AMZN Amazon.com Inc

By Waverly Colville 

Amazon.com Inc.'s website and mobile application were plagued by outages Monday afternoon as the online retail giant kicked off its annual sales event, Prime Day.

Users took to social media to report trouble getting access to Amazon's home page, as they encountered error messages featuring "the dogs of Amazon" -- the company's placeholder messages during outages -- for at least an hour into the launch. The sale began at 3 p.m. Eastern on Monday and is scheduled to end at the end of the day Tuesday.

An Amazon representative said that the company is working to resolve the issue quickly and that only some shoppers are experiencing difficulty. Amazon didn't disclose the cause of the outage.

"In the first hour of Prime Day in the U.S., customers have ordered more items compared to the first hour last year," the representative added.

Amazon's stock price set a new intraday trading record Monday, and closed up 0.5% at $1,822.49. In after-hours trading, shares fell 1%.

Analysts and investors typically bank on the shopping event -- which is typically bigger for Amazon than Black Friday -- to generate a revenue bump during the summer, something that helps the company fund its holiday preparations.

The company-created holiday began in 2015 and has since expanded to 36 hours from 24 hours. Customers can get deals at Whole Foods Market, which Amazon now owns, and on Amazon products such as its Echo electronics, Kindle books and Fire TV.

Earlier this year Amazon said its Prime subscription service, which gives customers free two-day shipping, rewards, access to its video streaming service and other perks, had more than 100 million members.

--Laura Stevens contributed to this article.

Write to Waverly Colville at waverly.colville@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 16, 2018 18:14 ET (22:14 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.