UPDATED 17:30 EDT / JULY 15 2015

NEWS

Amazon’s ‘Prime Day’ is a bust, says everyone but Amazon

For the last few weeks, Amazon has been touting its upcoming Prime Day, which the site claimed would rival Black Friday sales. The only catch is that you have to be an Amazon Prime subscriber to take advantage of the deals. Now Prime Day has finally arrived, but the excitement over the sales quickly fizzled out as users discovered that most of the items on sale were junk, and the few good items sold out in minutes.

Here are just a few comments made by users on Twitter:

Some consumers accused the online retailer of using Prime Day as a way to clear out its warehouse, while others made the more obvious accusation that the company simply did it as a way of driving up Prime subscriptions during the summer. A few conspiracy theorists even claim that Prime Day was a way to get people to use up their free trial period and forget to cancel it before they are charged for the next month.

Amazon claims success

While Amazon’s more vocal users are making disparaging remarks about the quality of its sales, the retailer claims that so far the event has been a success, and Amazon says that Prime Day has already outperformed its Black Friday sales.

Amazon’s sales day also prompted a response from Wal-Mart, which launched its own one-day sales event to compete with Prime Day, and Wal-Mart said that it would also be temporarily lowering the minimum order amount for free shipping from $50 to $35.

Some analysts have said that these sales are aimed at enticing consumers who are still reluctant to spend money.

“Both companies are likely to grab share from retailers that don’t participate in heightened promotional activity,” said a report from Bloomberg Intelligence. “Deals may drive shoppers to buy school and college merchandise early, leaving fewer dollars to spend elsewhere.”

While Amazon’s Prime Day sales may have been numerically successful, they do not seem to have impressed the public, and the general perception seems to be that the retailer over promised and under delivered.

As one Reddit user eloquently put it: “Nothing I wanted was on sale. Also, I don’t know what I want, but it wasn’t that.”

Screenshot via Amazon.com

A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Support our open free content by sharing and engaging with our content and community.

Join theCUBE Alumni Trust Network

Where Technology Leaders Connect, Share Intelligence & Create Opportunities

11.4k+  
CUBE Alumni Network
C-level and Technical
Domain Experts
15M+ 
theCUBE
Viewers
Connect with 11,413+ industry leaders from our network of tech and business leaders forming a unique trusted network effect.

SiliconANGLE Media is a recognized leader in digital media innovation serving innovative audiences and brands, bringing together cutting-edge technology, influential content, strategic insights and real-time audience engagement. As the parent company of SiliconANGLE, theCUBE Network, theCUBE Research, CUBE365, theCUBE AI and theCUBE SuperStudios — such as those established in Silicon Valley and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) — SiliconANGLE Media operates at the intersection of media, technology, and AI. .

Founded by tech visionaries John Furrier and Dave Vellante, SiliconANGLE Media has built a powerful ecosystem of industry-leading digital media brands, with a reach of 15+ million elite tech professionals. The company’s new, proprietary theCUBE AI Video cloud is breaking ground in audience interaction, leveraging theCUBEai.com neural network to help technology companies make data-driven decisions and stay at the forefront of industry conversations.