Amazon Prime Day is here, but buyer beware

Amazon Prime Day has officially begun, offering loads of deep discounts on everything from tech to home essentials.

It’s a two-day event that gives Prime members some of the best deals of the year, but retail expert Doug Stephens, founder of Retail Prophet, says Prime Day is not so much about the bottom line, and more about loyalty and memberships.

“This really isn’t about sales. To my mind, Amazon Prime Day is really less about Amazon’s absolute, you know, bottom line numbers. And it’s really more about two things. It’s about enticing new members onto the platform. And it’s also about giving existing Prime members a reason to remain Prime members,” says Stephens.

Although Prime Day might be about keeping or gaining new members, it still brings in billions of dollars for the company. Last year Amazon sold more than 370 million items worldwide.

“A lot of the discounts on Amazon are quite significant,” Stephens adds.

But one of the biggest online shopping days of the year can also come with big risks.

“Anytime there’s a major retail event and there’s a lot of e-commerce activity, cyber criminals will zero in on it, almost like moths to a flame,” says technology analyst Carmi Levy.

Experts are reminding shoppers to use legitimate websites to avoid scams that share their personal information with the wrong people.

“Things like usernames and passwords, of course, to sign into accounts, but also credit card numbers, expiration dates, security numbers,” Levy explains. “The things that you use to authorize payments online, so that they can then either use it themselves to buy things for themselves or sell that information to other cybercriminals, who then roll it up into large databases that they then use to prosecute their own attacks.”

Amazon is aware of the issue. The company has been actively combating counterfeit products and fraudulent reviews by removing millions of fake items and blocking billions of suspicious listings.

But even with the higher risk of shopping on Prime Day, many Prime members will still take full advantage of the deals.

“Obviously the membership model has been an extremely successful model for Costco and I think we can, at this point, declare it an equal success for Amazon,” says Stephens.