Amazon customers took to industry boards when they found they were unable to shop or checkout due to an outage on Thursday. Many people said they encountered Amazon’s classic error page that shows dogs with the message, “UH-Oh. Something went wrong on our end.”
One frustrated shopper reported, “I met A LOT of Amazon’s dogs today. Let’s see… there was Bailey, Barkley (& Emma), Barney, Bowser, Brandi, Butters (& Marge), Cannoli, Clancy, Corbin, Duke, Frank, Hunter, Jaja, Jax, Kodak, Lola, Lucy, Maddie, Mae, Martini, Meela, Milly, Miss Chief (lol), Muffin, Oliver, Peek, Phoebe, Ranger & Remi, Robin, Rocket, RoRo, Rufus, Rupert, Shadow, Sheriff, Soju, Talula, Tanq, and Thomas. Oh, and Waffles.”
Amazon told media outlets in a statement that “some customers may have temporarily experienced issues while shopping” due to an issue related to a software code deployment” and apologized.
But the issue impacted more than people shopping on the app and desktop. A customer reported on Down Detector that they were unable to pick up the item they had already purchased when they went to an Amazon locker, which was essentially holding their item hostage:
“When I try to pickup from locker, app just shows spinning wheel on page. Called and was told it would be fixed in ten minutes, and 35 minutes later it still didn’t work. It’s been hours now and back home, still no connection. Don’t know what to do.”
Members of the Amazon Vine Review program were unable to post reviews. And the outage even impacted Amazon’s Kindle ebook program – “I can’t view any of the descriptions and there are no options to download or even get a new book so what the heck,” one customer wrote in part.
Sellers were impacted not only by the loss in sales when customers were unable to complete their purchase. Sellers also encountered issues trying to access their own listings. “All of my listings are 404 error, not showing the buy box, currently unavailable or shows an error when added to the cart,” one seller posted on the Amazon seller discussion boards on March 5th.
“Same,” another seller reported. “I thought sales are slow today, but I checked the inventory and saw many of the listings not showing any image and on the listing page there is not buybox, seller info or even product info is missing. Seems AWS is impacted badly.”
Some shoppers had reported on DownDetector that they couldn’t see item prices, such as a one who wrote in part, “Prices are also not showing up …just “Options” then when I click on that, I get a “Suspenseful Music” message and it goes back to the item page with no additional info. Lots of Product Unavailable and 404 Dogs.”
Another seller who said they usually have daily sales exceeding $2,000 posted during the outage, “We did not sell anything for the last 5 hours.”
A seller reported in another thread that when they tried replying to messages, “it says it’s being processed, and then it appears as if we never replied.” And a seller whose listings suddenly became unsearchable wrote, “it seems Amazon seller support is out of reach too. Anyone on the same boat?”
The problem of lost sales was not the only issue for sellers – those who advertise their listings were concerned Amazon was charging ad fees during the outage when customers might have been able to click on an ad but end up on an error page.
On Friday, a seller posted the following in a thread on the Amazon discussion boards:
Amazon Outage Today Caused Significant Ad Spend Without Ability for Customers to Checkout – Request for Clarification
I’m hoping someone from the Amazon Ads or Seller Support team can seek clarification regarding the Amazon site outage that occurred earlier today.
For approximately three hours today, Amazon experienced a widespread outage where many customers were encountering “Dog Page” errors, dead-end product pages, and checkout failures. During this period, customers were clearly unable to complete purchases or navigate the platform normally.
However, Amazon Advertising campaigns continued to run normally during the outage, and ads continued receiving clicks.
From what we observed on our account:
Our ad spend volume increased significantly during the outage window.
We received hundreds of clicks with virtually no conversions.
Customers appeared to be frantically clicking and attempting to access product pages, likely refreshing or retrying pages due to the site errors.
Many of these clicks were likely occurring while customers were encountering broken pages or checkout failures.
Because the site infrastructure itself was failing, these clicks did not represent normal shopping behavior. Customers were unable to complete purchases even if they intended to.
This creates several serious concerns for advertisers:
Advertising spend accumulated while purchases were impossible.
Conversion rates were artificially suppressed due to the platform outage.
Campaign performance metrics may now be distorted, potentially affecting:
-optimization algorithms
-bid efficiency
-organic ranking signals
Advertisers essentially paid for traffic during a time when the marketplace itself was not functioning properly.
Given that the outage was entirely outside of advertiser control, we would appreciate clarification on the following:
Will Amazon automatically refund ad spend generated during the outage window?
Will Amazon adjust performance metrics or algorithmic learning for campaigns affected during this time?
Has Amazon identified the exact outage timeframe so advertisers can understand the impact on their accounts?
We understand that technical incidents can happen, and we appreciate the scale at which Amazon operates. However, when the marketplace is not functioning and customers cannot complete purchases, continuing to charge advertisers for clicks raises fairness concerns.
We respectfully request that Amazon review ad traffic during the outage period and provide appropriate reimbursement or adjustments for affected advertisers.
Thank you for your time and for any clarification the team can provide.
We asked Amazon Friday evening if it would be crediting seller ad fees during Thursday’s outage when customers were clicking on ads but unable to purchase items and will update this article when we receive a response.
CNBC reported that reports on DownDetector spiked around 2 pm ET, and that the issues appeared to be largely resolved by 8 pm ET.
