The New York Post is reporting that yesterday’s short lived Amazon Fire TV sale was a mistake. Consider yourself lucky if you nabbed a new Fire TV for $79.99, or better yet at the $59.99 student price. It’s unclear at this point if the $79.99 price available to the general public was a mistake, or if it was just a mistake to allow the $20 off student discount to stack on top of the already reduced sale price. During last year’s Amazon Student day event, the online retailer also discounted the 1st-gen Fire TV by $20 for students, so it does seem like that part of yesterday’s sale was intentional.
Update
10/8/2015 8:15am I just heard back from Amazon and they said the $20 off student discount inadvertently got applied to the regular Fire TV price. The good news is, they’ll be fully honoring the discounted price for everyone who managed to get an order in. Way to go Amazon!
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I got my refund so I guess I was one of the lucky ones.
The poor reviews are still pouring in, I guess, another mistakes will have to be made. This is by far the worst launching of a Amazon’s device!
I can’t cope with the fact that Amazon bragged about beating Netflix into delivering UHD 4K HDR in May and months later releases a device that won’t support it.
Amazon should never have let this out the door with the audio and remote issues. Surely someone should’ve picked up on the multichannel sound before the launch. No excuse for that. But, on the positive side, Amazon is straight onto it. The Nexus Player went neglected for months.
As for the remote, if beggars belief so many are complaining they can’t get the batteries out. A comment on their mental age, I think.
The best tip I’ve come across since mine arrived is to enable and then disable WiFi to get the remote working without dropouts. Amazon needs to sort that out too.
Other than waiting for Firestarter and the audio patch, no complaints from me.
Got my $20 as well.
Although the full price was displayed when I added the Fire TV to my cart, I contacted customer support via chat, told them It was my understanding that the deal would last for the day, and they were able to give me the discounted price, and the student discount applied on top. Couldn’t pass up a brand new AFTV2 for $60. Very exciting.
Amazon’s explanation makes no sense as a mistake.
The reviews are bad and they are getting returns. Now they halted sales until they get the firmware updated. Tge product was rushed to keep up with apple and roku and it’s one big screw up of what had been a great product.
The search page and item page showed the item as 79.99, but the price went up to 99.99 for me when I try to check out. CS chat sent me to 4 different people and refuse to honor the price. The last one told me the sale was over but the price kept showing up as 79.99 for me during the chat. Emailed them the transcript and was sent back a generic email to go check out their warehouse deals.
http://imgur.com/W3PhqsG
I haven’t set up my new Fire TV yet.. but I had no issues opening the back of my remote.. it was super easy. People are nuts.
I applied for and got the $20 refund for the price difference between what I paid for my pre-order and the price during this one day special.
But it all became moot some days later when, for the umpteenth time my remote lost it’s Bluetooth connection to the Fire TV, and this time resisted all effort to re-establish it. Fed up, I packed it up and shipped it back for a full refund (of the reduced price + tax). The product is a lemon in myriad ways, but Amazon’s customer service still shines. That’s why I went ahead and ordered the Roku 4 from Amazon. (That, and the fact that as a Prime member, I get 2-day free shipping from Amazon, whereas ordering it direct from Roku would have cost more or taken longer.)