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   A piñata in the Amazon conference room where Prime Day coordinators gathered in 2015 to oversee the company’s first Prime Day sale. The original event was code-named piñata. (Photo: Elizabeth Weise) 
   
   SEATTLE—At Amazon headquarters here, two floors of conference rooms are outfitted as war rooms, the better to absorb the crushing blow of 85 million Prime shoppers feverishly tapping on the best slow cooker deals. 
   
   Prime Day (or Prime Day plus six hours) is almost here. 
   
   What started as an experiment to shake-up the shopping doldrums of July, with perhaps a sprinkle of inspiration from Alibaba's wildly successful Single's Day, has turned into one of Amazon's biggest sales days. 
   
   Last year, analysts estimate Prime Day sales totaled between $500 million and $600 million, or 1.5% of its third quarter sales — compared with the $3.34 billion spent online by Americans this past Black Friday at retailers. Amazon (AMZN), which does not release sales figures for the event, said they surpassed the prior year's Prime Day by more than 60% worldwide. 
   
   While this year’s Prime Day will almost certainly out-perform last year’s, in the bigger picture Prime Day just isn't as relevant as holiday sales in November and December, said Alasdair McLean-Foreman, founder of Teikametrics, a company that provides data analytics and optimization technology for sellers on e-commerce platforms. 
   
   Sales are by no means the only important metric. At heart, Prime Day is “another excellent branding opportunity to own consumer mind share,” McLean-Foreman said. 
   
   Related: 
   
   Bursting digital shopping carts help Amazon and the tens of thousands of companies that sell on its site to level out demand over the year, adding a nice bump of sales in July when things are typically flat, says Gene Alvarez, an analyst who follows the company for Gartner. 
   
   It’s also a chance for Amazon to tout voice-ordering and to get more people engaged with its Echo voice-operated devices. 
   
   But mostly it’s a chance for Amazon to gather information, both in general and as a kind of stress test for the holidays. 
   
   Amazon’s vice president for Prime, stands in the conference room where his team oversaw Amazon’s first Prime Day sale in 2015. The event was code-named Piñata and the room was decorated with piñata cutouts and actual piñatas. The one he holds in his hand was the only piñata remaining in the conference room in 2017. (Photo: Elizabeth Weise/USA TODAY) 
   
   “Prime Day is about experimenting and learning more about the customer experience and willingness to shop in new ways,” Alvarez said. 
   
   Amazon is prepping for this year's Prime Day, which starts Monday at 9 PM Eastern and runs for 30 hours across 13 countries, to be a big one. 
   
   Amazonians (Amazon's internal name for its workers) who work on Prime are expected to block off June and much of July and take their summer vacations after the dust has cleared. 
   
   Code Name: Pinata 
   
   It’s all a long way from its beginnings as a doldrums of July sale, originally code-named Piñata. 
   
   The first Prime Day in 2015 got off to a somewhat inauspicious start. The team focused on the event had taken over a small conference room decorated with Piñata cutouts as its operations center. 
   
   Prime hit first in Japan, 16 hours ahead of Seattle. As the sale began there, customers rushed online to start buying and the Amazon.jp site promptly crashed. 
   
   Greg Greeley, Amazon’s vice president for Prime, literally fell off his chair as he lunged to deal with the problem. The team got the site up and running again in two minutes but the magnitude of what they’d launched was clear. 
   
   “I got on the phone with AWS and I told them, ‘When the sun comes up here, this is going to be huge,’” he told USA TODAY last week. 
   
   The first Prime Day in 2015 came about as the company was casting about for a celebration for its twentieth anniversary, though it resembled Singles’ Day in China, an obscure event for bachelors that the Chinese digital giant Alibaba turned into a cultural event beginning in 2009, selling $17.8 billion in goods last year. 
   
   Just as with Black Friday deals, the question for consumers is always whether they’re getting deals or duds. Amazon’s first try at Prime Day in 2015 was panned by some because too many deals seemed instead to be merchants clearing out unsold inventory, with Twitter calling out garage-sale like goods such as shoe horns and granny panties. 
   
