Amazon’s fall sales extravaganza, Prime Early Access Sale 2022, is about to begin. We will be curating the best deals on laptops, monitors, gaming PCs, PC storage and more as this information becomes available. But one of the best ways to find good prices during the sales fest is Amazon’s Lightning Deals.
Lightning Deals feature limited inventory available at a low price for a limited time, and there is a purchase limit of one per customer per item. Lightning Deals often offer some of the best sale prices during the Prime Early Access Sale 2022, which makes the demand for them that much higher.
These ethereal deals expire in two ways: either the time limit runs out or customers claim all available stock. Because these bargains tend to sell out quickly – and we mean fast— you’ll want to have a plan of action.
Strategy 1: Defense of the cart
Once you claim a Lightning Deal, you have 15 minutes to check it out. If you don’t check out within this time, the offer will be removed from your cart and available to the general public again. Or, if all actions are claimed, the deal goes to the next person on the Lightning Deal waitlist (more on that in a moment).
This being the case, one strategy is to claim something you really like, put it in your cart, quickly jump to a site like CamelCamelCamel or Keepa to check the item’s price history, and then come back to dump it from your cart or buy it within the 15 minute window.
Strategy 2: Plan ahead
You can also try looking ahead, as Amazon often teases flash deals in advance. If you visit the Prime Early Access Sale 2022 page, for example, you should see a Lightning Deals carousel. Keep browsing these deals and you’ll soon find products that haven’t gone on sale yet.
Upcoming flash deals won’t show a sale price until they’re released, but you can still use this time to research. If you find something you’d like to buy, do a price history check right away. When the product goes on sale, you’ll know whether Amazon’s limited-time pricing is worth it or not.
Strategy 3: Get Alerts for Specific Lightning Offers
You don’t have to wait or keep an eye on the clock to know when your favorite deals will be released. The Amazon app for Android and iOS allows you to create a deal watchlist and receive notifications when your deals are active.
After installing the Amazon app and logging in, go to Settings > Notifications > Your monitored and waitlisted offers. Activate the slider in that section. You can now add a next item to your watchlist by going to the deals page in the app, find the next deals that interest you, and tap Watch this offer.
You can also create a watchlist on Amazon.com from your desktop PC, but you will not receive any notifications. Instead, you should check your watchlist on the Amazon website. Amazon says its browser add-on, Amazon Assistant, will deliver notifications when the Lightning Deals on its watchlist are released, but in our tests on Firefox for Windows, that didn’t happen.
Strategy 4: Waiting lists
We’ve all done it. You take something from Amazon, leave it in your cart, and then forget about it. When this happens with a Lightning Deal, the item drops from your cart after 15 minutes. That’s where the waiting list comes in. If you find a Flash Offer that is still valid but is sold out, you may see a button that says Join the waiting list.
This likely means that all items have been claimed, but not all of them have been purchased. Once you’ve joined a waitlist, if the item falls out of someone’s cart and you’re next in line, you’ll have a chance to buy it.
The Amazon mobile app for Android or iOS notifies you if the offer is available to you. On the website, you will see a notification in the upper right corner of the website. Once your photo appears, you will have a limited time to add it to your cart and make your purchase.
Editor’s Note: This article was updated in September 2022 to include information from the Prime Early Access Sale 2022.
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