Was Amazon down today? Services resuming after customers couldn't check out on Thursday
A massive spike of 220,000 reports on Downdetector crippled Amazon's shopping experience Thursday afternoon.
Amazon faced a significant service disruption on Thursday, March 5, 2026, impacting hundreds of thousands of customers attempting to shop online. The outage, which began in the afternoon, was tracked by Downdetector, which recorded a massive spike of over 220,000 user reports at its peak. Customers across major U.S. cities including New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, San Francisco, and Seattle reported being unable to complete checkouts, view product pages, or use the Amazon mobile app. An Amazon spokesperson acknowledged the issue, stating, "We're sorry that some customers may be experiencing issues while shopping. We appreciate customers' patience as we work to resolve the issue."
By 7:00 p.m. ET, reports indicated that services were slowly resuming, with the number of outage reports dropping significantly to roughly 2,000. While some users regained the ability to add items to carts and make purchases, others still encountered blank pages on listings. The most common problem reported was checkout failure, crippling the core e-commerce transaction process. The exact technical cause of the partial outage remains undisclosed as of the latest updates. This incident highlights the massive scale and potential single points of failure in global digital infrastructure, even for a tech giant like Amazon, and serves as a reminder of the fragility of always-on services.
- Peak outage reports hit 220,000 on Downdetector, impacting major US metro areas.
- Checkout failures were the most common issue, blocking core transaction functionality.
- Services began resuming by evening, with reports dropping to ~2,000 by 6:20 p.m. ET.
Why It Matters
Major outages at dominant platforms like Amazon disrupt global commerce, highlighting critical infrastructure dependencies.