Amazon Prime Day disrupted by strikes and technical incidents

A pebble in the shoe of the American giant of the online trade. Since 2015, the Seattle firm offers in July a day of promotions to its premium subscribers. Until Tuesday midnight, more than a million products are available at bargain prices on the platform.

But this 2018 edition of Amazon Prime Day, which should bring $ 3.4 billion to the firm according to badysts (a new record), knows its share of inconveniences. Amazon first experienced a crash of its servers, linked to the explosion of traffic on its platform. An incident materialized by the impossibility for premium subscribers to browse parts of the site or pay for their purchases.

Technical difficulties at 9 pm

Instead, Internet users found themselves faced with a flop of dogs, animals used by the firm to illustrate its pages of errors.

According to the website DownDetector.com, which monitors online traffic problems, the outage started at 9pm (in France) and peaked at 10pm. The situation returned to normal later in the night, but still forced Amazon to communicate via Twitter. "Some customers are having trouble making their purchases, and we are working to solve this problem quickly," apologized the American company.

Strike in Germany …

The online business giant also had to to deal with certain strike movements initiated in several countries in Europe, notably in Germany, Spain or Poland.

In Germany, a union took advantage of the "Prime Day" to launch a picket line: "Until midnight, prices will go down and profits will go up, Amazon employees will leave their jobs and protest for a collective agreement protecting their health, "says Germany's largest service sector union, Ver.di, in a communicated. Six sites were concerned across the Rhine

The union deplores the working conditions of employees in Amazon's logistics platforms. Denouncing "kilometers traveled", "repetitive tasks" or "prolonged standing" positions

… and in Spain

On the other side of the Pyrenees, the mobilization took This is evidenced by the work of employees at Amazon's largest logistics center on site near Madrid. Some 1,200 workers began a three-day strike on Monday to demand a wage hike.

This is "about 80 percent" of the workforce, according to the unions. In a statement sent to AFP by Amazon, the firm of Jeff Bezos replied that "the total remuneration of the workers of San Fernando de Henares is in the high range of the logistics sector."

In his defense, the group explains that he predicted a 2.5% increase in gross annual salary for new employees and 5.6% for those with at least four years of seniority

Difficult to measure losses

These two events taint the Prime Day 'of the American giant. An operation whose impact on sales volume is difficult to measure.

Amazon quickly expressed itself to rebadure investors, stating that it had sold more products during the first hour of the 2018 edition than in four hours of the 2017 edition. The record of $ 2.41 billion earned by the firm in 2017 could therefore fall.

AFP and Reuters Sources

Lucas Mediavilla