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Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteAmazon’s Prime Day 2018 launch was hit by shopping-site and app problems, while separate labor actions took place at fulfillment sites in Germany and Spain. Website trouble was reported at the promotion’s start on July 16 and eased substantially within a couple of hours. The full number of affected shoppers and the technical cause were not established.
When the Amazon Prime Day crash happened
Amazon’s 2018 Prime Day promotion began at 3 p.m. Eastern on Monday, July 16. Contemporary reporting said website problems increased around the launch, then declined significantly within a couple of hours. The account appeared in an Indian Express archive article attributed to Bloomberg and published July 17, 2018: Indian Express, July 17, 2018.
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This was a temporary launch-period incident, not a current Amazon outage. The report did not quantify how many customers were affected; some people encountered errors while others said they could shop successfully.
What shoppers and users experienced
- Some visitors saw Amazon’s familiar dog error page or could not get the app to load.
- Some shoppers could add an item to their cart but did not see the Prime Day discount at checkout.
- Some promotion links reportedly sent shoppers back to Amazon’s home page.
Jessica Henning complained on Amazon’s Facebook page: “Way to go, Amazon.com. People might actually buy prime day stuff if your site wouldn’t crash. Great planning. Can’t get the app to load at all.” That post illustrates one customer’s experience; it does not establish how widespread any particular symptom was.
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Other services were also reported to have problems
The same report relayed user complaints about Alexa losing its connection and Prime Video streaming trouble. It also reported global problems with the AWS Management Console. These were distinct reported service issues. The article did not establish that they shared a technical cause with the retail-site failures.
What Amazon said—and what sales figures mean
Amazon acknowledged shopping difficulties in a Twitter post on July 16, 2018: “Some customers are having difficulty shopping, and we’re working to resolve this issue quickly,” while adding that “many are shopping successfully.” The company said sales in the event’s first ten hours grew faster than in the same period of 2017, but did not disclose total sales specifics in the report.
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| Figure | What it represented |
|---|---|
| $3.4 billion | Coresight Research’s 2018 projection for Prime Day spending, described in the report as more than 40 percent above the previous year. This was a forecast, not a final sales result. |
| 54 percent more | Feedvisor’s estimate that spending in the first four hours of the 2018 event exceeded the first four hours of 2017, based on results from its clients. |
| 5 percent lower | Feedvisor’s estimate of sales in the first hour, when glitches were limiting sales; it was not an Amazon-reported figure. |
| 4,670 posts | Crimson Hexagon’s count of social-media posts about the Prime Day crash by Monday afternoon. |
| 80 percent | Crimson Hexagon’s classification of online sentiment about Prime Day as conveying anger or sadness. |
These figures came from outside research firms as reported by Bloomberg; they are not audited Amazon totals. Amazon’s mention of selling millions of Alexa-platform devices, including Fire TV Stick and Echo Dot among its stated top sellers, does not explain the outage or indicate a remedy.
Was a cause confirmed?
No confirmed technical root cause was given in the contemporary account. Antony Edwards, then chief technology officer of Eggplant, suggested that an incompatible software change affecting Amazon’s content distribution network could explain the symptoms. He said, “Everything we see points to their content distribution network, which is how they get product images and videos around the world quickly,” and, “Someone has made a change and it’s not compatible.” This was Edwards’s analysis at the time, not an Amazon-confirmed postmortem.
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- Amazon.com Gift Cards never expire and carry no fees.
- Multiple gift card designs and denominations to choose from.
- Redeemable towards millions of items store-wide at Amazon.com or certain affiliated websites.
- Available for immediate delivery. Gift cards sent by email can be scheduled up to a year in advance.
- No returns and no refunds on Gift Cards.
Forrester analyst Sucharita Kodali criticized Amazon’s preparedness, saying, “I’m candidly shocked that they’re not prepared for the traffic,” and, “Unless this is way beyond their wildest expectations, it’s just odd.” That was contemporaneous opinion, not an engineering finding about the failure.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the strikes involved
The reported labor actions were separate from the website incident and from each other:
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- Germany: The Ver.di services union said workers at six Amazon sites went on strike Tuesday to protest what the union described as a lack of health benefits. The report did not name the sites or document the outcome.
- Spain: Unions called for a three-day strike at Amazon’s main Spanish fulfillment plant, seeking new contractual agreements and a salary increase. The report did not establish the eventual outcome.
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
