Yesterday afternoon Amazon.com Inc. (Seattle) kicked off its annual shopping holiday Prime Day, in which it features steep discounts on various products, with embarrassing glitches.
Around its launch at 3 p.m. ET, shoppers opening the app or browsing its webpage for deals instead found photos of dogs and a message reading, “Uh-oh. Something went wrong on our end,” reports the Chicago Tribune. After roughly an hour and a half into the promotion, the site was working for many shoppers. In an email to the Associated Press, Amazon said “many [customers] are shopping successfully,” and that consumers had ordered more items than in the same time frame last year.
Amazon does not disclose its sales figures for Prime Day, but it is estimated that the company will generate $3.4 billion in sales worldwide in the duration of the this year's sale, up from an estimated $2.4 billion last year. The sale will also extend six additional hours this year, possibly mitigating losses from the opening-day glitches.