percentage (of monthly subscribers) truly cherry-pick their Amazon Prime months.” To save any cash over the annual subscription, you'll have to skip at least three months.

Related: Paying $139 for Amazon Prime? Don't Miss These Perks

Search for a product on Amazon, and the first listings that pop up will likely say "Sponsored." This is an advertising program run by Amazon, and the products get preferred placement not because they're necessarily better, but because sellers have forked over big money to be the first ones you see. "These items often have tons of reviews, but you have to know that the item's popularity did not come organically — it came from paying Amazon for more prominent placement," said Karl Quist, CEO of PriceBlink, an online price comparison service. Critics say Amazon may be going too far with its sponsored listings, charging in a Federal Trade Commission complaint that the ads aren't easy enough to distinguish from "real" search results, sometimes burying "Sponsored" labels and even blocking those labels from appearing until several seconds after a page loads.

One of the most overwhelming parts of shopping on Amazon: searching for a needle in a haystack of roughly 353 million products. The smartest way to narrow your options is by making liberal use of Amazon's filters, which appear on the left side of the browser window. "Filters are your friends," McGrath said. "Amazon presents custom filters that vary by product type. You can filter by size, color, brand, and even average customer review. And, if you need the item fast, don't forget to filter by items eligible for Prime fast shipping." For instance, searching for a laptop backpack returns thousands of results, but searching for a laptop backpack between $50 and $100 that was eligible for Prime shipping, sold by Amazon, and rated 4 stars and up yielded 276 results — more manageable for sure. (To see the price filter, you may also need to filter by department.)

Amazon acknowledges the rising tide of customer-service complaints generated by third-party sellers. The company has amended its A to Z Guarantee to include protections for injury or damage caused by products sold via the company's third-party marketplace, up to $1,000. In a statement, Amazon said the policy "will directly pay customers for claims under $1,000 — which account for more than 80% of cases — at no cost to sellers, and may step in to pay claims for higher amounts if the seller is unresponsive or rejects a claim we believe to be valid." 

Third-party sellers are supposed to follow a litany of rules to sell on Amazon, but some have figured out how to work the system, raking in cash by selling counterfeits, defective products, or even potentially unsafe goods. Despite Amazon's recently bolstered buyer protections, it's best to steer clear of third-party sellers in higher-risk categories, said Casey Runyan, managing editor for Brad's Deals. "These include things that you put in your body or on your skin, things for children, things that plug into the wall, and safety equipment. You should also be very wary of purchasing brand-name products from third-party sellers unless you can independently verify that they are a legitimate seller of the product," she said.

Prime members hoping to better manage their deliveries can designate an "Amazon Day" when they can receive all of their packages at once, instead of in dribs and drabs. It's particularly helpful for buyers who can select a delivery day when they're more likely to be home, reducing the risk of package theft. It also makes it more likely that Amazon can combine your items into fewer shipments, leaving you with fewer empty boxes to manage.

Amazon has long battled fake reviews, and while there are plenty of ways to spot them yourself, you can also outsource the chore. "Third-party tools, like Fakespot and ReviewMeta, use algorithms to analyze language and reviewer purchase history to determine which reviews are most likely to be fake," said Jason Cohen, associate editor at PCMag. "Depending how the tool works, it may either grade the reliability of the product page or remove the fake reviews from the aggregate in order to reassess the product's rating." If you shop on Amazon a lot, you can even download a browser extension that can make "reviewing the reviews" easier.

Once you're reasonably certain you're looking at legit reviews, your work doesn't stop there. Runyan recommended zeroing on the bad ones to investigate further and decide whether something is a deal-breaker for you. "There is typically always someone looking to complain about a product or service they recently purchased. For instance, if you look at the reviews on a pair of shoes, and see that the complaints are mainly related to the footbed being too narrow, but you know that isn't usually a concern for you, you are probably fine to buy them."

Among the litany of Prime perks worth checking out, this is perhaps the one that most bears repeating: You can share that pricey Prime membership with another adult in your household, but maintain your own accounts. It's an easy way to save on a yearly membership, and though there are some limits, important benefits like Prime shipping, Prime Now, and Prime Video are all eligible for sharing.

Speaking of Prime, some members are eligible for a price break on monthly memberships. Prime is $7.49 a month for students and $6.99 a month for EBT and Medicaid cardholders, though it remains to be seen if those rates will rise when normal Prime membership fees increase. EBT and Medicaid recipients need to qualify for the discount every 12 months.

Related: Where You Can Order Groceries Online With an EBT Card

Instead of going straight to the regular Amazon homepage, shop through AmazonSmile. You'll find all the same items, but 0.5% of your purchase goes to a charity of your choice. Every little bit adds up: As of August 2022, the program had resulted in donations of about $355 million.

