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[feline groovy]

Amazon logs record setting Prime Day: Firm sells more than 100 MILLION products, despite outages that left shoppers unable to make purchases

• Amazon said Prime Day was the 'biggest shopping event' in  the firm's history
• It sold more than 100 million products over the course of the 36-hour event
• That's despite glitches on its app and website that kept shoppers from ordering

REUTERS

PUBLISHED: 09:42 EDT, 18 July 2018 | UPDATED: 13:38 EDT, 18 July 2018

Amazon called this year's Prime Day the 'biggest shopping event' in its history as shoppers bought more than 100 million products during the 36-hour sale. 

That's depite glitches on its mobile app and websites that prevented customers from placing orders for hours on end.  

Among the best-selling products were several of Amazon's own, including the Fire TV stick and the Echo Dot. 

Outside of Amazon-branded products, the Instant Pot, 23 and Me DNA test and the LifeStraw water filter were the best-selling items in the US, while the Bosch cordless drill, Philips Hue light strip and Finish dishwasher tablets were purchased the most in the UK. 

Prime Day began on July 16 and ran through 3 a.m. (ET) on Wednesday. For the first time, Amazon extended the sales event to be a day and a half this year. 

'Extending Prime Day to a day and a half this year allowed us to further reward members with unbeatable deals, access to exclusive new products and unforgettable experiences that highlight the many benefits of a Prime membership,' said Jeff Wilke, CEO of Worldwide Consumer at Amazon, in a statement.

The company did not provide total sales figures for the event, which was open only to members of its Prime subscription service across 17 countries, up from 13 last year. 

Short of mentioning how many Prime subscribers it added, Amazon said it had more new Prime members sign up on July 16 than any previous day in the company's history.

This year was also the first Prime Day since Amazon acquired Whole Foods for $13.7 billion last June.   

Though only available to US consumers, Amazon offered savings at Whole Foods Market during Prime Day, with the best-selling item being organic strawberries. 

The glowing numbers came even though Amazon was hit with a massive glitch that caused its US and UK sites to crash at the beginning of the event. 

Users would attempt to click through to a product and would instead be met with error messages and pictures of dogs. 

Making matters worse, it took Amazon several hours before it acknowledged the outage, eventually issuing a statement Wednesday evening. 

‘Some customers are having difficulty shopping, and we’re working to resolve this issue quickly,’ Amazon tweeted hours after the site crashed.

‘Many are shopping successfully – in the first hour of Prime Day in the US, customers have ordered more items compared to the first hour last year.

‘There are hundreds of thousands of deals to come and more than 34 hours to shop Prime Day.’ 

Another bizarre glitch left shoppers in a loop; clicking a category such as 'Electronics' or 'Home and Garden' will simply redirect you to a page that says 'Shop all Deals' – and, clicking that will bring you back to the start.

The technical glitches lasted for at least two hours and was likely exacerbated by excessive demand and traffic volume, RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney said.

The retailer likely got between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in revenue from Prime Day and gross merchandise value topped $3.5 billion, Mahaney said.

[feline groovy]

The story behind the dog photos on Amazon’s Prime Day 404 error pages

Yahoo Finance     July 18, 2018

This year’s Prime Day may be remembered for the dogs, not the deals.

Amazon’s third annual Prime Day, a 36-hour sales event for Prime users, was supposed to kick off smoothly at 12 p.m. PT/3 p.m. ET. on Monday, but when many shoppers logged on during those first several hours, they were met with 404 error pages featuring photos of different dogs.

The sitewide problems were met with mixed reactions on social media. At best, some Prime members found humor in the canine photos, but other shoppers were justifiably less amused they couldn’t start bargain-hunting.

In a statement provided to Yahoo Finance, Amazon acknowledged “some customers” were having difficulty shopping and that it was working quickly at the time to resolve the issue, but it did not offer a reason for the website outage. Still, it’s fair to assume Amazon.com’s cloud servers temporarily buckled under the increased web traffic around Prime Day.

As for those “Dogs of Amazon” 404 error pages? A source with knowledge of the matter tells Yahoo Finance they were cooked up a few years ago by several user experience (UX) designers, who photographed over 40 employee-owned dogs — including “Waffles” the corgi and “Barkley” the beagle — and integrated those snapshots into the error pages.

Dogs have played an integral part of Amazon’s company culture since its early years. In the late 1990s, two former Amazon employees — a husband and wife team — brought their Welsh corgi, Rufus, to work. Rufus played an integral part of the team, such that in 1998 and 1999, employees held up the canine and used his paw to click the mouse, officially launching some of the earliest Amazon.com pages online. (One of the buildings on Amazon’s Seattle campus is named after the dog, and his mug can found on the walls of multiple buildings.)   

Amazon now has over 6,000 registered employee-owned dogs that roam the company’s headquarters. The company caters to them with events including movie screenings and dog costume contests, as well as facilities including a 1,000 square-foot dog park.

While Amazon would probably argue its 404 error pages are simply an extension of the company’s dog-friendly culture, let’s face it: they’re also a creative way to cushion the blow whenever parts of its heavily trafficked website goes down. A dog photo certainly isn’t the same thing as that steeply discounted Instant Pot, 4K flat-screen TV or Echo speaker, but it’s better than staring at blank web page — if only ever so slightly.

[chrystaltree]

The technical glitches lasted a heck of a lot longer than 2 hours,  I saw that dog all day on that first day and so did my friends but we all got in the next day.  I did end up buying a couple of small items that came at good price and that I needed.  I bought a small fabric. steamer and an automatic wine bottle opener.  I'll be able to uncork the wine myself.  I bought just what I needed but one friend said she most of her Christmas shopping and a computer for her grandaughter.

[chickenbutt]

Cool with the dog info. 

I know there was an outage because I've seen it everywhere, but I was on Amazon numerous times both the first and second day of Prime Day (only bought one item on the second day) and I never had any slowage or outage problems.    

Must have been regional, or maybe overnight (?).   I don't go online overnight, or usually even in the evening.

[wagirl]

I didn't buy anything due to the glitches that lasted all day and into the night. and I live in Seattle where they are located--couldn't even take care of their local people---had a cart load of stuff too---what a sad joke, Jeffy B!!!!

[NickNack]

I looked at Amazon off and on both days and didn't have any problems.  I only bought four boxes of Greenies for my dog.  They were a great price.

[Krimpette]

I made two purchases Monday afternoon when the Prime Day began.  I received the first order this AM before 8:00 AM.  The second order came around 10:30 AM.  Don't know how they do it!!!!!!!!!!

[Marp]

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@Krimpette wrote:

I made two purchases Monday afternoon when the Prime Day began.  I received the first order this AM before 8:00 AM.  The second order came around 10:30 AM.  Don't know how they do it!!!!!!!!!!

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Neither does Q but if anyone finds out the details Q desperately needs that information so please share.

[Kachina624]

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@NickNack wrote:

I looked at Amazon off and on both days and didn't have any problems.  I only bought four boxes of Greenies for my dog.  They were a great price.

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@NickNack.   I bought a box of every dog treat they had on sale.  They wouldn't let me buy multiples of the same items.

I also bought US (the dogs and me) an Instant Pot.

[NickNack]

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@Kachina624 wrote:

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@NickNack wrote:

I looked at Amazon off and on both days and didn't have any problems.  I only bought four boxes of Greenies for my dog.  They were a great price.

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@NickNack.   I bought a box of every dog treat they had on sale.  They wouldn't let me buy multiples of the same items.

I also bought US (the dogs and me) an Instant Pot.

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@Kachina624  Interesting that they wouldn't let you buy multiples of the same item.