   The next year Prime Day felt a lot more like Black Friday, though an analysis by The Wirecutter found that while there were thousands of deals, few were what it termed "great deals." 
   
   This year, Amazon is pledging that price for all its limited-time lightning deals will be the lowest for that item offered on its site in the last 365 days. 
   
   It won't be the only game in town. JCPenney, Kohl's and Macy's are all offering exclusive discounts before and during Prime Day, though Walmart, Target and Lowe's are among the big names who appear to be skipping the event. 
   
   Amazon uses both human and robot workers in its warehouses. (Photo: Amazon) 
   
   In the first two years Prime Day was also a big enticement for customers to sign up for Amazon’s Prime membership service, which offers free two-day shipping and same-day shipping in many cities plus a host of perks. 
   
   Prime members are a major sweet spot for Amazon. According to figures released last week by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, there are now 85 million highly remunerative Prime members in the United States, up from 65 million a year ago. Once in the Amazon eco-system they spend on average about $1,300 per year, compared to about $700 per year for non-member customers. 
   
   Forrester’s Amazon analyst Brendan Witcher expects the company to heavily promote its Echo family of voice-activated devices as it continues efforts to build-out its already substantial lead in voice assistants. This includes the new Echo Show, which comes with a 7" screen. 
   
   Amazon Echo Show (Photo: Reviewed.com / Jackson Ruckar) 
   
   “It wouldn't surprise me if almost every step of the purchasing journey will include some mention of Amazon Echo,” he said. 
   
   Amazon’s overall goal, which Prime Day contributes to, is to do with retail what Apple did with music – build an ecosystem of delivery that will become an ecosystem of buying, Witcher said. 
   
   The work that Amazon has put into Prime Day is paying off for the third-party sellers on Amazon’s site, who now make up more than 50% of units sold by the company. 
   
   Austin, Texas-based Silk Innovation sells mobile phone cases. The company set its sales targets in the spring, ordering from China and having the products shipped directly to Amazon fulfillment centers. 
   
   CEO Matt Altschul expects a 25% jump in sales in July due to Prime Day. 
   
   “I wish I had a story to tell you that everything’s wild and we all had to work our butts off, but I don’t," he said. "It’s the beauty of Amazon’s automation.” 
   
   Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2u8NTs2 ||||| Amazon.com’s (amzn) Prime Day on Tuesday was marred with many customers reporting problems checking out, potentially denting business on a day the online retailer is hoping will yield hundreds of millions of dollars in sales and spur sign ups to its Prime program. 
   
   On Tuesday morning at 7:40 Eastern time, the retailer said on Twitter that some customers were having problems with the website. At 11:18 a.m., or two and half hours later, the company told Fortune by email that the problem had been resolved. 
   
   Some customers are reporting difficulty with checkout. We're working to resolve this issue quickly. — Amazon.com (@amazon) July 12, 2016 
   
   But by then, Amazon was dealing with angry shoppers. Earlier, some customers took to Twitter to also complain about problems like adding items to carts. And by early morning, the hashtag #PrimeDayFail, which gained traction during last year’s inaugural event after many customers were underwhelmed by items included in the deals, was trending again. 
   
   Sad to wake up early for Prime Day & NOT be able to add to cart. #PrimeDayFail — John Gann (@thejohngann) July 12, 2016 
   
   The snafus were poorly timed for the online retailer, whose $81 billion in annual sales make it the largest e-commerce player in the U.S. by far, doing six times more business than Walmart.com (wmt). Still, investors shrugged off the problems as the stock hit an all-time high on Tuesday. 
   
   Amazon debuted Prime Day last year as a one-day sale exclusively for members of its Prime subscription shopping service. The company’s goal is to create a new shopping holiday like Black Friday—the busy shopping day after Thanksgiving—to encourage more spending on its site. While Prime Day is a manufactured shopping event, the sale is a big deal for Amazon: retail advisory firm FBIC, has forecast predicts Prime Day could generate $525 million in sales, up 26 percent from its $415 million estimate last year. 
   
