With the holiday shopping season in full swing, a couple of retailers are experiencing technical difficulties amid a surge of customers on their websites.
Costco and Nordstrom Rack were off to a rocky start to Black Friday. In the past 24 hours, both of their e-commerce platforms suffered outages that prevented some shoppers from completing their orders.
Yesterday on Twitter, a number of frustrated users noted that the Costco.com site had been down for several hours.
One person wrote, “I’m usually a satisfied #Costco member, but today I’m a very disappointed customer #CostcoWebsiteDown. The site has been down since 9AM. I hope they do something to make it up.”
Another complained that the site was not allowing customers to log into their accounts: “All I had to look forward to today was some deals because I’m alone for the holiday and your website [has] been down for hours. Quit sending me all the member sale emails since I CAN’T LOG IN YOUR SITE.”
Costco has since posted a banner on its homepage informing customers that its website is “currently experiencing longer than normal response times.” It has also extended its Thanksgiving Day-only promotions into Black Friday. “We apologize for any inconvenience,” the company wrote.
NordstromRack.com, however, is back in service. Following reports of crashes on its site, the retailer took to Twitter last night to confirm the system errors.
“We’d like to apologize for the technical issues we were experiencing and any inconvenience,” it said. “Though we planned ahead for our busiest week of the year, the demand has exceeded even our expectations.”
Nordstrom Rack shoppers had reported issues including items disappearing from their carts, problems with the login process and the inability to complete their transactions.
FN has reached out to both companies for comment.
The tech hiccups come during a critical shopping period for retailers. According to Salesforce, digital sales in the United States during Thanksgiving soared 17% to $4.1 billion, with online sales on Black Friday expected to increase 16% to $7.4 billion.
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