This story is part of Amazon Prime Day, CNET’s guide for everything you need to know and how to find the best deals.
Odds are you’ve already heard of or even participated in one of Amazon’s Prime Day sales, but that doesn’t mean that you should wait until the last minute to prepare for Prime Day 2022, which Amazon has confirmed will happen sometime in July. To that end, we’re pulling together our best early bird tips. Now, some of these are pretty straightforward, ranging from general housekeeping type of things to slight updates to our suggestions from previous Prime Day or Black Friday sales. But we’ll bet there are at least a couple tips here that are new to you — and we’ll continue to update this list as we get closer to Prime Day 2022.
In the meantime, let’s get you Prime Day ready, CNET Deals style.
Make sure your Prime account is in good standing
This should be the most obvious one, but it’s also one of the easiest ones to overlook. In order to shop Prime Day’s best deals, you will need to be an Amazon Prime subscriber. Now’s a great time to check the status of your membership to make sure it’s not due to expire before the upcoming event in July.
Current customers can check the status of their Prime account at this link. It will show whether you’re a monthly or annual member, and when your next renewal is. Keep in mind, Amazon recently increased the price of a Prime subscription, so you’re now on the hook for $15 per month or $139 for the year if you prepay for it.
Not a Prime member yet? Get a free trial
One of the best parts about Amazon Prime Day is that you don’t have to be a paid Prime subscriber in order to get the discounts and other benefits. That means you can sign up for Amazon’s free 30-day trial of the service and participate without having to pay anything, as long as you remember to cancel it before the trial ends and your paid subscription starts.
Since Amazon has not announced the official date for Prime Day 2022, it’s worth waiting until a little closer to July to start your trial so that the 30 days doesn’t run out before Prime Day begins. (Amazon has confirmed that Prime Day 2022 will take place in July, and we anticipate the announcement of the exact July date before the end of June.)
Update your payment methods
There’s nothing worse than missing out on a great Lightning Deal because your payment method on file had expired and you forgot to add your new one. Amazon makes it very easy in your account to see all the payment methods you have on file, along with when each of them expires. We’d recommend removing any that have already expired, and ensuring that the remaining ones won’t be expiring in June or July so that your purchases go through without delay.
If you plan to make any large purchases, like TVs, gaming PCs and the like, we’d recommend advising your credit card company or bank ahead of Prime Day to prevent it from being held up or denied.
Read more: Best Credit Cards for Amazon for June 2022
Consider the Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature Card
If you are a frequent Amazon shopper, this is a no-brainer. The Amazon Prime Rewards Signature Visa offers Prime members 5% cash back on purchases made at Amazon.com and Whole Foods, as well as 2% cash back on restaurants, gas stations and drug stores. The card also earns you 1% cash back on utilities, rideshare and other purchases. There’s no annual fee, so this could be putting money back in your pocket with little effort if you shop in these places often.
Amazon is also offering a $100 Amazon gift card instantly upon approval of the card. You can opt for the cash back or 0% promo APR for 6 to 18 months on purchases of $50 or more. After the promo period, this card has a variable APR of 14.99% to 22.99%.
Keep an eye on other retailers
Amazon won’t be the only one running deals during the Prime Day period. Over the past few years, we’ve seen eBay, Best Buy, Walmart and others launch competing sales and aggressively matching prices. What’s great about this is that you don’t need to be a Prime member to shop those sales (though they may upsell their own retail membership plan), and when something sells out at one retailer it may still be available from another.
Generally, once Amazon announces the exact dates for Prime Day, we’ll start to see announcements from the competition, so be sure to keep an eye out for that in the coming weeks. We’ll update this page when we get more information.
Sign up for CNET Deals text alerts
That’s right. The CNET Deals team sends daily text alerts for great deals year-round, but during Prime Day we amp things up a bit. If you’re the type who’s generally busy during the day or feels as though you may forget to check in for the best Prime Day deals, having them sent right to your phone is a great option. We will be browsing all the best deals throughout the whole sale event and sending the best in a variety of categories out.
Compare prices with the CNET Shopping browser extension
Is that Prime Day “deal” really a deal? Instead of looking up prices on Amazon’s retail competitors one by one, do it instantaneously with a price comparison extension for your web browser. There are several on the market, but CNET now has our own in-house extension, CNET Shopping (formerly known as PriceBlink). It works across a bunch of retailers and can show you the best current deal, price history for select items, coupons for retailers that can help you add to your savings and more.
The best part of it all? The extension is completely free. Give it a try right now on Google Chrome.
Follow us on social
The CNET Deals team will be covering the event from the minute it starts, right up until the last minute when the deals end. You can follow the main CNET Twitter account for the best of the best deals, along with the CNET Deals Twitter account for a bigger stream of deals. You can also follow me on Twitter @jareddipane for some of my favorites and some of the deals you should stay away from.
*All information about the Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature Card has been collected independently by CNET and has not been reviewed by the issuer.
The editorial content on this page is based solely on objective, independent assessments by our writers and is not influenced by advertising or partnerships. It has not been provided or commissioned by any third party. However, we may receive compensation when you click on links to products or services offered by our partners.
