Cyber Monday Sees Credit Card Glitches and Amazon Disappointments

Amazon sellers reported glitches impacting their orders and buying activity on Cyber Monday, and in the UK, a major credit card outage impacted sales not only online, but at restaurants, gas stations and stores.

Cyber Monday is about the worst day a merchant can experience technical issues since it's one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Amazon sellers noticed glitches impacting their orders, but also impacting some purchasing activity.

In response to a thread started by an Amazon seller who was unable to get phone support, another seller reported, "As a buyer, I've been trying to find some items that I know are there, and I'm getting the "Oops! we can't find what you're looking for" message. This is so not cool. Also, I have a bunch of pending orders that should have been released a while ago, if the system were functioning normally."

Other sellers confirmed that payments for many of their confirmed orders were not transferring over to their seller accounts. "Yep.. Lots of issues here," wrote one seller. "Made a listing 20 minutes ago and its no where to be found.. Also in 10 minutes I had 4 orders go through and nothing now for 2 hours.. and I have other orders for a split second they were in my pending... Amazon must be overloaded."

Other problems reported included items in shopping carts changing from one seller at one price to another seller at a higher price and back again; and one item in shopping cart changing to two items - and the duplicate items reappearing after having been deleted.

However, aside from the thread on the seller's board, there was no widespread reports of glitches reported by Amazon shoppers.

A look at the Amazon Facebook page showed many shoppers complaining about a lack of good deals, however. In fact, some Facebookers said Amazon actually raised the prices on Black Friday and Cyber Monday and passed them off as deals. A typical comment was, "Black Friday prices with 10 to 20 percent added on. No good deals this year at all on Cyber Monday. Disappointing. No purchases for me this year."

In the UK, things were bad for shoppers attempting to use RBS/NatWest credit cards. The Telegraph newspaper reported the bank experienced a three-hour disruption beginning at about 6:30 pm. "NatWest customers rushed to Twitter and other sites on Monday evening to report their debit and credit cards were being declined in shops across Britain. Other said they couldn't use the bank's website or smartphone apps, either."

Cyber Monday has turned into a weeklong event, keep us posted about the highs and lows of your holiday shopping here, and report glitches and technical issues on the Ecommerce EKG board.

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