Walmart has announced it will be running a huge sale beginning on July 15. The sale is scheduled to compete directly with Amazon's Prime Day, which has the exact same start date.

We recently gave you the early scoop on what turned out to be Amazon's Prime Day sale. Late last month, online rumors began swirling that Amazon would be running a huge July sale to commemorate the company's 20th anniversary, offering great discounts on par with those that are normally seen on Black Friday. Amazon employees and mail delivery personnel that had been advised of the upcoming sale spilled the beans on blogs and forums. Several days later, Amazon officially announced the sale as Prime Day, with one caveat — you have to be an Amazon Prime member to access the discounts.

Retailer Walmart, whose e-commerce site is also one of Amazon's largest online rivals, has now announced a sale to counter Amazon Prime Day. Both sales go live on July 15, but Walmart is heralding the fact that its sale is open to all customers, and the big box store has attacked Amazon in it's online blog for only offering discounts to Prime customers.

"We've heard some retailers are charging $100 to get access to a sale. But the idea of asking customers to pay extra in order to save money just doesn't add up for us," Walmart posted on its blog. "We're standing up for our customers and everyone else who sees no rhyme or reason for paying a premium to save."

The company is promising thousands of discounts and rollbacks, which it claims will be available all summer long, not "for just one day." In addition, Walmart has cut the minimum order total required to receive free online shipping from $50 to $35, at least for the next month.

Walmart recently announced that it would also begin testing a Prime-like premium shipping membership service sometime this summer, offering free three-day shipping for a $50 annual fee.