Slashdot Mirror
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.
is it good or is it whack?
Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
Turns out they accidentally listed a number of items that was not divisible by only itself or one.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The local tv news stations all mentioned this Amazon 'event' -- I don't know why they don't provide the same free advertising to all other local and national businesses (Apple also gets this special treatment (I've never seen local broadcast news mention Dell is releasing a new Precision laptop, but they will often mention when Apple has new releases))
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
"Prime Day" is played out.
"Megatron Day" or gtfo.
I just used PrimeVideo whilst eating lunch to continue my rewatch of Star Trek: Enterprise. The interface is all messed up and it took me a few clicks more than usual to get to what I wanted, but once there, the site streamed flawlessly. So that much is working, at least.
Someone had a massive, globally distributed, computing platform that people could rent for a short time as and when needed..........
Post giving a shit about companies like amazon and facebook.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Stop feeding the consumerist maw that is devouring you.
You all should be donating your money to making a nobody a billionaire.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I'm pretty sure this story is about Amazons infrastructure not being able to handle the load, which is of technical interest. But nice rant.
Yeah. For those of us who actually shop, Prime isn't that good of a deal on most things - especially when you have to pony up $119 for the "privilege" of giving your money to Amazon.
So I can buy Hodgson Oat Bran on Amazon for $9.97 or a Pack of 2 for $19.99 or I can buy it from Kroger for $2.19.
Sure, I can buy a pack of 12 for $28.20 ($2.35/box) but I'm still shelling out money and storing things that I have no room for. So, it's a false economy.
wasn't even a good rant...
nothing to see here - move along
I rated it a 3 out of 5 stars on Amazon.
I thought it was a pretty good rant, 4/5 stars. But I did receive it for free in exchange for this review.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I am not too bright, but it sounds like you are getting 130ukp off. How is that a con? That is a pretty big discount over other sellers.
In ecommerce vernacular, this is a 'good problem' to have. In essence either they didn't plan properly for the load or the promotion is just super successful and exceeded expectations. The whole premise is to drive traffic to your website, and they got it in spades.
Now everyone rushes to amazon.com to click on a product to see....... a product page appear. Oh well since i'm here i might as well shop.
Brilliant slashdot. Brilliant.
-dk
See on the BBC
Amazon Prime Day deals 'not what they seem'
By Brian Milligan
Personal Finance reporter
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/bus...
unfortunately we've removed your rating as it violates our policy. his rant was not against amazon per se but the state of our education system. but I diverge.
nothing to see here - move along
They're running it a bit longer than a day this year. Consider the extra time the beta while they work out the bugs. Course like most betas people might not come back when it's working.
It's fucked. However, as someone who sells on the platform and therefor spends a lot time there, it goes down more often then most people realize. Lots of reasons to expect they are using some super ancient code. The platform is all around not impressive.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Well, depending on how risk adverse you are...I would consider that to possibly be a buying opportunity.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
ROFLOL, an hour and 15 minutes in and Amazon acts like any other Slashdotted site. The preeminent E-commerce site can't even hold a sale.
Kicking out Musk would probably be a good thing for Tesla, as they could actually get someone in there with car manufacturing experience to properly ramp up manufacturing instead of trying to build cars out of a tent. I can only imagine the quality issues those cars are going to have off the lot.
Mod parent up -- buying from Amazon is a vote for the destruction of local business and privacy (considering their entry into the mass surveillance market).
Looks like they were getting spammed by bots, as I had to enter a captcha just to get to www.amazon.com
Too many people running bots to buy things cheap to resell after the sale.
That's why we can't have nice things.
I was seeing this error until I logged in with the Amazon account I have which has Prime. Afterward, I saw it one more time, then a reload resulted in the page working.
Soooo... login, mash F5 a few times.
Site devs didn't test for the test case in which the user wasn't yet logged in, or failed to blow out their browser cache before doing that test.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
The deals are not that great and mostly off brand garbage.
Or at least what I saw
If youre a teacher or artist thou, might work out for you.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
I logged on the website and put an item in my cart, but could not get past continue to purchase. Went to the amazon shopping app, item was in my cart and was able to complete purchase.
I think the strain was just too much, with people always on his nuts, they were beginning to tear. I mean, it's gotten to the point where people are so Elon obsessed, they interject him into everything with a negative light, even though he has nothing to do with the actual topic.
do that in NYC and you only support higher rents
I knew right away they were having problems. 404 isn't prime
It is a mess over at Amazon today. Orders are not being processed due to a massive DDoS and workers are walking out all over.
They should have called it D-DAY instead of Prime Day. I tried to place an order repeatedly for some items and kept getting this error...
https://drive.google.com/open?...
Looks like Jeff got a kick in the nuts today.
Probably be the same as when Eich "resigned."
Same. Would've given four, but it doesn't say "verified purchase."
Funny, that's exactly how I feel about Walmart and Target. I try to shop mom n' pop where / when possible.
For me Amazon isn't about shopping from home, it's about stock availability.
I used to buy my music at Spec's, until Spec's died.
I used to buy my books at All Books and Records, until they died.
I used to buy used vinyl and CDs at the same place, and a feew others, until they died.
I used to buy my clothes at Pennys and Sears, until they too became a shadow of what they were, with no inventory.
So where, exactly, local, should I buy? I buy from whomever has stock, thank you very much. "Oh, I can order it for you?" Yeah. So can I.
I don't blame Amazon, I blame Walmart. Amazon's just sweeping away the ashes of what Walmart torched 20 years ago.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
and there are some items where even with 4-5 Brick and mortar stores don't have something in stock /
How is a stock with a P/E ratio of negative 28 worth $90?
Wow.
It's like I'm reading Slashdot, circa early 2001.
If only there were some historical event that could possibly give us some insight as to what could happen if we keep up this financial stupidity...
For the longest time I couldn't even see anything in prime deals. Took over an hour to get that fixed.
Now I can see them and add stuff to my cart. But when I try to check out, I get the error screen telling me to go back and go to my cart again. I do so, but have to sign back in before it shows my cart. Get the cart up, click to check out, and get the same error page again. Lather, rinse, repeat. For crying out loud, Amazon, it's not your first prime day. You have no excuses for screwing us over like this.
#amazonfail #primedayfail #amazonprimedayfail #primeday2018fail.
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
What a flop. For the past three years, I've usually bought a few hundred dollars worth of stuff on Prime Day. This year? Pffft. I'm still looking for anything I even want, let alone anything I want that's an urgently-compelling great deal. Maybe the truly great deals just aren't showing up in searches under "Prime Day", but my reaction after searching for "mouse" (just to name one item I searched for) was, "Seriously? Am I supposed to be impressed right now?
Yes, and if the brick and mortar store doesn't stock the item, they'll say they can order it for you. Hell, I can order the damned thing myself!
Some things I buy from Amazon *are* available locally, IF I want to drive 8 or 10 miles to Walmart or Target, hunt for a parking space, and stand in line to give them my money. Call me lazy or impatient, but unless I'm going to be passing by the store on my way to work and back anyway, it's not worth the effort to drive there from home.
Lower rents -- if landlords can't rent ground-floor commercial space, guess how they make up the difference...
Furious Amazon customers are threatening to cancel their Prime membership after the retailer's heavily hyped shopping holiday, Prime Day, got off to a rocky start.
The Internet mob in full cry. I'd be keen on buying Amazon stock if they came out and replied "OK, please do. If this is your trigger, we are better off without you. We'll focus on improving service for the rest of our customers rather than waste time trying to please a small number of crybabies." Or at least something to that effect.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
It also seemed to kill the Prime Video services for a while too.