Amazon Outage Disrupts US and European Shopping

Shoppers across the United States and parts of Europe faced widespread disruptions on Amazon's website and mobile app Thursday afternoon, preventing many from browsing products, adding items to carts and completing purchases.

The outage began around 1:30 p.m. Eastern time on March 5, according to user reports compiled by the outage tracking site DownDetector. By mid-afternoon, more than 20,000 complaints had been logged in the U.S. alone, with additional reports from users in the United Kingdom and other countries. The issues peaked around 2 p.m. Eastern time, affecting major U.S. cities including Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Houston and Atlanta. In the U.K., smaller numbers of users also signaled problems, though the scale appeared more limited there.

Customers described a variety of glitches, from error messages blocking access to order histories and search filters, to inconsistencies in product prices that fluctuated or failed to display at checkout. Many reported repeated failures when attempting to log in, update shipping addresses or process payments, with some encountering timeouts or empty product pages. Data from DownDetector indicated that about 58 percent...