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Amazon Suffers Glitches at the Start of Prime Day (techcrunch.com)
It's not just you. Amazon Prime Day started 15 minutes ago, and so far, it's not going well for Amazon. From a report: The landing page for Prime Day does not work. When most links are clicked, readers are sent to an error page or to a landing page that sends readers back to the main landing page. Direct links to the product pages, either from outside links or the single product placement on the landing page, seem to work fine. This is a huge blow to Amazon and its faux holiday Prime Day. The retailer has been pushing this event for weeks and there are some great deals to be had. It's not a good look for the world's largest retailer. Both the desktop website and mobile app are facing glitches, users said. Prime Day, which began just now, is a 36-hour shopping event. CNBC reports: Some users saw an error page featuring the "dogs of Amazon" and were never able to enter the site. Some got caught in a loop of pages urging them to "Shop all deals." Clicking the entry link for a specific category returned the user to the first page urging them to "Shop all deals." Some users successfully added items to their cart, only to receive an error message when trying to checkout and complete the purchase. Business Insider reports that several customers are threatening Amazon that they would cancel their Prime membership if the company is unable to resolve the glitches soon. Bloomberg offers some context on the significance of the any outrages on Amazon's website today: Trouble on the site spiked when the event began at 3 p.m. Eastern time, according to Downdetector.com, which monitors web trouble. Shoppers were expected to spend $3.4 billion on the site during the event, up more than 40 percent from a year earlier, according to Coresight Research.
Yeah - even pushing past the obvious technical errors - the deals aren't even close to good either - they're like low-grade department store sales.
The guys on the Slickdeals forums are going through everything:
https://slickdeals.net/ ...and there's nothing really great.
There's a couple of possible sources of this:
1) Companies are just cashing in on the allure of the day, only offering lukewarm deals. I don't think that's all of it though, since you'd get at least a few breakout offers by the make-it-up-in-bulk sellers.
2) Inflation is making it very difficult to offer those make-it-up-in-bulk agreements for a good sale.
3) Tariff threats probably contribute a little too - but they're mostly targetted enough to not have too large a knock-on effect. They shouldn't be dampening the entire ecosystem like we're seeing.
I think we're seeing a bit of a soft recession fear popping up, more than just inflation fears here. Many of these sale prices are higher than a lot of the normal prices - folks seem to be preparing for a economic winter here.
Ryan Fenton
Depends on what you use Prime for.....
I find it a value still (but maybe not if it goes over $119/yr).....but I use it for:
1. "Free" 2 day shipping on most things
2. Prime Video - I watch a lot of movies/TV shows from Prime offerings included with PRIME.
3. eBooks - I like to use the PRIME ebook offerings, I look over magazines, books, etc....
4. Prime Music- I enjoy a lot of music streaming from Prime Music, I hook my phone into my car system and stream music commercial free to listen to while driving all the time.
5. Storage - Now, I don't at this time use this, but I believe it comes with a decent bit of "free" storage on Amazon cloud for photos, etc...
I believe there are other services that come with Prime too, but I find all of these to be useful and I used them and they are valuable for my annual fee for Amazon Prime.
I believe they are also offering some benefits/sales at Whole Foods for Prime members too?
If Amazon continues to pursue the medical/prescription drug aspirations, it may channel into that too.
As far as prices....I do look at Amazon's pricing on something I want, and still to date, Amazon's 3rd party sellers don't charge sales tax, so that's something to look into too. Shopping Amazon as with any other retailer, requires the customer to do a bit of homework themselves, and to weigh convenience vs pricing.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
"Amazon's 3rd party sellers don't charge sales tax"
This is becoming false.
100% of our sales on Amazon to PA customers are charged sales tax by Amazon.
Also I'm glad you put "Free" in quotes for the free 2 day shipping. All sellers on Amazon utilizing Fulfillment by Amazon pay Amazon for every shipment. If you have ever wondered how 119 a year is enough for Amazon to cover the bill to a shipping carrier for a member who purchases a few times a week - it isn't.
They are charging you annually for two day shipping, but us sellers are the ones actually paying for it.