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 It’s a hand-me-down from Sharon, and is one of the outdated tech items I bring when I travel.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.
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