Anyone had problems with Kindle Countdown Deals?

[Angstriddengoddess]

I have a book in KU and I scheduled a Kindle Countdown Deal. According to my KDP page, it's been running since 8 a.m. today.
You wouldn't know it by looking at Amazon. Nothing changed re the price, no listing on the Countdown Deals.

Is it normal for this to get messed up? I've sent an SOS to customer service, but I'm not sure if I should cancel the blog posts and such. Is it too soon to start panicking?

[Denise]

Are you in the US? KCD are only in the US or UK or both. If you're looking from another country, you won't see it.

If you're in the US, then I don't know...

[Angstriddengoddess]

I'm USian. That's interesting that they don't have this feature in other countries.

[Robin]

I have a US countdown deal that started today at midnight and I can tell it's running because the price is discounted on my amazon author page and on the product page itself, though I don't get the countdown deal box because I'm in the UK.

Does it say "in progress" in your KDP promotion tab?

[Angstriddengoddess]

Yes, the promotion tab says the countdown promo is in progress. But there’s no change in price. I checked the list of countdown authors and went through the list of countdown novels to verify. Nada.

[Robin]

Hmm v. strange! Could it be because its not 8am in all the US time zones yet?

[missingalaska]

Are you logged in? I don’t think countdowns show if you already own the book. View in an incognito tab on your browser.

[Angstriddengoddess]

I've checked when I was logged in, and when I was logged out, on a couple of different computers.
Looked under the list of Countdown Authors and my name was not on it.
Scrolled through the list of Countdown Books and my book was not there.

But if I log in to KDPamazon and click on my book, the details say it's been a Countdown Deal since yesterday at 8 a.m. Pacific Time (which is where I'm located).

Is there any way to contact KDP apart from the Customer Service link? I've had no replay to my queries.

[Angstriddengoddess]

Finally got a response back from Amazon. The email response said "You're right! Your KDP status page shows your book is in a Kindle Countdown Deal."
Ignored my questions as to why the book price was unchanged or why the book was not listed in the KCD promotions.
But they did ask me if I was satisfied with their email.

Why do they ask questions like that?

[Robin]

Ugh, how annoying 

[jez1982]

I've had a problem...with free promos. The price just doesn't change. Amazon says its a technical glitch that's affecting 5-10% of titles and that they are working on it. I thought maybe it only affected one of my titles, but I tried again yesterday with a different book, and woke up today with the same result: the price is still the same. Amazon says they will give us our free days/countdown days back. And the promo sites understand (at least the ones I've been working with). They say others have had problems also. Part of that unlucky 5-10%, I guess. This is really a very serious issue, and I asked them why Amazon doesn't have a disclaimer up saying some countdown deals/free promos might not go through, and they said, as 90 to 95% do go through, it's not really a big enough problem. Hmm!

[Robin]

I've had a problem...with free promos. The price just doesn't change. Amazon says its a technical glitch that's affecting 5-10% of titles and that they are working on it. I thought maybe it only affected one of my titles, but I tried again yesterday with a different book, and woke up today with the same result: the price is still the same. Amazon says they will give us our free days/countdown days back. And the promo sites understand (at least the ones I've been working with). They say others have had problems also. Part of that unlucky 5-10%, I guess. This is really a very serious issue, and I asked them why Amazon doesn't have a disclaimer up saying some countdown deals/free promos might not go through, and they said, as 90 to 95% do go through, it's not really a big enough problem. Hmm!

Oh wow, that really is a serious problem. I've had KDP countdown deals running this week. I wouldn't have booked them if I knew there were issues. Luckily I'm not in the 5-10% but it must be so stressful and irritating for the unlucky ones.

[jez1982]

Yes, very frustrating! Especially as they say they have 'no idea' when it will be fixed. Ugh!!

[lemmystarbursts]

Annoying new glitch. I wish Amazon would pull itself together.

[missingalaska]

I read today that Amazon recently switched from Oracle to a proprietary database structure, with full implementation scheduled to be done by 2020. I suspect the hiccups we've seen recently are related to this.