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I tracked Amazon's Prime Day prices. We've been played
By Geoffrey A. Fowler The Washington Post
Published Nov 3, 2025
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Next time Amazon hypes its Prime Days savings, remember this: The prices during the sale aren't always better. I've got the receipts to prove it.
I would have saved, on average, almost nothing during Amazon's recent fall "Prime Big Deal Days" - and for some big-ticket purchases, I would have actually paid more.
For the sale that took place Oct. 7 and 8, my family went in prepared. We had a shopping list with prices we'd been tracking. Then, on the first day of the sale, I got a text from my dad: "Very disappointed," he wrote. "The prices were significantly higher!"
He was right. A TV stand he'd been watching jumped 38 percent to $379, from $275 on Oct. 2. Same story for a few other big-ticket items on his list - another console went up from $219.99 to $299. Those products weren't listed as "big deals" on the site, but we certainly didn't expect their prices to spike during Prime Days.
And in other cases, Amazon marketed discounts that turned out to be the exact price it had charged in recent weeks. One example: an Oral-B electric toothbrush was listed as 39 percent off, but actually the same price as in August.
Many retailers use "sales" for misleading marketing, so I decided to investigate systematically. I pulled receipts for every non-grocery purchase I'd made on Amazon over the past six months - nearly 50 products. Then I calculated what those same items would have cost during Prime Big Deal Days on Oct. 8.
My overall potential Big Deal Days savings: a mere 0.6 percent. And that doesn't include the $139 annual fee to be a member of Amazon Prime.
Tariffs and inflation might have contributed to rising prices over that period. But as the Washington Post's Michelle Singletary says, Prime Day is mostly a good deal for Amazon - not for you.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, but I review all tech with the same critical eye.
"Amazon offers customers genuine savings and transparent pricing, whether on a regular shopping day or during a major event like Prime Big Deal Day," said spokeswoman Jessica Martin in an email.
"While we offer millions of deals during events, not every item across our store will be on promotion during an event, which is normal in retail," she said, adding that the examples I shared "are not indicative of the broader trends for this event."
I'm not the only one who thinks Prime Days can feel like a marketing scheme. Other consumer advocates have warned one common trick is for Amazon to feature artificially inflated "before" prices to make discounts appear larger than they are.
Ahead of Amazon's 2017 Prime Day, the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog reported that 61 percent of reference prices on Amazon were higher than any price the company had charged for those items in the prior 90 days.
I asked Amazon about its pricing practices around Prime Day. "When we display a discount, we compare our price to actual prices that customers have recently paid on Amazon or that competitors have recently offered," Martin said.
Yet I found products listed as Prime Day discounts that cost the same as I'd paid less than a month earlier. For example, a pack of coronavirus tests I bought on Sept. 12 was the same price on Oct. 8, but listed as "39 percent off." Amazon said I'd gotten a particularly good deal in September, and the Prime Big Deal Days price offers "meaningful savings compared to the typical price customers have paid on Amazon over the last 90 days."
And there's no rule against prices actually going up during Prime Days, when shoppers like my family assumed they'd go down. "Prices fluctuate over time and currently reflect our practice of meeting or beating reputable and relevant competitor pricing," Martin said.
Yes, you can find some real deals on Prime Day, if you don't just blindly trust Amazon's prices. One of the hidden costs of an Amazon Prime membership is how we change our behavior and lower our guard, blindly putting Amazon at the center of our shopping life.
If you want to save money shopping online, you should still do comparison shopping. Web browser plug-ins that flag lower prices can help, though you should be wary that some are out to steal your data and turn them off when you're not shopping. Google and even AI tools like ChatGPT can also help. Don't count out physical stores, either - I discovered my dentist sells that electric toothbrush for $10 less than Amazon's "deal" price, and my local toy shop charges half of Amazon's price for monster trucks.
To actually get a good deal on Amazon, go in with a plan. I use a free website called CamelCamelCamel, which tracks Amazon's historical prices. You can see what's really a discount - and set alerts when prices drop to your target. Many TVs, for instance, hit their lowest prices on Black Friday, not Prime Day.
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