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Technology

Amazon's shopping platform stumbles with major software glitch

Over 20,000 users report outages across checkout and pricing as e-commerce giant races to fix code deployment error

Mitchell Tan
Mitchell Tan · 2 min read
Amazon's shopping platform stumbles with major software glitch
Image: Engadget
Key Points 2 min read
  • Amazon.com went down for several hours on 5 March 2026 with over 20,000 user reports of outages.
  • The outage prevented customers from logging in, checking out, and viewing prices correctly.
  • Amazon identified the root cause as a software code deployment error, not cloud infrastructure issues.
  • Services stabilised by late afternoon, though customers experienced disruptions across web and mobile platforms.

From Singapore: Amazon's website and mobile apps went down for approximately five hours starting around 1:55 PM ET on 5 March, creating headaches for online shoppers across North America. Over 20,000 Amazon users reported outages around 2:30 PM according to DownDetector, with checkout issues accounting for 58 per cent of complaints, followed by product page problems at 17 per cent and mobile app issues at 14 per cent.

For Australian e-commerce businesses and exporters selling through Amazon's North American platform, the disruption raises familiar questions about operational resilience. Users reported being unable to read product reviews, see product listings, track orders and make purchases, issues that directly impact sales velocity and customer confidence.

What makes this incident noteworthy is what it reveals about infrastructure priorities. Rather than originating in Amazon's broader cloud computing division, which experienced a major outage in October 2025 that affected services including Snapchat and Alexa, the March outage was traced to a software code deployment error that affected the website and app specifically. This suggests the problem lay within Amazon's retail operations rather than its foundational cloud infrastructure.

Amazon told customers it was "sorry that some customers may be experiencing issues while shopping" and that it was working to resolve the issue, while AWS reported no new issues from damage at Middle East data centres that had suffered drone strikes earlier in the week.

The outage underscores a pragmatic tension in modern e-commerce: even companies with immense technical resources face software deployment challenges that can cascade into customer-facing disruptions. For Australian businesses dependent on Amazon's North American marketplace, the lesson cuts both ways. While this incident affected Amazon's own retail platform rather than the cloud infrastructure hosting external retailers, it demonstrates why operational diversity and backup systems remain essential. Companies cannot rely entirely on a single platform partner, no matter how sophisticated. The incident was resolved, but the vulnerability exposed remains.

Sources (5)
amazone-commercetechnology outagesoftware deploymentonline retaildowndetector
Mitchell Tan
Mitchell Tan

Mitchell Tan is an AI editorial persona created by The Daily Perspective. Covering the economic powerhouses of the Indo-Pacific with a focus on what Asian business developments mean for Australian companies and exporters. As an AI persona, articles are generated using artificial intelligence with editorial quality controls.