Amazon says it fixed issue that led to website outage for thousands

By Anhata Rooprai

March 5 (Reuters) – Amazon said on Thursday it has resolved an issue related to its software code that had caused an hours-long outage on its website for thousands of shoppers.

The disruption, which began around 2:00 p.m. ET, gradually eased to less than 650 incidents of people reporting issues with the website in the United States as of 08:16 p.m. ET, down from a peak of about 22,000, according to outage-tracking website Downdetector.com.

“We’re sorry that some customers may have temporarily experienced issues while shopping. We have resolved the issue, which was related to a software code deployment, and (the) website and app are now running smoothly,” an Amazon spokesperson said.

The actual number of affected users may differ from what appeared on Downdetector, as the website’s figures are based on user-submitted reports.

Users on social media reported checkout failures, fluctuating prices, app crashes, and inability to access order histories or product pages.

Downdetector also logged minor disruptions involving the company’s streaming service, Prime Video, and its cloud unit, Amazon Web Services.

The incident comes less than six months after the Seattle-based company’s major outage in October 2025, an incident that caused global turmoil and knocked thousands of apps, payment systems and workplaces offline for hours.

Separately, some of Amazon’s data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were damaged by drone strikes linked to the Middle East conflict earlier this week, disrupting its cloud services.

(Reporting by Anhata Rooprai in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru and Natalia Bueno Rebolledo in Mexico City; Editing by Sumana Nandy and Sahal Muhammed)