Buzz about Amazon‘s second annual Prime Day — the site’s summer version of Black Friday — has been building for the past few weeks. The retailer kicked off the event on its site Tuesday morning.
But by 8 a.m. today, some shoppers were already reporting issues “add to cart” and checkout functions. The company took to Twitter to get ahead of the issue, but it wasn’t enough to deter negative reactions on social media and in the press.
Consumers were eager to see the deals, which included discounts of 25 percent to 50 percent on major brands including Nine West, Vince Camuto, Steve Madden and New Balance Reebok.
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Worldwide members ordered 398 items per second during last year’s Prime Day, exceeding Black Friday records at the time, according to a company press release.
All told, there will be more than 100,000 deals worldwide available exclusively on Prime, with shoppers able to use Prime Now, a new part of Prime Day that allows customers in a growing number of cities to get select deals delivered in an hour or less. Since Prime Day last year, Prime Now has added 33 new metropolitan areas in six countries to the service. Users can also track and shop deals on shoes, apparel, electronics, household goods and more.
