Amazon Claims Prime Day is a Success

Despite numerous consumer complaints on social media, Amazon is claiming Prime Day to be a success.

“Prime Day peak order rates have already surpassed 2014 Black Friday,” said Greg Greeley, Vice President Amazon Prime, in a press release issued at 3:30 p.m. EDT. “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.”

But denial may be a river that runs through Amazon’s Seattle headquarters: Kurt Heinemann, CMO of 1-to-1 personalization firm Reflektion, says Prime Day is a huge missed sales opportunity for Amazon.

“Looking at Prime Day from the shopper’s perspective, it seems Amazon is basically selling a bunch of old inventory stock that’s been piling in their warehouse,” Heinemann said. “You don’t see some of the trademark Amazon personalization elements, which is unfortunate because shoppers are stuck looking at irrelevant and even sold out inventory. This day is a lost sales opportunity for Amazon to capitalize on the extra traffic by cross-selling and intelligently promoting products that are not on sale.”

Amazon’s customer service department has been fielding several complaints about Prime Day, as evidenced by this Facebook post and exchange…