Furious Amazon customers are threatening to shop elsewhere as the site has issues for over an hour on its biggest shopping day of the year

Amazon

Amazon Prime Day is off to a rocky start.

• Amazon's website has been up and down since the start of Prime Day in the United States at 3 p.m. ET.
• The website has been experiencing issues like links that go nowhere, leaving customer unable to access the special deals.
• Furious customers are threatening to cancel their Prime memberships and shop elsewhere.

Amazon Prime Day is off to a rocky start.

Prime Day deals were expected to kick off at 3 p.m. ET on Monday. But just a few minutes later, Amazon's website crashed, and many Prime members were unable to shop the deals. When it has been online, the links on the main page advertising Prime Day deals have gone nowhere - except to the main page itself. Pages within Amazon's mobile app have also been affected, showing an error page with a photo of a dog.

Individual product pages appeared not to be affected by the problems and were still functional, though customers reported issues with adding items to their carts for purchase.

Some threatened to cancel their memberships over the problems. 

Retailers who jumped on the Prime Day bandwagon this week with their own deals, such as Target, Macy's, and JC Penney, are poised to take advantage of these technical glitches as some angry customers say they will be shopping elsewhere.

Target is offering discounts of 30% off its exclusive home brands, select baby gear, and Google products, as well as 25% off beauty and personal-care items. Meanwhile, J.C. Penney, which held its biggest two-day sale earlier this month, is holding a three-day promotion, called "Cyber-in-July," which kicked off on Monday.

These technical glitches are likely to cost Amazon millions of dollars in sales. One Click Retail estimates that Amazon sells about $1 million per minute during peak time on Prime Day, based on last year's data. As of the time of writing, Amazon's site issues had lasted for more than an hour.

Amazon did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment on the site issues. 

Check out all of our Amazon Prime Day coverage:

• Amazon Prime Day, a made-up holiday that's become bigger than Black Friday, is here. This is why it's such a big deal.
• Everything you need to know and what to expect on July 16
• Amazon is giving Prime members up to $30 in free cash for shopping at Whole Foods
• Amazon is pulling out all the stops to make sure as many people as possible shop on Prime Day
• Amazon Prime Day is killing Black Friday
• 5 overlooked deals you really don't want to miss out on during Prime Day - but probably have in previous years
• Amazon's made-up holiday is forcing other retailers to offer crazy sales
• 9 money-saving tips and hacks for shopping on Amazon Prime Day
• Prime Day has become such a big shopping event that even retailers that never run deals are jumping on the opportunity