   The larger point for Amazon is to stoke enrollment in its Prime service, which for $99 a year, among many benefits, offers customers free two-day delivery and access to Amazon’s TV and movie streaming service. Prime enrollments peaked on July 14 last year, one day before Prime Day. According to comScore data, 21.7 million unique visitors went to Amazon.com on Prime Day last year, making it as big a deal as Cyber Monday. And Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimated this week that 63 million people in the U.S. are Prime members, up 43% from a year earlier. 
   
   Amazon’s Prime Day has prompted many traditional retailers to hold their own events. Most notably, Walmart this week waived minimum online order sizes to get free shipping. 
   
   The Amazon snafus are reminiscent of website problems retailers like Target (tgt), Best Buy (bby) and Neiman Marcus have all dealt with in the last few years on major online shopping occasions. ||||| Now playing: Watch this: The real deals of Amazon Prime Day 
   
   It's beginning to look a lot like Prime Day. 
   
   On the evening of Monday, July 10 at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT, and 6 p.m. in the UK, Amazon will kick off its third annual sales event. It's basically a Cyber-Monday-in-July that promises extra savings over and above the company's usual discount prices. But that evening start is reminiscent of Black Friday sales that start on Thanksgiving: This year's Prime Day runs for 30 hours, straight through July 11. 
   
   So who's allowed to get in on this Prime action? What's going to be different compared with last year? How can you be sure Amazon's Prime Day price is actually the best price? 
   
   I've got all the answers. Here's everything you need to know about Prime Day 2017. 
   
   Days of Prime Day past 
   
   Amazon's first stab at Prime Day (in 2015) was to celebrate its 20th anniversary. Although the event proved a big success in terms of sales, customers found a lot to dislike. The biggest discounts were on Amazon's own products (Kindles, Fire tablets, Echo products and so on), and those seemed to come and go at random. 
   
   Last year, things went better, with lots more inventory and category-driven search that made it easier to sift through the nearly 100,000 sale items. 
   
   Why you should care about Prime Day 
   
   In 2016, Amazon's big categories were TV and toys. The company promised twice as much TV inventory as "Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined," and toy deals that would run "nearly all day." 
   
   Will those be the spotlight categories this year as well? That remains to be seen, but there will undoubtedly be countless other deals. And Amazon will offer Alexa-powered specials as well, so if you own an Amazon Echo ( ), Dot or Tap, you might be able to score some exclusives. (You can already ask Alexa to spill some rumors.) 
   
   Amazon is also promising savings of "up to 40 percent" on Kindle Unlimited membership, though it's not quite clear what the "up to" part is about. Currently, the ebook/audiobook subscription service costs $9.99 per month, or £7.99 in the UK. 
   
   ...and why you shouldn't care 
   
   If we haven't met before, I'm Rick "The Cheapskate" Broida, and I write about tech deals pretty much every day of the year. And let me tell you, every day is Prime Day. By which I mean there are great bargains to be had all the time. 
   
   Yes, as with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Amazon may shave a few extra dollars off a TV or Kindle. But also as with those days, supplies will be limited. And the TV might be an off-brand model that wasn't really what you had in mind. 
   
   In other words, resist the hype. If there's a particularly good deal to be had on a product you've been eyeballing, by all means grab it. But don't think this is your only opportunity to save big. 
   
   Furthermore, with Amazon planning to roll out new deals "as often as every 5 minutes" throughout the day, this is a rabbit hole you might want to avoid. Prime Day will definitely not be Productivity Day if you're refreshing your browser every 5 minutes. (Though see below for a handy way to keep tabs on specific deals.) 
   
   Prime Day is for Prime subscribers 
   
   Amazon Prime is, of course, the subscription service that affords unlimited two-day shipping, movie and unlimited music streaming and various other perks. It costs $99 per year (a very good deal, in my humble opinion), or £79 in the UK. 
   
