Amazon.com Inc.’s site crashed late Monday afternoon, interrupting the flow of sales during the e-commerce giant’s 2018 Prime Day.
At 3.10 p.m. Eastern, the site AMZN, +0.52% was showing a message accompanied by an image of a dog saying: “Sorry, something went wrong on our end,” directing users to try to go back to the home page. That resulted in another similar message with a different image of a dog.
MarketWatch has reached out to Amazon for an explanation.
“There is no doubt that this will erode sales and deter some customers from buying,” said Global Data Retail’s Managing Director Neil Saunders in a note. “The outage is especially problematic as many of Amazon’s Prime deals are promoted for a set window of time - something that could cause a great deal of frustration for potential customers.”
Amazon heavily promoted this year’s Prime Day as it has in years past, highlighting discounts on Amazon devices and private-label goods as well as the back-to-school, back-to-college, grocery and other deals to be had. Whole Foods Market is also included in this year’s event.
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“The good news is that after extensive marketing and hype, Amazon has clearly pushed demand for its Prime extravaganza to an all-time high - maybe even more than it anticipated,” said Saunders. “Fortunately, that means the day will likely be a financial success even with the various system problems. That this year’s event is longer than in previous years will also play to Amazon’s advantage.”
Meanwhile, shoppers took to Twitter to vent their frustration.
When you try to order all the treats on #PrimeDay but #Amazon has crashed. pic.twitter.com/ZKLI66m1T7
— Henry Holcomb (@FirstDogHenry) July 16, 2018
