Amazon is hoping customers don’t see any more dogs, after early problems on Prime Day meant people trying to shop got only images of the cute canines delivering an apologetic message. Amazon’s website ran into some early snags on Monday on its much-hyped Prime Day, an embarrassment for the tech company.

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Shoppers clicking on many Prime Day links after the 3 pm ET launch in the US got only images of dogs some quite abashed-looking with the words, “Uh-oh. Something went wrong on our end.” People took to social media to complain that they couldn’t order items.

By about 4:30 pm, many Prime Day links were working, and Amazon said that it was working to resolve the glitches.

In an email, it said “many are shopping successfully” and that in the first hour of the 36-hour Prime Day in the US, customers ordered more items than in the same time frame last year.

Still, the hiccups could mute sales and send shoppers elsewhere during one of Amazon’s busiest sales periods that’s also a key time for it to sign up new Prime members.

Shoppers have lots of options, as many other chains have offered sales and promotions to try to capitalise on the Prime Day spending.

Analyst Sucharita Mulpuru-Kodali at Forrester Research called the glitch a “huge deal.” “This is supposed to be one of their biggest days of the year,” she wrote in an email.

“I am shocked this caught them off guard. But I guess the lesson is to not have a big unveil during the middle of the day when everyone comes to your site all at once.” Amazon, which recently announced that Prime membership would be getting more expensive, was hoping to lure in shoppers by focusing on new products and having Whole Foods be part of the process.

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It was also hoping parents would use the deals event to jumpstart back-to-school shopping.

Jason Goldberg, senior vice president of commerce at Publicis.Sapient, noted that the problems could turn off shoppers for a while, particularly those who planned to sign up for Prime membership.

“If you were planning to find Prime deals to lower the cost of back-to-school (purchases), you’re almost certainly going back to your traditional venue of choice,” he said.

Goldberg noted that it’s easy for Amazon to extend deals on its own devices and brands, but trickier for it to extend deals for its third-party sellers because they signed up for different promotional slots.