I’m ready to delete the Amazon app from my phone! All of a sudden it’s now alerting me to “deals” that I just don’t care about. I don’t want alerts or notifications from Amazon! How can I disable this annoyance??
There’s no question that Amazon has grown to become a massive powerhouse in the retail and e-commerce space. In fact, almost 60% of all e-commerce sales are through Amazon.com, which is astonishing. Most of us buy products through Amazon, even with its various problems and shortcomings. With millions of merchants and a rich and complex merchant/customer relationship management system, many of those merchants have begun experimenting with different ways to get in front of potential customers too. Ads, sponsored content, “frequently also purchased”, deals, pairings, the options are almost endless.
If you search for a product on the site, you’ll see lots of ads and sponsored listings mixed in with products that might match your query or might be far afield because the merchant’s trying keyword stuffing or similar to show up more often. One of the newest ways is through alerts and notifications. The merchant’s logic is “we’re running a sale, you want to know about that, right?”. Fortunately, you can disable these advertising notifications within the app. Let’s do just that!
First, though, here’s a notification I received a few days ago:
Can you see it at the top? “Don’t miss this deal”. Uhm, I’m okay missing it, actually…
AMAZON APP SETTINGS
It’s not easy to find the Settings area in the Amazon app for mobile. The company wants you focused on buying, not adjusting preferences! 🙂 Nonetheless, launch the Amazon app on your mobile device…
Notice that it knows what I’ve searched for in the recent past and shows those as its “Keep shopping for…” images in the center. Ignore it all – we’re not here to shop! – and instead tap on the three horizontal lines – the so-called hamburger icon – on the very bottom. This will take you to your Shortcuts and your Shop by Category areas:
Swipe up to get to the very bottom of this screen and you’ll see tucked on the very bottom is the link we seek: “Settings“. Tap on it to expand the list of choices:
This is a logical and intuitive place to have Settings, right? 🙂
CHANGE NOTIFICATION SETTINGS IN THE AMAZON APP
Now that you’ve found the right spot, tap on “Notifications” to proceed.
Start by tapping on the middle option: “Deals and recommendations“, because that’s really “adverts”…
You can use the shortcut “Turn off all” at the bottom, or you can pick between Savings, Recommendations, and New releases to disable. I’ve turned all three of these off, personally, but I’m pretty plugged into my favorite authors and musicians releasing new content anyway.
While you’re here I also encourage you to check out the “Account and shipping” notification settings:
If you don’t have an Alexa, or you’ve disabled voice-based ordering in the Alexa app, you can disable this setting. Shipping and delivery? You can disable this too as Amazon will still notify you when your orders are delivered, from my experience.
And that’s it. Now you have full control over what’s happening with your Amazon notifications. You can now go back to that “Keep shopping for” area to, well, keep shopping!
Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about iPhone and Android apps since the beginning. Please check out my extensive iPhone help and Android help areas while you’re visiting for lots more useful tutorials and guides! Thanks.
Thank you so much for posting this! Those Amazon alerts were driving me crazy and this worked like a charm.