   In order to take advantage of Prime Day deals, you must be a Prime subscriber. That's the bad news; the good news is that if you've never tried the service before, you can get a free trial -- and that trial membership qualifies you for Prime Day savings. 
   
   By the way, if you're a US college student, you can get a six-month free trial of Amazon Prime, after which you can snag a membership for just $49 -- 50 percent off the regular annual price. 
   
   Prime Day deals have already started (sort of) 
   
   Head over to amazon.com/primeday (here in the UK) and you'll find some deals rotating in and out before the official kickoff on July 10. Some of the deals are better than others. For instance, as of Friday, July 7, there are digital versions of some pretty great movies on sale for just $5. I'll update the post if there's anything further to report. 
   
   Use the Amazon App to get deal notifications 
   
   Amazon 
   
   Part of the challenge of Prime Day is keeping tabs on the deals that interest you, especially those scheduled to begin later in the day. If you forget, you might miss out. 
   
   Fortunately, the Amazon App lets you track upcoming deals and receive notifications when they're about to begin. It's available for Amazon Fire (natch), Android and iOS in their respective app stores. (The app also affords benefits like voice-powered search and shipment tracking.) 
   
   Don't assume Prime Day is the best day 
   
   As I noted above, where I come from, every day is Black Friday, Cyber Monday or Prime Day. That means you should approach every deal with a little bit of skepticism -- or at least a little bit of research. 
   
   One great place to start: CamelCamelCamel, the site that tracks Amazon price histories. (It can also notify you when Amazon products go on sale; I recently explained how to use it to track those rare Amazon Echo deals and you can see Amazon's current deal offerings here.) 
   
   Before you pull the trigger on any Prime Day deal, copy the URL, paste it into CamelCamelCamel's search field and check the results. You may discover that the product has indeed been priced lower in the past, and therefore may be again. 
   
   At the same time, consider using a browser plug-in such as Honey, which can instantly inform you if any third-party sellers have the same product for a lower price (which doesn't happen often, but it's worth checking). 
   
   Finally, be sure to check other sites. Best Buy, Walmart and other major stores may well trot out their own answers to Prime Day, offering loss-leader pricing on popular items. 
   
   How waitlisting works 
   
   Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET 
   
   Like Amazon's daily Lightning deals, most Prime Day deals are available in limited quantities -- and once they're "claimed," they're gone. Or maybe not: You may see a Join Waitlist button that'll put you in the queue to grab an item if it becomes available. 
   
   How does that happen? Sometimes other customers will add an item to their cart, then decide not to buy it (or fail to complete the purchase within 15 minutes) -- at which point it goes to the next person in line. That could be you, so don't be shy about joining the waitlist if it's something you really want. 
   
   Ask Alexa for exclusive deals 
   
   Amazon already offers exclusive deals to owners of the Echo, Echo Dot, Tap and other Alexa-enhanced devices: You just say, "Alexa, what are your deals?" 
   
   It should come as no surprise, then, that Amazon's gal is serving up Prime Day exclusives as well -- starting with a deal on Prime itself. If you're not already a subscriber, you can say, "Alexa, sign me up for Prime," and you'll get an annual membership for $79 instead of the usual $99. 
   
   Beyond that, ask Alexa for "Prime Day deals," both leading up to the big day and on the day itself. One item to consider: the Bose SoundLink Bluetooth Speaker III. Alexa will score you a $50 discount, a bit better than the $41 discount afforded to regular Amazon shoppers. 
   
   Editors' note: This article was originally published on July 5, 2016, and has since been updated. ||||| Amazon is hoping to lure more shoppers to its Prime member program with its annual Prime Day. Deals for shoppers actually begin a little earlier, starting this evening. The company claims there will be "hundreds of thousands of deals" with "new deals starting as often as every five minutes." But if you're hoping to save twice - deals plus sales tax-free shopping - think again: as of April 1, 2017, Amazon began collecting sales taxes from all states with a sales tax. That means that Prime Day 2017 won't be sales tax-free. 
   
