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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsAmazon’s 2018 Prime Day launch brought reports of shopping failures, alongside separate labor actions in Germany and Spain. Website problems surfaced as the sale began on July 16 and eased substantially within a couple of hours, according to contemporary reporting. The full number of affected customers and the technical cause were not established.
When did the Amazon Prime Day crash happen?
Amazon’s 2018 Prime Day promotion began Monday, July 16, at 3 p.m. Eastern. An Indian Express article carrying a Bloomberg report, published July 17, 2018, said website trouble increased around launch and declined significantly within a couple of hours. This is a record of the incident as reported at the time, not a current service alert or an official Amazon technical postmortem. Read the contemporary report.
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What problems did shoppers report?
The retail website and app did not fail in just one way. Some visitors saw Amazon’s familiar dog error page; some could add items to a cart but did not see a Prime Day discount at checkout; and some sale links sent shoppers back to the home page. Other customers reported shopping without trouble. The article did not quantify how many people were affected.
One frustrated customer, Jessica Henning, wrote 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,” according to the report.
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There were also user reports of Alexa connection losses and Prime Video streaming trouble, as well as problems with the AWS Management Console. These were distinct reported service issues; the contemporary article did not establish that they shared a technical cause.
What did Amazon say, and what caused the failures?
Amazon wrote on Twitter 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 statement acknowledged shopping difficulties but did not explain their cause or give an estimate of the number of affected customers.
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A proposed explanation, not a confirmed cause
Antony Edwards, then chief technology officer at Eggplant, suggested that a software update might have introduced an incompatible change affecting Amazon’s content distribution network—the system used to deliver product images and videos. He told Bloomberg: “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.” That was Edwards’s analysis at the time, not a confirmed explanation from Amazon.
Contemporaneous criticism
Forrester analyst Sucharita Kodali criticized Amazon’s preparedness, saying, “I’m candidly shocked that they’re not prepared for the traffic,” and adding, “Unless this is way beyond their wildest expectations, it’s just odd.” Her comments were an opinion about the launch, not an engineering finding.
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What did the reports say about Prime Day sales?
The figures reported at the time came from outside estimates, not audited sales totals released by Amazon. The article said Amazon had not provided total sales specifics. It did report Amazon’s statement that sales in the first ten hours grew faster than during the same period in 2017, and that the company sold millions of devices using its Alexa platform.
| Figure | Attribution and qualification |
|---|---|
| $3.4 billion in projected Prime Day spending | Coresight Research’s 2018 forecast for the promotion, described in the report as more than 40 percent above the previous year. This was a projection, not a final sales figure. |
| 54 percent more spending during the first four hours than during the first four hours of 2017 | Feedvisor’s 2018 estimate, based on results from its clients. |
| 5 percent lower sales in the first hour | Feedvisor’s 2018 estimate for the period in which glitches limited sales; it was not an Amazon-reported figure. |
These estimates describe different measures and time windows, so they should not be treated as competing company-wide sales totals.
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What strikes took place during the event?
The labor actions reported alongside the technical trouble were separate from the website incident. The Indian Express report said Germany’s Ver.di services union reported that workers at six Amazon sites went on strike Tuesday, July 17, to protest what the union described as a lack of health benefits. It did not name the six sites or document the eventual outcome.
The report also said unions called for a three-day strike at Amazon’s main Spanish fulfillment plant, seeking new contractual agreements and a salary increase. It did not establish the outcome of that call. The report does not connect either labor action to the technology problems.
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How widespread was the reaction?
Crimson Hexagon, a social-media monitoring firm, counted 4,670 posts about the Prime Day crash by Monday afternoon in 2018. The article also reported the firm’s classification that 80 percent of online sentiment about Prime Day conveyed anger or sadness. Those figures describe the monitoring firm’s reported social-media analysis; they do not measure the share of Amazon customers who experienced an outage.
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