Prime Down: Amazon’s sale day turns into fail day

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From TechCrunch:

It’s not just you. Amazon  Prime Day started 15 minutes ago, and so far, it’s not going well for Amazon. The landing page for Prime Day does not work. When most links are clicked, readers are sent to an error page or to a landing page that sends readers back to the main landing page.

Direct links to the product pages, either from outside links or the single product placement on the landing page, seem to work fine. I just bought this tent two weeks ago for $120. Some users are reporting errors when completing a purchase, too.

This is a huge blow to Amazon and its faux holiday Prime Day. The retailer has been pushing this event for weeks and there are some great deals to be had. It’s not a good look for the world’s largest retailer even though the retailer saw glitches last year, too.

Link to the rest at TechCrunch

PG says this is a giant embarrassment for Amazon and, in particular, for Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud company.

19 thoughts on “Prime Down: Amazon’s sale day turns into fail day”

  1. Yeah. The Azure boys must be dancing in the hallways in Seattle…
    …and rushing to make sure the same doesn’t happen to them.

    ‘Cause a lot of other retailers are doing mid July sales, too.

  2. It’s stunning how badly this thing launched, especially considering that this is hardly their first rodeo. That said, given the fiasco that is KU/Select, it shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with the situation.

  3. Funny how often the tech doesn’t match the hype.
    How many time did poor Billy Gates get to show off a new ‘blue screen’? 😉

    Someone ‘fixed/set’ something for the big day, not realizing some part of it wouldn’t play nice with the rest of the system. This too will pass (and this is why I’ve learned not to trust bleeding edge tech/toys – you are often left bleeding! 😉 )

  4. My two orders worked fine, one ebook, one Echo Dot. (Thanks, a lot, PG. You made me “hafta get that”.)

    Did see the “Oops sorry,” dogs, twice while surfing on two Kindles.

    Dan

      • Update on PG’s beloved Alexa.

        My new Echo Dot just rattled off Pi to 21 decimal points. I’ve always been stuck on 3.14159.

        And now, like Isaac Asimov, I never have to remember Kepler’s Third Law of Planetary Rotation. Alexa can always just remind me.

        I shouda got one of these a loooong time ago. 🙂

        Dan

  5. I ordered a couple things without a problem, then for an hour or so got the dogs, and after that had no trouble, although I was comparison shopping not buying.

  6. After a couple of hours, I got in — but then couldn’t find anything I wanted to buy. Maybe that’ll change before the night is over.

    Trying to remember how long the previous outage was. What I do remember is that despite the outage on that Prime Day, Amazon managed to achieve record sales.

    • I don’t have Prime anymore, but I browsed anyway. They had only a handful of items in the categories I was interested in, and most of that was barely on sale. Black Friday it is not.

      • Just from what I looked at, I’d say Prime Day was primarily a way to get a lot of Amazon electronics into customers’ hands so they’d use ’em for purchased content … that, and a ton of third-party sellers, so I think it’s a day to get them in the spotlight.

        Last night I almost caved and bought a Spot, but I certainly don’t need it (which I had to keep reminding myself) but it’s sooo cute. I already have the Show and two regular Echos in a tiny house.

        Then today I got an email saying some items are still on sale IF ordered via Alexa. I’m now on the fence about getting an electric toothbrush. I hate to let Jeff down when he’s counting on me to buy something.

  7. How could this happen?! You’d think Amazon of all companies could handle a surge in demand for bandwidth.

    • Well, they added a captcha-type filter.
      Either they were under cyber attack or they expected to be. It could also be that the improvements they added to deal with the extra traffic were the culprits. In IT is is common to see systems continually “improved” until they break.

      Know Bezos, a mea culpa and extension of the deals is likely.

      • I haven’t talked to any Amazon engineers for a while, but I’ll bet life is fraught on south Lake Union today. This was not supposed to happen. If Felix is right, and he may well be, this is the kind of mistake that Amazon engineers are not supposed to make. (And they shouldn’t, but into every life some ash does fall.)

        I live too rarefied a life to pay attention to Prime Day myself 🙂 , but my wife complained earlier that the deals were not as good as last year.

  8. I was waiting to add a few more Alexa devices (spots, 2nd gen echoes) to my stable for Prime Day. I got lucky that those were all day specials so I didn’t miss anything with the snafu. But geez…what a mess!

    Did anyone else notice that nothing was giftable? Apparently, Prime Day is Christmas where you only buy things for yourself. A new faux holiday indeed.

  9. Me, I was completing an order when it dumped me. When I got back almost all of my “saved for later” list was history.
    A bit worrisome that the account section was impacted.

    A hack or hack attempt is not out of the question.

  10. It’s still a PR victory for Amazon – their deals were so great that their servers crashed! Consumer mind = Amazon is obviously the place to go for great deals.

  11. The problems aren’t over. I gave up on browsing deals yesterday, figuring I’d wait until the crush abated. I put a couple of items in my cart, then checked out with 1-click.

    I went back in to review the order, only to find I had been charged the full price for one item. Canceled it, then ordered it again. This time I got the “lightning deal” price.

    Glad I thought to check the order.

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