   The online retail giant had previously fought the imposition of sales tax on a state by state basis - from court battles to corporate exemptions. Today, Amazon collects sales tax in 45 states plus the District of Columbia (you can see the list here). Amazon does not collect sales tax in Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon: those states do not have a state sales tax. 
   
   Collecting sales tax on online purchases has been a controversial subject for years. Companies which make sales over the internet are still subject to the same sales tax collection requirements as so-called "brick and mortar" stores. Generally, the test is whether the company has a physical presence in that state: if a company has a physical presence in a state, they are required to collect and remit sales taxes. The test is the result of 25-year-old Supreme Court ruling in Quill Corp. v. North Dakota. In that case, the Court ruled that only those companies with a physical presence inside a state can be required to collect sales tax, "continuing value of a bright-line rule in this area." The key, of course, is that the definition of physical presence can change even as technology changes - and the definition isn't consistent from state to state. 
   
   In Massachusetts, for example, a new rule would have applied sales tax to certain out-of-state businesses who use internet cookies. Internet cookies are data files which are stored on your computer by a web browser and contain information about you - often, your name and interests - that companies use to tailor your internet experience. The Department of Revenue in Massachusetts claims that like software, internet cookies are "present in the state and serve to facilitate such vendor’s in-state sales." That, they believed, was enough of a presence to require the collection of sales tax. 
   
   NetChoice, a trade association of Internet companies and organizations, and American Catalog Mailers Association ("ACMA"), a trade association representing the interests of companies, individuals, and organizations engaged in and supporting catalog marketing, disagreed. In June, the two organizations filed suit to stop the new rule from taking effect. Among the arguments in the lawsuit were allegations that the Commonwealth had not followed proper procedures with respect to the directive. 
   
   The rule, which was expected to take effect on July 1, 2017, was eventually revoked. However, it's not completely buried. I fully expect to see it again after some procedural tweaks. And other states are watching closely to see what happens. If the revised rule successfully moves forward, it could change the way that state revenue departments view - and tax - online sales from out of state retailers. 
   
   (You can read more about the history of sales tax and presence here.) 
   
   Of course, even if a company doesn't charge you sales tax, that doesn't mean that you get a pass. States that impose sales tax typically also impose use tax. Use tax is the equivalent of sales tax for taxable purchases not taxed at sale by the retailer - like that furniture you bought across state lines in a sales tax-free state. If a purchase is subject to use tax, you are supposed to self-report and pay the tax. About half of all states offer a line on their income tax returns now for this purpose; otherwise, there are separate tax forms for your completion. 
   
   As you can imagine, between the complexity and the insanity of this rule, most consumers ignore the use tax. A 2015 poll conducted by the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) found that 62% of registered voters were not aware that use taxes were payable (downloads as a pdf). Most of those polled felt that the best way to collect sales tax was to tax at sale, not by asking consumers to self-report and pay. 
   
   Some states have pretty aggressive enforcement divisions which target use tax. It's easier, as you can imagine, when retailers keep track of sales for out-of-state buyers (car dealers and art houses often do this). Now, some states, like Colorado, are passing new rules to require out of state retailers to report more information about sales. Many online retailers who are either seeing the writing on the wall or are weary of fighting against the inevitable, have been quietly shifting operations to collect sales tax in most states. Amazon is one of the largest retailers to do so: founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, Amazon reported revenues of $107.01 billion in 2016. The company is ranked at #237 in Forbes' Global 2000 and #12 on Forbes' list of the Most Valuable Brands. 
   
   So, be prepared to pony up sales tax for purchases made on Amazon in most states. You can find Prime Day deals on amazon.com/primeday from 6 pm PT / 9 pm ET on July 10 (if you use Alexa on the Echo, Dot, Tap, Show, Fire TV/Fire compatible tablets, or the Dash Wand, deals start 2 hours earlier). According to Amazon, new deals start as often as every 5 minutes for 30 hours straight. 
   
