People enter the newly opened Amazon Books on May 25, 2017 in New York City (Spencer Platt / Getty Images / AFP)
Amazon.com Inc. sales rose sharply during the first three hours of its Prime Day sales event, dispelling fears that the technical glitches that incensed shoppers would significantly hurt business.
Shoppers spent 54 percent more in the first four hours of this year’s event, which began at 3 p.m. Eastern, than in the first four hours of a year ago when the shopping bonanza began at 9 p.m., according to Feedvisor, which sells software to set prices in e-commerce.
Amazon said sales in the first 10 hours of Prime Day grew at a faster pace than the same period of the event in 2017. The company said it sold millions of devices that work on the Alexa voice-activated platform, with top-sellers including the Fire TV Stick streaming device with an Alexa Voice remote and the Echo Dot voice-activated speaker.
Amazon’s annual 36-hour shopathon, an important marketing tool as well as a boost to business, had been expected to drum up $3.4 billion of spending -- up more than 40 percent from last year -- as bargain-hunters chase promotions and discounts. But the e-commerce giant acknowledged Monday that shoppers were having trouble on the site, while numerous 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.
"It wasn’t all a walk in the (dog) park, we had a ruff start,” Amazon said in a statement early Tuesday. It didn’t provide other details on what caused the technical difficulties, noting only that it has hundreds of thousands of new deals today.
Feedvisor’s estimates are based on results from its clients. The firm’s data indicates the glitches limited sales in only the first hour of the event, when sales were down 5 percent. They recovered in the second and third hours, according to Feedvisor, which is monitoring the event. Amazon’s stock was little changed at $1,817.15 at 9:46 a.m. in New York. It’s up 55 percent so far this year.
Read more: Amazon Crashes on Prime Day, Threatening $3.4 Billion Haul
The technical issues weren’t limited to shopping. Thousands of people reported losing connections with their Alexa digital assistants via Echo voice-activated speakers and having trouble streaming Prime Video, according to Downdetector.com, which monitors web trouble. Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud-computing division, reported global problems with its AWS Management Console, one of its tools. Thousands of big companies rely on AWS to run their websites.
