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Angry Amazon customers vent over ‘Prime Day’ sale fail

Posted at 12:09 PM, Jul 15, 2015
and last updated 2015-07-15 18:26:15-04

NEW YORK — Sorry Amazon. It’s not living up to the hype.

Unhappy Amazon shoppers vented on Wednesday about its “Prime Day” sales, slamming the online retailer with the hashtags that included: #unhappyPrimeDay, #AmazonFail, #gobacktosleep, and #PrimeDayFail.

Amazon had promoted the 24-hour sale event as having “more deals than Black Friday” and teased major savings on electronics, home appliances and baby products.’

An Amazon spokesperson sent Fox 13 this statement:

“Prime Day peak order rates have already surpassed 2014 Black Friday.  Prime members have bought tens of thousands of Fire TV Sticks, 35,000 Lord of the Rings Blu-Ray sets, 28,000 Rubbermaid sets, and 4,000 Echos in 15 minutes. The Kate Spade purse was gone in less than a minute. The 1.2K of $999 TVs sold out in less than 10 minutes and there are thousands more deals coming. New deals start every ten minutes until late tonight.”

But based the response on social media, the site’s “Lightning Deals” weren’t that electric and some products sold out in a matter of seconds.

One customer on Twitter took issue with Amazon’s claim that Prime Day would be bigger than Black Friday, saying it was more like April Fool’s Day.

Another frustrated shopper user said the sale items sold out in seconds — even “a bunch of crap that no one wants…”

Some were perplexed that even items like “sharpies” were gone in a flash, with one person using the hashtag “amazonsucks.”

The backlash was captured by one shopper who tweeted: “Now whenever something in my life goes wrong or I have a bad day, I’ll say I had a #primeday.”

“Jamal” took to Twitter to call it a “horrible sale with misleading promotion. Where’s the stuff we want?”

Another user tweeted, “When I die I want whoever’s responsible for #AmazonPrimeDay to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time.”

Despite the social media backlash, Amazon was pleased with the sales day in a statement to CNNMoney.

“Prime Day has been exciting so far,” Amazon said. “We have years of experience with these types of events and we stagger the deals to make sure the fun will last through tonight.”

Walmart, which also hosted a mega-sale on Wednesday, didn’t seem to be experiencing quite the same blowback on social media from shoppers.