   Want more taxgirl goodness? Pick your poison: follow me on twitter, hang out on Facebook and Google, play on Pinterest or check out my YouTube channel. ||||| Now playing: Watch this: The real deals of Amazon Prime Day 
   
   July 10 will mark the start of the third annual Prime Day -- or Amazon's massive 30-hour sale. With nearly 100,000 products on sale and with staggered start times for deals, it can be a lot to take in. And with so many people watching and waiting for deals to go live, some of the best will come and go in a hurry. 
   
   Fortunately, you can set up alerts for deals that you're interested in. Here are three ways to get notified of deals on Prime Day. 
   
   Watch deals 
   
   Taylor Martin/CNET 
   
   You can't sit around waiting all day for the deals you're interested in to go live. And if you're not careful, you might forget to check in and miss a deal. 
   
   With the Amazon Shopping app on Android and iOS, you can watch upcoming deals so you're alerted when they go live. 
   
   Tap the hamburger button in the top left to expand the menu and select Today's Deals. Swipe left to switch to the Upcoming tab to view all the deals which haven't started yet. Beneath each item is a button that says Watch this deal. The first time you hit the button, you will be asked to enable notifications. Once you do, any time a deal you're watching goes live, you will receive a push notification. 
   
   If push notifications still aren't working, you may need to enable notifications in the app settings. Tap the hamburger button in the top left to expand the menu and tap Settings. Then tap Notifications and to the right of Your Watched & Waitlisted Deals make sure the toggle is in the On position. 
   
   All of the deals you're watching can be found under the Watching tab. Deals that have gone live will appear in larger card views at the top, while upcoming deals are listed below. Deals will jump to the top of the list -- ahead of those that are already available -- when they're just minutes away from going live. 
   
   To stop watching a deal, either locate the item again under the Upcoming tab or in the Watching tab. If the deal hasn't started yet, tap the Watching button to stop watching it. If the deal has gone live, you will need to tap the action overflow button (three vertical dots) and select Stop watching this deal. 
   
   Add items to your wish list 
   
   Taylor Martin/CNET 
   
   Browsing the upcoming deals is only one way to tackle Prime Day. But what are the odds that you're going to see something you're actually looking for in the never-ending list of upcoming deals on Prime Day? 
   
   You're better off approaching it from the other direction by building a list of items you need or want. Then, on Prime Day, Amazon will notify you if items from your wish list are part of a Prime Day deal. So it's wise to spend some time perusing Amazon to curate (or prune) your wish list ahead of Prime Day. 
   
   While browsing Amazon from the Android or iOS apps, you can quickly add items to your wish list by long pressing and dragging it to your list at the bottom. 
   
   Better wish list alerts 
   
   Taylor Martin/CNET 
   
   Not all Prime Day deals are worth getting excited about. In fact, if the last two years serve as any indication, most of the deals are just all right. 
   
   However, if you want to make sure you're getting the best deal possible for the items on your Amazon wish list, you'll want to enlist the help of one of the best price tracking services out there, camelcamelcamel. 
   
   Typically, people use camelcamelcamel to create individual price alerts, so when a item's price drops below a certain threshold, they receive an alert. But camelcamelcamel has an even better feature: wish list sync. This allows you to build your Amazon wish list and create a rule for which you want to be notified. For instance, I'm only notified when the price of an item drops to at least one penny below its lowest price ever. Best of all, it creates an RSS feed for your price drop alerts, so you can even add the alerts to your favorite RSS reader. 
   
   To set up wish list alerts: 
   
   Go to camelcamelcamel.com and login or create an account. 
   
   At the top of the site, click Your account . 
   
   . In the left menu, click Wishlists . 
   
   . Click Add Wishlist . 
   
   . Go to your Amazon wish list and click Share (an email icon just above the list of items). 
   
   (an email icon just above the list of items). Copy the list URL and paste it in the Wishlist URL field on camelcamelcamel. 
   
   field on camelcamelcamel. Under Advanced Options , select which prices you wish to watch (Amazon, third-party new and third-party used). 
   
   , select which prices you wish to watch (Amazon, third-party new and third-party used). Set a desired price, either a static price or an amount below the current or lowest recorded price. 
   
