Amazon's website crashes as soon as Prime Day sale begins, users report

Amazon Prime Day 2018: Best deals so far including TVs, Fitbit and Echo Show

As well as bagging $1bn worldwide, Prime Day served as a golden opportunity for Amazon's deliveries.

Amazon's third annual Prime Day, a 36-hour sales event for Prime users, was supposed to kick off smoothly at 12 p.m. PT/3 p.m. ET. on Monday, but when many shoppers logged on during those first several hours, they were met with 404 error pages featuring photos of different dogs. It said it sold millions of devices that work on the Alexa voice-activated platform, with top-sellers including the Fire TV Stick streaming device and the Echo Dot speaker.

Amazon said it sold over a million smart home devices in the United States.

Amazon issued statements Tuesday and Wednesday, saying Prime Day sales in the US grew faster than past year within the first 10 hours of the annual sales promotion.

This year's Prime Day is expected to bring in $3.4 billion for the company, up from an estimated $2.4 billion a year ago, according to retail research firm Coresight Research. Four new countries will be part of Prime Day this year: Australia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Singapore.

While details on how well Amazon's newest addition, Whole Foods, which it acquired nearly one year ago, did on Prime Day were left out, the company did reveal its best-selling item was organic strawberries. The company recently said it had 100 million Prime members worldwide.

Looks like Amazon wasn't primed for Prime Day this year.

More news: U.S. to receive American soldiers remains in coming weeks: Mike Pompeo

The result came despite widespread site glitches Monday that frustrated Prime members trying to take advantage of deals during the manufactured shopping holiday.

"Our analysis indicates the robust North America retail channel is showing no signs of slowing down in [the second half of 2018] as the Prime membership moat that Bezos & Co. have built is gaining further steam in the field and the Amazon flywheel effect is further playing out globally among consumers", he wrote in a note to clients. Others reported some Prime Day deals were not immediately available.

Amazon's first 10 hours of Prime Day outpaced the first 10 hours previous year, with Prime members buying "millions" of Alexa devices, according to the e-tailer.

Whatever the sales tally may be, to Amazon, sales are only a secondary goal during that one-day event.

PRIVATE LABEL PUSH: Amazon has been building its own brands, and it'll be offering deals on those, especially its clothing brands, analysts have said. Amazon's mid-summer sale runs exclusively for Prime members.

When do the Prime Day 2018 sales start?

This week's labor protests underscore a growing challenge for Amazon: It is facing increased scrutiny over its hiring and labor practices at a time when it is looking to add thousands of new warehouse workers and growing at breakneck speed.

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