Amazon Recovers From Prime Day Stumble With Soaring Sales

Amazon has found its footing after a difficult start to its annual Prime Day sales promotion, according to Bloomberg.

Spending jumped 89 percent in the first 12 hours of the event on the e-commerce giant’s website and app compared with the same period last year, according to estimates by Feedvisor. Amazon extended Prime Day to 36 hours from 30 hours last year and added four countries, including Australia, all of which point to greater revenue if the site is functioning.

The Feedvisor data and an announcement from Amazon indicate the company was able to shake off shopper disappointment from sweeping technical glitches as the promotion began. Customers vented their frustrations on social media with the hashtag #PrimeDayFail. Many complained about being unable to checkout or search for products, instead getting an error page with images of dogs. Discount site Lovethesales.com estimates the web problems cost Amazon more than $99 million in sales.

Amazon doesn’t disclose Prime Day revenue and hasn’t explained the cause of the technical problems. The company said sales in the first 10 hours of Prime Day grew at a faster pace than in 2017. Amazon said it sold millions of devices that work on the Alexa voice-activated platform, with the most popular items including the Fire TV Stick streaming device with an Alexa Voice remote and the Echo Dot speaker.

The technical issues weren’t limited to shopping. Thousands of people reported losing connections with their Alexa digital assistants via Echo speakers and having trouble streaming Prime Video, according to Downdetector.com. Amazon Web Services reported global problems with its AWS Management Console which Amazon said was unrelated to problems on the shopping site.