Amazon’s Voice Shopping Weekend

Ever the retail trendsetter, Amazon just celebrated the newest holiday shopping event around. The event, dubbed Voice Shopping Weekend, ran starting on Friday (Nov. 18) of last week. The event ends tonight. (OK, so it was an extra-long weekend.)

All customers have to do is ask, “Alexa, what are your deals?” to their Amazon Echo, Echo Dot and Tap smart speakers, Fire TV or Fire HD tablet to kickstart their holiday shopping. Well, as long as the customer subscribes to Prime and already has one-click shopping enabled.

Amazon said sales pricing on specific items will be available for voice order “at select times between Nov. 18 and Nov. 21.” While supplies last, of course. Alexa-exclusive deals will also be available on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

The move can be seen as an attempt by Amazon to bolster the use of Alexa voice commands to complete online purchases — one of her now more than 3,000 skills, but perhaps an underused one.

Some of the sale items and their accompanying voice commands for Voice Shopping Weekend include saying, “Alexa, order Lindor truffles,” to get the chocolates at 35 percent off; or, “Alexa, order a Samsung TV,” to get a 32-inch Samsung 1080p LED TV for $80 off.

Just one word of caution: Don’t, under any circumstances, let your kids get ahold of the instant-order voice commands. Or else you might be receiving a number of surprise packages.

Luckily, returns are free for physical items ordered with Alexa.

Amazon currently leads the pack of companies selling voice-controlled home AI assistants, including Apple’s Siri and Alphabet‘s Google Assistant, the latter of which is set to let third-party developers create customized actions starting this December.

Get ready for voice-activated home assistants to be everywhere. The race is still on, even though Amazon may be a bit ahead (for now) with this retail campaign.