Staples Defends Web Site

(Updated with spokesman's comments and modifications to earlier paragraphs)

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Staples(SPLS) says that an error message that customers were receiving in their early hours of shopping at Staples.com by no means meant that the Web site was down.

Staples says it has seen an unprecedented number of visitors to its Web site -- a few million between 6 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. -- and as a result some customers had a slightly slower experience on the Web site during that 30-minute timeframe.

"Only small fraction of visitors received the error message, which was quickly corrected as Staples did the load balancing," the spokesman said.

Early this morning users had complained that the website was down, but it was apparently functioning again at 7 a.m. EST.

Those bargain hunters became very distressed when they rushed onto the Staples Web site only to find an error message. Staples quickly became one of the most searched topics on Google.

This is, of course, the busiest shopping day of the year, and heavy traffic on the site may have caused the glitch.

The following error message appeared on shoppers' screens: "An error occurred while processing your request. Reference #102.d148453f.1259320024.0"

-- Reported by Andrea Tse in New York

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