Amazon Prime Day kicks off in Australia for the first time

Now that Amazon is Down Under, so too are all its bells and whistles — including the online retail giant’s flash sale event ‘Prime Day’, which first occurred in the US back in 2015.

Available only to shoppers signed up for Amazon’s Prime shopping membership program, the sale event kicks off for Australian shoppers for the first time at 12pm today, purporting to offer a wide array of discounts and sales on various products on Amazon’s Australian storefront.

The event runs for 36 hours, and according to Business Insider will have a significant range of discounts across video games and consoles, various fashion brands, headphones and audio products, beauty products, and various baby goods.

There will also be limited time ‘lightning deals’, which will appear periodically through the sale as flash deep discount events.

Prime is available as a 30-day free trial, or for $4.99 a month after that. It provides Australians will free shipping for overseas and local items on the Amazon Australia website, however, shoppers shouldn’t expect to get same or next day delivery, with the Australian Prime offering promising two-day delivery to most Australian cities.

Australia has long been lacking a true comparison to the United States’ Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales events, with Click Frenzy previously being the closest point of comparison. However, with Amazon’s arrival last year, fellow retailers have been upping the stakes, with eBay and MyDeal both announcing similar sales events.

Despite Amazon saying its Australia launch had surpassed expectations, the reaction has been lukewarm from Australians, with both shoppers and businesses claiming the e-commerce giant’s local offering isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

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