No, you’re not suffering from COVID fog. Amazon.com already had its Prime Day sale in July. To capitalize on the success of that promotion, Amazon is having a 2nd Prime Day in 2022 on October 11 & 12th. The difference is that it’s calling the event the “Early Access” sale. I don’t know about you, but I typically think early access means there’s a general access sale to follow but let us all realize this is simply another 2-day sale for those who have Amazon Prime subscriptions.
While I don’t usually partake in gimmicky sales, I will jump in if there’s something I need and I see it for a great price.
Such is the case with my travel laptop. If you’ve seen my posts, you’ve noticed that I still travel with my 2011 MacBook Air. It’s a hand-me-down from Sharon, and is one of the outdated tech items I bring when I travel.
Despite totally wiping the hard drive and installing a new battery, it still can’t run for more than 30 minutes when connected to Wi-Fi. And heaven forbid I open more than 3 browser tabs at the same time, or it shows down to a snail’s pace.
However, it’s been suitable to accomplish website tasks while on the road that I can’t easily accomplish using my iPad Pro. But even I admit it’s time to upgrade.
I wanted to stay with a Mac because it’s easier to keep track of emails, notes, pictures and everything else when I stay within the Apple ecosystem. I could go with a Chromebook as Sharon did, but it’s too much of a pain to keep things synced.
I can take a hint and when I saw a Tweet from DansDeals that Amazon was selling the M1 MacBook Air for the lowest price ever, I had to check it out. Sure enough, the base MacBook Air with an M1 processor was going for $799, which is $200 under the Apple price.
When I’m shopping for a desktop I’ll pay extra for more memory and processing power because I’m using it every day and want to keep it for as long as possible. However, I only use my laptop when we’re traveling and only for the simplest tasks. I determined that the base model MacBook Air would meet my needs. Most importantly, I was drooling at the 18-hour battery life. That’s one less excuse I’ll have for watching movies on a plane instead of getting work done.
So I ordered a new MacBook Air from Amazon.com.
However, getting a computer for the best price ever isn’t enough. Could I save any more money on this purchase? I remembered a post on OMAAT about an offer from Amazon.com for a discount if you use a single Membership Rewards point to pay for your purchase. I’ve taken advantage of a dual-stacked offer from Amazon and AMEX before. That’s how I got my Bose headphones for $75.
While my offer this time wasn’t as generous, AMEX was offering me 40% off, up to a $40 discount if I used Membership Rewards to pay for my purchase. As is usual for these offers, you only have to use 1 Membership Rewards point to activate the discount and can then use your AMEX card for the rest of the purchase.
While the usual price for the Macbook Air is $999, Amazon shows the price at $899. I save another $100 from the Early Access Sale and another $40 from the AMEX discount. With free Prime shipping, I’m paying $808 for a new MacBook Air that usually lists for $1000 before taxes and shipping.
Could I have found another way to squeeze a few extra dollars from this purchase? I’m sure someone has figured out how to get the price under $800 when using a portal or with a discount code on another website. However, this was an easy $200 win with minimal effort and I’ll take those every day of the week.
Want to comment on this post? Great! Read this first to help ensure it gets approved.
Want to sponsor a post, write something for Your Mileage May Vary, or put ads on our site? Click here for more info.
Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and sign up to get emailed notifications of when we post.
Whether you’ve read our articles before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!
This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
