Amazon Gets Defensive As Customers Criticize Prime Day

Amazon.com's much-hyped Prime Day was meant to be a celebration. As the Seattle company marked its 20th birthday, it was hoping that customers would share its enthusiasm by taking part in an online sale that was billed to have more offerings than the yearly shopping ritual of Black Friday.

Half way through Prime Day, a 24-hour bonanza on Wednesday that features thousands of heavily discounted items, many customers didn't seem to be enthused with the selection of goods or price cuts and took to social media to express their dismay. In response, Amazon got defensive, uncharacteristically releasing an update during the sale to partially illustrate Prime Day's impact, while characteristically shielding some figures to make it unclear of just how successful the event has been.

"Prime Day peak order rates have already surpassed 2014 Black Friday," said Greg Greeley, vice president of Amazon Prime, in a statement. "Prime members have already bought tens of thousands of Fire TV Sticks, 35,000 Lord of the Rings Blu-Ray sets, 28,000 Rubbermaid sets, and 4,000 Echo devices in 15 minutes. The Kate Spade purse was gone in less than a minute. We also sold 1,200 of the $999 TVs in less than 10 minutes. And there are thousands more deals coming."

Those numbers mean very little. Amazon declined to say what the actual peak order rate--defined as the highest number of orders per minute--really is. Is it the peak order rate bigger than Black Friday? Yes. By how much? Who knows?

While the sale rates of single items are slightly interesting, they do little to characterize how well the millions of other items that are being sold through Amazon Prime are moving off the retailer's warehouse shelves. Some don't think Amazon's statement is impressive at all.

"They usually don't advertise like this for Black Friday and there's way more competition [on Black Friday]," said Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst at Forrester.

Though the company had to contend with Walmart, which launched its own sale today, it hasn't had to compete for customers' attention in the middle of July as it would have to do during the busy holiday shopping season. Mulpuru estimated earlier that Amazon may see a doubling or tripling of its average daily sales volume for this time of year because of the promotion, but also noted that the company could be losing anywhere from $5 to $10 per significantly discounted item.

“We know it will be expensive for us in short term but we know it’ll be great for our customers,” Amazon spokesperson Julie Law told FORBES before the sale began on Wednesday.

Customers, at least those that are armchair critics, have taken to Twitter and Facebook to voice their complaints. While #PrimeDay has trended on the 140-character microblog social network throughout the day, users have also created a second disparaging hashtag: #PrimeDayFail. Shoppers using that label hammered Prime Day's selection of items, which ranged from televisions and tablets to suntan lotion, pop tarts and a much maligned 55-gallon container of a water-based lubricant for more than $1,138, roughly half its normal price.

"#PrimeDay #PrimeDay Fail A crappy garage sale with an insane marketing budget. Let me grab that knee brace at 4% off!" wrote one user.

Hopefully a Prime member with bad knees found that deal.