Although much hype was generated by Amazon’s ad campaign and associated media coverage in the run-up to the second annual Prime Day this week, it seems that this event was the victim of its own success.

The Telegraph and several other outlets reported on issues that customers were suffering when attempting to make purchases via safe shopping online, with high volumes of traffic compromising the operation of Amazon’s e-commerce checkout service.

A tweet posted to Amazon’s official Twitter account confirmed its awareness of these issues, while also assuring customers that work was being done to amend them.

The checkout was not the only element of the site which appeared to be overloaded with traffic and thus less than optimally functional, with some customers taking to social media to complain of being unable to access any part of it.

This is an issue for Amazon since it was intending for Prime Day to deliver a much needed mid-year boost to sales, while also encouraging more people to sign up to its premium subscription service. And if customers were unable to buy online, then it may have dissuaded some people from sticking with its paid-for elements.

In spite of these complaints, it is still predicted that Amazon will have enjoyed its highest ever single day sales, since the Prime Day promotion was not only available in the UK but also in many other countries around the world.

Discounts and offers which were exclusively available to Prime subscribers helped to drum up plenty of activity, although it is a shame that Amazon’s servers were overwhelmed by visitor numbers, suggesting that even the company itself had failed to adequately project the amount of interest that had been generated ahead of the event.