Amazon's annual summer blowout sale — Amazon Prime Day — has been postponed "at least until August" due to the growing coronavirus pandemic.
According to a report today (April 3) from Reuters, the news of Prime Day being pushed back comes from an internal meeting note. The 48-hour shopping event has taken place in July since it began in 2015 and has grown larger than Black Friday for Amazon, as reported by Business Insider last year. However, Amazon "expects potentially a $100 million hit from excess devices," because of the postponement, says Reuters.
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Last month, we reported that the e-commerce giant was working with its third-party sellers to avoid low product inventory come the summer sale event. According to the New York Times, Amazon began asking for six to eight weeks of supply on products made in China instead of its usual two to three weeks worth of products.
Amazon had not announced an official time frame for this year's Prime Day. It usually waits until a few weeks before the sale starts to divulge details. Because of this precedent, it is possible Amazon won't release a statement about Prime Day's postponement. Rather, the company could wait to announce the online event's schedule until it's ready to fulfill a massive surge in orders.
As it is, Amazon warehouses have been scrambling meet the demand for essential products caused by the coronavirus. With more people staying home and relying on online shopping, orders are delayed and services like Prime Pantry have struggled to keep up.
If you rely on Prime Day to get products at a discount, the best thing you can do is to keep an eye on the items you need to buy and purchase them when they hit a price point that you're comfortable with. In other words, don't count on Amazon Prime Day this year.
