Is Amazon Prime Day a Bust?

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) promised its Prime subscribers a commercial holiday to rival Black Friday on Wednesday. Called Prime Day, deals on high-priced items including televisions and laptops were teased in advance of the sale.

But despite the hype leading up to the event, many Amazon customers took to Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) to express disappointment on the available deals. Tweeters joked about their lack of enthusiasm for vitamins, underwear, and shoehorn discounts.

Despite the online backlash, Amazon Prime Day peak order rates have surpassed 2014 Black Friday. A company spokesperson shared the following sales update with FOX Business Wednesday afternoon. 

Tens of thousands of Fire TV Sticks, 35,000 Lord of the Rings Blu-Ray sets, 28,000 Rubbermaid sets, and 4,000 Echos in 15 minutes. The Kate Spade purse was gone in less than a minute. The 1.2K of $999 TVs sold out in less than 10 minutes and there are thousands more deals coming.  

In an interview with FOX Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo, Amazon Prime President Greg Greeley said he was optimistic about the success of the holiday because the company  "introduced the world to exciting online shopping events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday."

Other retailers also decided to get in on the game, with Walmart (NYSE:WMT), Best Buy (NYSE:BBY), and Target (NYSE:TGT) also offering summer specials to compete with the Amazon holiday.

Amazon is not the first e-commerce brand to invent a commercial holiday. Alibaba (BABA) owes much of its success to Single’s Day on November 11, bringing in $9.2 billion in gross merchandise volume last year.

An eventful week for the e-commerce business, Ebay (EBAY) will be completing its spinoff of PayPal (PYPL) on Friday. Ebay reports earnings on Thursday and Amazon reports earnings on July 23.

UPDATE: This story has been updated from its original version to include comments from Amazon.