Amazon strives to undercut the competition, but it doesn't always offer the lowest price on every item it sells. "People mistakenly assume they always have the best price," Quist said. "In fact, more than half of the time, there is a lower price available from another online store." He recommended browser add-ons like PriceBlink or InvisibleHand to automate the process of comparison shopping. They'll alert you if there's a cheaper price elsewhere — just be sure to factor in shipping, if any, especially if you're a Prime member.

If money is a little tight, Amazon will let you make interest-free payments on certain items sold and shipped by Amazon. To qualify, you have to be a U.S. resident with an Amazon account that has been active at least a year, a valid credit card associated with that account, and a good payment history.

Just because you're shopping online doesn't mean you can't get a rush from using a coupon. You can browse available coupons on Amazon's coupon homepage, and all it takes is a click to "clip" them. But don't worry about missing out if you don't hit this page first — coupons will show up on individual product pages and are automatically applied to their purchase prices. 

Willing to buy a refurbished product to save some cash? Amazon Renewed allows customers to do just that, and the risk is relatively low. All products are inspected, tested, fixed, and cleaned, plus they're eligible for a replacement or refund within 90 days of purchase. How much you can save varies by product, of course, but we spotted a 6.5-quart Ninja Foodi for $156 versus $180 new. Also, "there's a lot of potential to save on Amazon's own proprietary smart-home tech items, phones, TVs, kitchen gadgets, and more," McGrath said. "Plus, buying used is a more sustainable way to shop, which can be compelling for some." Runyan agreed that Amazon devices in particular are a good thing to look for since it's always best for items to be refurbished by their original manufacturer, if possible.

A close cousin of Amazon Renewed, Amazon Warehouse sells "millions of pre-owned, used, and open-box items." That might mean a bit more in savings; for instance, you can get a Ninja Foodi with slight cosmetic imperfections for $148, about $8 cheaper than Amazon Renewed and $32 less than brand new. But, while Renewed items are "tested and confirmed to be 'like new,' Amazon Warehouse is generally for Amazon itself to offload returned, lost, or used inventory," McGrath said. The return window is also shorter — just 30 days compared with 90 days for Renewed products.

If you love browsing through stores like T.J.Maxx, don't miss the Amazon equivalent, Amazon Outlet. This is where you'll find "thousands of discounted overstock items," but as Runyan warned, it's best suited for browsing. "Discovering good deals can be a real challenge," she said. "It is a needle-in-the-haystack situation, so if you are happy to go on a bit of a treasure hunt, check it out. But don't assume that just because you find it in this section, that it is an incredible deal."

It's natural to assume Amazon is always going to highlight the lowest price on an item, but in some cases, third-party sellers still manage to go lower. "Amazon doesn't always show the cheapest price on its product pages," Quist said. "Sometimes, there are third-party sellers that offer the product for a lower price than what is shown on the main product page. Look for a message that says, 'Available for a lower price from other sellers (see below).' Many of the lower priced alternatives still qualify for Prime shipping."

In the market for some new electronics, but your old stuff still works? See if you can trade it in on Amazon. Cell phones, tablets, smart speakers, and video games are among the eligible items. Of course, what you'll get varies by trade-in, with newer items and those in good condition fetching more than older items or devices or those in poor condition. But you might as well get $5 (what we were quoted for an older Amazon Fire Tablet) or even $40 (a newer iPhone) in Amazon credit toward a new purchase.

Amazon devotees know that the best deals are often the site's limited-time Lightning Deals, and that the best of them can sell out in minutes. To boost your chances of snagging the deal, Amazon's app will send a notification when a deal you're interested in starts. Just tap which ones you're eyeing using the app's Upcoming tab.

Racking up those credit-card points? With select programs you can redeem them directly through Amazon. Unsurprisingly, the best way to do this is with an Amazon credit card — though the other options may be convenient, your points may not go as far as they would if redeemed outside of Amazon, according to NerdWallet.

Not in a hurry? Opting for no-rush shipping at checkout can earn you a credit good toward video or music downloads, Kindle books, or other Amazon content. In certain cases, it can also nab you an instant credit toward your purchase.

If there's something you order regularly, Amazon will give you a price break of up to 15% and free shipping if you agree to subscribe — that is, receive the item at regular intervals. The program is relatively flexible, allowing deliveries as frequently as every two weeks or infrequently as every six months, and you can skip a delivery or cancel at any time. The discounts are even better if you sign up for Amazon Family, a Prime benefit. You'll get 20% off Subscribe & Save orders for diapers, wipes, baby food, and other kid-friendly essentials.

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