This year’s Amazon Prime Day starts on July 12th

Amazon’s annual shopping event, Amazon Prime Day, will officially kick off at 3AM ET / 12AM PT on Tuesday, July 12th, and run through Wednesday, July 13th, the company announced today. We knew it was going to be July, thanks to a prior earnings call, but now Amazon Prime subscribers know when to set their clocks for.

This year’s Prime Day is a few weeks later than it occurred last year, but it’s maintaining its summer timing, as opposed to during the height of the pandemic in 2020 when Amazon delayed the event until October. And if you’re in the market for toys, tech, home goods, or pretty much anything else, it may be one of the best times to save money outside of the Black Friday / Cyber Monday holiday shopping season. It’s almost a guarantee that we’ll see some of the lowest prices to date on Amazon’s own products — including Echo devices, Kindles, and Ring video doorbells — as well as headphones, 4K TVs, laptops, and an assortment of other tech. Early deals start on June 21st, when Amazon will offer up to 50 percent off a range of Amazon devices.

Despite the positive fanfare surrounding the event, Prime Day is arriving at a turbulent time for the company. Since the massive influx of online shopping during the pandemic and through 2021’s Prime Day and holiday season, there were numerous reports of the awful working conditions facing Amazon’s warehouse workers and delivery drivers. Now, the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) is working to get more warehouses unionized as Amazon continues to see more scrutiny from the New York state government over its treatment of workers.

The harsh reality is that, while Prime Day most certainly will bring about a deluge of deals and discounts, it also increases the workload on warehouse workers and delivery drivers, who have been known to skip breaks to meet quotas. We’ll just have to wait and see if this year is any different, especially with New York inching ever closer to cracking down on Amazon’s production quotas.