Amazon just coached the witness.

Happy Friday,

On Tuesday, Amazon published a guide to the AI tools that help shoppers find the best deals this Prime Big Deal Days.

The headline promised eight features.

The first paragraph promised nine.

It's a guide to checking whether numbers add up.

The sale has a date now. Prime Big Deal Days runs October 6 and 7 — 48 hours, with fresh deals dropping at midnight, 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. Pacific, like a very aggressive feeding schedule.

It came with a kit for the shopper, including price history that now reaches back a full year on eligible listings. And this time, Amazon also wrote the shopper's lines.

The guide suggests asking the assistant what an item cost during last Prime Big Deal Days. And then, in Amazon's own words: "Was it cheaper last Black Friday?"

That is not a shopping tip.

That is witness prep.

Now do the date math, because the guide didn't.

Count back 365 days from October 6, 2026. You land on October 6, 2025.

Last year's Prime Big Deal Days started October 7, 2025.

It makes the chart by one day.

Last Black Friday, November 28, is comfortably inside.

So on October 6, your last sale like this one and the biggest sale of last year sit on the same page as this year's deal. One tap, right next to the price.

Exhibit A is your own listing.

A deal used to be a claim. On October 6 it's a claim with the evidence stapled to it.

The awkward part isn't the chart. It's the fall calendar.

Price holds all summer. In September it drifts up a little, for reasons that sounded completely reasonable in the meeting. In October the deal arrives, looking deep.

For years, that only had to survive a 90-day glance.

On a year-long chart, it draws stairs. One step up. One big step down.

The shopper wasn't in the meeting.

The shopper can see stairs.

Then there's the version that's completely innocent, which is worse.

Say you gave 30% off last Black Friday and 20% this October. Real discount. Nothing wrong. The shopper asks the question Amazon wrote. The assistant, correctly, says yes.

The assistant is right. You are right. The shopper puts it back on the list and waits for November.

Amazon sells you the deal slot and gives the shopper the lie detector for free. That's what a two-sided marketplace looks like.

Now the honest part.

It's a good tool, and hard to be mad at a store for showing its receipts. More than 50 million customers have used it since 2024. It only appears on eligible listings, it shows the page price (on a shared listing, not always yours), nobody knows how many shoppers will ask, and deal qualification runs on separate rules.

None of that changes the setup. For 48 hours, every deal stands next to its own record.

No further questions.

360,000 people a year ask Amazon whether Amazon is Amazon. So Alexa for Shopping now checks a message against Amazon's record of everything it actually sent. It's a shopper tool. Sellers, the ancient rule still wins: never click the link, open Seller Central yourself.

Amazon raised starting pay for full-time US operations employees to $20 an hour, average near $24, plus a grocery discount for every US employee. Also on the calendar: holiday peak fulfillment fees start October 15. Two dates. No lines drawn.

The holiday forecast is quiet. eMarketer projects roughly 6.6% ecommerce growth, the second straight year the season trails the full-year pace. A season that barely grows gets won on share

Twenty minutes, for whoever runs your Prime Big Deal Days plan. You're not changing a price. You're changing what you point at.

Pull your ten biggest deals. Seller Central → Advertising → Deals, or Prime Exclusive Discounts. Write the deal price next to each.

Open each one as a shopper. Go to the product page, tap Price history beside the price, and switch to the one-year view. No link means the listing isn't eligible — skip it. About two minutes each.

Ask the witness question. Is the deal price lower than every low point on that chart, including last October and late November? Yes: chart agrees. No: chart argues.

Skip shared listings where another seller did most of the selling (the chart shows their price) and anything out of stock for weeks (gaps make the line lie). Don't check against your spreadsheet — the chart is what the shopper sees, so the chart is the test.

Then move the spotlight. Whatever you were going to lead with — your Store hero, the first product in your Sponsored Brands ad, the top of your email — goes to a chart-agrees ASIN. Store and Sponsored Brands edits go through review, so do it this week. Nothing in column one? Lead with the deal closest to its low. No Store, ads or email? Send the columns to whoever sets event budgets: extra money goes to column one first.

Chart-argues deals still run. They just stop being what you point at.

Two things not to do. Don't touch a price before October 7 — any nudge gets drawn onto the chart the shopper is about to read, and can cause trouble for the deal itself. And don't cancel a deal because its chart argues. That's a reason to stop featuring it, not to pull it.

Artifact: two columns, and a spotlight pointed at the first one.

Amazon spent Tuesday announcing a sale and teaching your customer how to cross-examine it.

That isn't a contradiction.

That's a store very sure of its own receipts.

See you Tuesday.

P.S. Forward this to whoever picks your hero product for October. It's twenty minutes, and it's the only fix on the list that doesn't touch a price.

See you Tuesday.

Any questions? Book a meeting with me here.

Dan Head

Founder, AMZ Elite