amazonprimeday1

Amazon.com customers who stayed up early Wednesday morning for initial Prime Day deals seem to be a tad underwhelmed.

Today is the first-ever Prime Day, a major online Black Friday-like shopping event created by Amazon to celebrate its 20th anniversary and reward Prime members with discounted products.

[Update: Despite customer complaints, Amazon says Prime Day order rates are surpassing Black Friday at peak times.]

However, a quick scan of the #PrimeDay tweets shows some customers frustrated with the first batch of deals.

https://twitter.com/wonnor_coods/status/621216793068216320

You can see my “Prime Exclusive Deals of the Day and Kindle Deals” below (click to enlarge), which sat in a row at the top of my Prime Day page with deals that lasted all day.

amazonprimeday12111

Some of these products include a pet vacuum robot (34% off), a lawnmower (40% off), and a 42-piece Rubbermaid set (40% off), which soon became a running joke on Twitter.

Some customers on the east coast that stayed up until 3 a.m. weren’t happy.

https://twitter.com/rachybecker/status/621219000157138944

https://twitter.com/ReignSixx/status/621220337053634560

As of 1 a.m. PT on Wednesday, there were only nine of the “Prime Exclusive Deals of the Day,” each available all day. Other products were grouped into four different categories: Top Prime-Exclusive Lightning Deals; Available Prime-Exclusive Lightning Deals; Upcoming Prime-Exclusive Lightning Deals; and Prime-Exclusive Savings and Sales.

primedayAmazon let you sort by about 20-to-30 categories within each of these groups. I counted about 60 total products in the “Top Prime-Exclusive Lightning Deals” group; about 230 in the “Available Prime-Exclusive Lightning Deals” group; about 90 in the “Upcoming Prime-Exclusive Lightning Deals” group; and about 40 in the “Prime-Exclusive Savings and Sales.”

That’s a little more than 400 total products available in the first hour of Prime Day.

Amazon also offered other special deals, like $30 off the Kindle and $60 off the Fire HD7, a VIP trip to watch the Amazon-produced Transparent Season 2 premiere in Los Angeles, 35% off one grocery item, and a $10 Amazon gift card by simply signing into your Amazon account on Amazon’s mobile app.

There are also some good deals yet to be posted that Amazon promised, like a 32-inch LED TV for $75, a 50-inch 4K TV bundle for under $1000, and the Amazon Echo for $50 off.

We’ll see if the reaction changes as the day progresses, but for now, the initial response doesn’t seem great. It will be interesting to watch Walmart and other retailers who are rolling out their own discounts this week in response to Prime Day.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.