   Click Add Wishlist to finish. 
   
   Now when the price of anything on your Amazon wish list drops below a certain threshold (set by you), you will receive an email notification. You can also view the deal in your RSS reader or by going to camelcamelcamel.com directly. 
   
   Also, be sure to check out Rick Broida's list of 9 things you should know about Prime Day. ||||| Yesterday’s checkout glitches didn’t impact Amazon’s ability to pull off another successful Prime Day sales event, as it turns out. The online retailer announced this morning, without giving specific figures, that its Prime Day 2016 was the “biggest ever.” Not just in terms of other Prime Days, either, but the “biggest day in the history of Amazon .” Tuesday’s customer orders were up by more than 60 percent worldwide, compared with last year’s Prime Day, and up by more than 50 percent in the U.S. Amazon says it was also the “biggest day ever” for Amazon devices globally. 
   
   This contradicts early reports that seemed to indicate that Amazon’s Prime Day 2016 U.S. sales were flat, according to ChannelAdvisor. However, ChannelAdvisor doesn’t monitor Amazon’s first-party sales, like those on its own devices – it only examines a sample of Amazon seller data. 
   
   Instead, Amazon’s announcement is more in line with analyst expectations of Prime Day doubling last year’s sales, potentially even hitting close to a billion, some believed. 
   
   Amazon had discounted a variety of its devices, including Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Echo speakers, and more. These discounts were clearly able to boost Amazon’s overall sales for the day, as was the fact that Amazon better spread out its sales throughout the day, compared with last year. Many of its limited-time “Lightning deals,” for example, launched in the evening on Prime Day. 
   
   The retailer says that it sold over 2.5 times more Fire TV devices compared with last year, and Fire TV Stick was the best seller globally of all Amazon’s devices. Amazon said it sold hundreds of thousands of Kindle devices on Prime Day, as well. 
   
   In the U.S., Amazon device sales were up by 3 times, compared with Prime Day 2015. And Prime Day was the biggest day ever for Amazon’s smart connected speaker Echo, which was also up over 2.5 times from last year. Current Echo owners were even shopping Prime Day via their speakers, the retailer notes, as Prime members bought on average one Alexa-exclusive deal per second via voice. 
   
   Amazon didn’t tout how many of its Dash buttons sold – the push-button ordering dongles that were marked down to $0.99 on Prime Day – but said that top brands were Cascade, Charmin and Tide. 
   
   Other top sellers included TVs (more than 90,000 sold), over 2 million toys and over 1 million shoes, 14,000+ Lenovo laptops, 23,000+ iRobot vacuums, over 200,000 headphones, and more. 
   
   Just as important, Amazon seems to have recovered from last year’s consumer backlash against Prime Day. Despite its great numbers in 2015, Amazon customers derided the sales event as “an online garage sale” due to the junky nature of some of the deals, and their inability to catch the best offers before they were sold out. 
   
   According to Adobe Digital Insights, which tracked over 4 million social engagements by online consumers, people were happier this year with Prime Day than in 2015. 
   
   39 percent of overall sentiment was related to sadness this year, compared with 50 percent last year. Joy increased to 30 percent, up from 23 percent in 2015. 22 percent of sentiment was attributed to admiration and 9 percent to surprise, both which tend to be on the positive side of the scale. 
   
   In addition, even those who were complaining online weren’t doing so because of deal quality. Instead, the checkout glitches – a purely technical matter – were to blame. 
   
   Adobe also noted that the most positive chatter was around Kindle products, Echo, and the Xbox One bundle. 
   
   Oh, and in case you’re wondering – Amazon says it will being doing Prime Day again next year. No surprise there. 
   
   (Article updated 7/13/16, 1:40 PM ET with Adobe’s more current statistics.) ||||| Prime Day starts tonight! And if you’re hoping to grab some of the hottest deals, vigilance is critical. The problem: You’ve got a life to lead —and constantly refreshing the Amazon homepage at your desk isn’t a good way to impress your boss. 
   
