Yahoo! experienced technical difficulties processing payments yesterday on what is one of the busiest online shopping days in the US.Known as 'Cyber Monday', the day following the Thanksgiving holiday break is notorious for drawing heavy online traffic as consumers look to buy products they failed to purchase in shops over the weekend.
The search engine provider, which helps thousands of small internet firms run their sites and manage their e-commerce transactions, had been unreliable all day.
Just after 08:30 Pacific Standard Time (PST), Yahoo! issued a statement saying: "Some merchants are reporting that shoppers are receiving an error message indicating 'system unavailable' during the checkout process.
"We are aware of this issue and are currently investigating. More information will be provided as it becomes available."
Further updates were issued throughout the day, with the company stating that the problems had been rectified shortly after 23:00 PST.
Yahoo! cited a heavy volume of traffic as the cause of the problems and assured customers that it was continuing to put processes in place to prevent further disruptions.
Despite apologies from the internet giant, however, many firms were left disgruntled by the difficulties.
Sara Schwimmer, who runs PodJudaica, a retailer of Jewish products, stated: "I couldn't have imagined a worse scenario. It's been horrifying and it's a loss of thousands and thousands of dollars," the New York Times reports.
