Amazon’s popular Prime Day kicks off tomorrow. The 48 hour event is the retailer’s largest sale of the year.

And this year, Prime Day is expected to look a little bit different. Amazon is offering a new invite only deal for some of its hottest products that it guarantees will sell out. Bridget Carey joins us now. She’s a tech journalist and senior editor at cnet.com. Okay.What do Prime Day participants need to know about these invite only deals?

Yeah, this is a new thing this year. They’ve been doing it for eight years. Never heard of invite only before, but for a handful of items, the Buy now button that that big yellow button has been replaced with a request invitation button and you have to hang out if you request your invitation to get the sale on these items.

You have to hang out and wait for an e-mail in your inbox to see if you even got the chance to buy it. These are just a few items. I feel like Amazon is doing this almost as a little bit of a testing period. If you go to Amazon’s main Prime Day website and you Scroll down a bit, you’ll see a list of them. There’s less than 10, so it’s not like a lot of items here, but we’re talking about a high end TV that was $400.00, now $100. Good headphones, a Soda Stream machine. So there’s some oddball stuff.

Amazon Prime Day Starts Tomorrow

But if you click that invitation today, you might have a chance tomorrow. I don’t know if enough people have already clicked it that you won’t have a chance, but Bridget is all to be seen.

But Bridget, do we know what the criteria for whether the invite arrives? Is it based on how much money you spend on Amazon? Is it based on how old you are? Where you live? Circle of friends? What is it based on? Is it a lottery?

I would like to know that too, because it is very interesting how they’re going to be dishing these out as a first come, first serve or whatnot. And are we going to be seeing more of this when Black Friday comes along? Are other retailers going to look at this and say we’ll do the same thing? You know, one of the biggest bummers is that you have a big sale day like this and what happens right at midnight when the sale launches, the big hot TV item is gone within seconds. Well, no one shops like that. That’s not normal. Maybe people have a chance here to actually buy something.

But who knows if this is limited quantity? How many invitations are really going out? And if you click the Request Invite button, you’re not obligated to buy it? Well, perhaps the scarcity is aimed at increasing the price or the value that people put on it, but what else should people be looking for to find those best deals other than being invited? Yeah, like I said, those are only a few ones. I think Amazon just has this avalanche of deals coming at you over the next two days, and there’s things like lightning deals.

Amazon Prime day HMDI

All these little different things that make you feel like you have to act now. You have to act quickly. But one thing to keep in mind is that you don’t have to act so fast because there’s a sale everywhere. One of the best things that go on sale are usually all of Amazon’s products. They have the biggest discounts, right? All your Echo devices. Amazon makes a lot of tech people forget about household items.

Those go on sale big during this time because Amazon makes a lot of household goods. You want 100 pack of batteries for 25 bucks? Sure, go ahead, get your soap, get your toilet paper, but everyday things like an HDMI cable that are just $2.00. So do your homework ahead of time to not get overwhelmed I would say because it feels like everything has a sale. And think about back to school, Think about things you need anyways, things like toys and clothing and do they discount the Prime membership? Because that’s also a big thing that people spend on.

Read More……….

All right. Bridget care. Yeah. Bridget, thank you very much.