Amazon Outage: Over 20,000 Users Report Problems
▼ Summary
– Amazon experienced a widespread outage, with over 20,000 user reports indicating problems with its website, Prime Video, and AWS.
– The outage began around 1:41 pm ET, peaked at 3:32 pm ET with over 20,800 reports, and then declined significantly by the evening.
– Amazon acknowledged “some customers may be experiencing issues” but initially did not provide a detailed confirmation of the specific problems.
– Half of the reported problems were related to checkout, while issues also affected the mobile app and product pages, which sometimes failed to load.
– Amazon later resolved the outage, attributing it to a software code deployment, and confirmed the website and app were running smoothly again by Thursday evening.
A significant disruption to Amazon’s online services impacted thousands of users, with reports indicating widespread issues accessing the platform’s core shopping functions. The outage, which began in the early afternoon Eastern Time, led to a surge in user complaints as many found themselves unable to complete purchases or load product pages.
The problem tracking website Downdetector recorded a sharp increase in reports starting around 1:41 PM ET. The volume of complaints escalated rapidly, reaching a peak of over 20,800 reports by 3:32 PM ET. While the main Amazon.com website bore the brunt of the issues, a smaller number of users also reported difficulties with Amazon Prime Video and Amazon Web Services. The company did not immediately provide a detailed public explanation, but an Amazon support account on social media acknowledged around 3:02 PM ET that some customers were encountering problems and that a resolution was being worked on.
Data from the outage reports painted a clear picture of where users were struggling. A full 50 percent of the complaints were related to failures at the online checkout, effectively preventing customers from finalizing their orders. Another 21 percent of reports came from users of the Amazon mobile app, while 17 percent cited specific problems with product pages that would not load correctly or at all. Independent confirmation noted that the Amazon homepage itself was intermittently failing to load for some visitors, indicating a broad technical failure.
Service began to recover later in the day. By 4:10 PM ET, the number of new problem reports on Downdetector started to decline, showing a significant drop by 5:55 PM ET. The situation continued to improve into the evening, with reports falling to just 435 by 9:05 PM ET on the same day. Following the restoration of service, Amazon issued a statement explaining the cause. The company attributed the widespread shopping issues to a problematic software code deployment, apologized for the inconvenience, and confirmed that both the website and mobile app were once again operating normally.
(Source: Ars Technica)
