New flash: you don’t necessarily have to stand in line at 5am this Friday to get great holiday shopping deals. Amazon.com has launched its Black Friday Deals page, presented by American Express, which searches for the best deals out there and tries to beat their prices. The deals are limited supply, and are going quickly, but Amazon has said that it plans on adding new deals throughout the day every day this week, so you can “skip the long lines and still save a bundle.”
Amazon - American Express
Lightning Deals
At the top of the page, Amazon has its lightning deals section, which are deals that are only available for a select period of time. The site displays a timer which counts down to the time when the deal will go live, and how much time is left. It also shows the percentage of the product in stock that has already been claimed.
Deal Calendar
The website also has a deals calendar page, which provides information on featured deals for the upcoming week, so that you can plan ahead for when you want to try and grab one of these hot deals. This could also be called a Cyber Monday promotion, as the week of deals extends to Monday the 30th.
Gold Box Deals
Amazon also provides a “deal of the day” called Gold Box Deals, which changes every day. You can also view the deals that are either minutes from closing or are almost 100% claimed, so that you don’t miss any of the last minute deals.
Even though on this site you don’t have to wait in line or physically push your way through other customers, that doesn’t mean that this is still an intensely competitive shopping environment. The top deals fill up quickly, and you have to be proactive to really get the deals that you want. For some of the deals with the highest traffic, you might actually be put “on line” for a few minutes.
Here are some other important details to help you get the most out of the site:
- Lightning Deals that are not yet available will be marked “Coming Soon,” with the exact start time listed. However, the discount will not be shown until the deal starts.
- Click the Add to cart button on the specific Lightning Deal to claim one of the available promotional discounts. The Lightning Deal promotional discounts are only available through the Lightning Deal offer and not directly from the product detail page.
- For some popular deals, you’ll see a “waiting in line” message while we validate and process requests on a first-come first-served basis.
- Clicking the Add to cart button on the specific Lightning Deal automatically adds the promotional discount for that deal to your Amazon.com account at the same time it adds the item to your cart. If you delete the item from your cart, the promotional discount will still be active on your account the day of the deal, and you can add the item to your cart again from the product detail page.
- Only one promotional discount is available per Lightning Deal per customer.
For more information on Lightning Deals or to find deals on Amazon.com, visit the Black Friday page here.