   Fortunately, there are a number of ways to track the onslaught of bargains. Just remember that if you see one that intrigues you, you may need to act fast. 
   
   The app – Amazon’s Shopping App (available for Android and iOS) is the most direct way to keep an eye out for discounts on items on your wishlist. Go to the app’s settings menu, click notifications and toggle alerts on for “Your Watched and Waitlisted Deals.” From there, go to the main dashboard and select “Today’s Deals” (it’s a long list). See something you want? Select the “Watch this deal” button below it. 
   
   Alexa – Amazon’s Echo devices are getting first crack at a number of exclusive deals. If you’ve got one in proximity, ask, “Alexa, what are your deals?” and she’ll read out bargains to you regularly. (Just be sure you’ve enabled voice purchasing beforehand.) 
   
   Amazon Assistant – If you can’t keep the Amazon homepage open throughout the day, you can enable it to push alerts to you. Amazon Assistant is a browser add-on that provides instant deal notifications (as well as order updates, etc.). 
   
   CamelCamelCamel.com – Not all Prime Day deals are actually deals. CamelCamelCamel doesn’t track Prime Day sales, per se, but it does follow the price history of all products on Amazon. You can set it to send an alert when the price drops to a certain point. That way, you’re not only among the first to know when the deal hits, but you won’t fall for “special prices” that aren’t all that special. 
   
   SlickDeals – There are a number of deal hunting Websites online, but few are as voracious as SlickDeals.net. The site has a Web-based price tracker that can alert you to deals not only on Amazon, but on other sites. 
   
   Facebook – Odds are you’re going to be checking in on Facebook Monday evening and sporadically throughout Tuesday anyway, so make it work for you. Head over to Amazon’s page on the social network and follow it. Last year, the company sent out extra deal notifications via Facebook and while it hasn’t made any announcements about doing so again this year, it can’t hurt.
target: – Will the third time be the charm for Amazon? Its now-slightly-misnomered Prime Day (it's actually 30 hours long, not 24, this year) kicks off at 9pm EDT Monday. Its inaugural sale in 2015 didn't blow consumers over; in 2016 there were early-morning website issues for some customers. This year, Amazon is ready, at least by USA Today's account, which notes that two floors of conference rooms at HQ have been "outfitted as war rooms" to support the onslaught of shoppers, all of whom must have a Prime membership to get the deals. More: The figures: Prime Day 2016 saw an estimated $500 million to $600 million in sales (Amazon didn't release official numbers). That's a fraction of the $3.34 billion spent on the Black Friday that followed months later, but Amazon said the total was up 60% over 2015, with 2017's Prime Day expected to be even bigger. What does bigger look like? Beating 2016 Prime Day records like these perhaps, per TechCrunch: More than 90,000 TVs, 1 million shoes, 23,000 iRobot vacuums, and 200,000 headphones were sold. It's a win-win for Amazon: There's a big upside involved in reeling in new Prime shoppers (the count has increased about 20 million year-over-year in the US, to 85 million): Their Amazon spending is almost double that of a non-Prime customer: $1,300 a year versus $700. What's on sale? Some 100,000 items, per CNET, but those items don't all go on sale at once. It offers tips on how to be alerted to the best deals (one smart one involves using your Amazon Wish List). Fortune offers some other ways, including a convenient-sounding Alexa tip. So are the deals deals? In some cases. Quartz points out that the Wirecutter gadget-review site examined 8,000 deals last Prime Day and recommended fewer than 1% of them: 64. One handy tool: CamelCamelCamel.com, which prompts you to input a product URL and then lets you know how that stacks up to what Amazon has charged for the item in the past. There's reason to care: ... and also reason to avoid the "rabbit hole" altogether. Rick Broida makes both cases at CNET. One dose of reality: If you've enjoyed Amazon's tax-free shopping in the past, it's, well, a thing of the past. Forbes points out that since April 1, Amazon has been levying sales tax for shoppers in all states with a sales tax (five don't have one: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon).