Amazon outages temporarily disrupt orders and accounts for thousands of users

Amazon outages disrupted shopping for thousands of users on Thursday after problems with the company’s website and mobile app prevented customers from completing purchases or accessing account information.

Reports of the outage began around 2:00PM ET, according to the website Downdetector, which tracks service disruptions. More than 22,000 users had reported problems within two hours.

Customers said they were unable to check out, view product prices or access their purchase history.

The company later confirmed the disruption was caused by a technical update.

Amazon spokesperson Jennie Bryant said in a statement: “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 website and app are now running smoothly.”

Amazon said the problems appeared to be largely resolved by about 8:00PM ET.

The outage came during a period when Amazon Web Services has also faced technical challenges.

The company’s cloud computing division recently dealt with disruptions after drone strikes damaged three data centres in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Amazon said Thursday that its cloud services were functioning normally despite the earlier incidents.