Amazon’s Most Important Service Breaks

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Sep 2, 6:47AM EDT · Published Sep 1, 7:26AM EDT

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The usually seamless Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) check-out process broke down over the Labor Day weekend.
Such problems do undermine company reputations.
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Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is famous for its cloud industry-leading AWS, its Prime fast shipping service, Prime Day deals, and Prime Video. However, at the core of Amazon’s success is its seamless check-out buying process. It is what makes Amazon so easy to use and brings in hundreds of millions of customers. However, it recently broke, leaving some buyers no way to finish the buying process. Customers vented their anger online.

According to CNBC, “In the run-up to the long weekend in the U.S., Amazon has started promoting discounts on products as part of a Labor Day sale. But people weren’t able to purchase discounted products because of the glitch, as some people pointed out on the X social network.” Amazon often has special sales around the holidays.

The problem is an example of how what seem to be small things can go wrong and damage a business, at least temporarily. It is like cars that won’t start without a charge from an outside battery, air conditioning that goes down in the hottest weather, and cellular systems that don’t work and render smartphones useless.

These problems may be short-lived, but they do undermine reputations. Complaints appear on social media, the press picks up the event, sales are lost.

Amazon’s service fumbled during one of the most important days of its year.

Prediction: Amazon (AMZN) Stock Will Hit $200 per Share This Year

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.