Thousands of online shoppers experienced difficulties accessing and completing purchases on Amazon on Thursday, as reports of service disruptions surged across the internet.

Data from the outage-tracking platform Downdetector shows that complaints from users began rising rapidly in the afternoon.

By around 3:45 p.m. Eastern Time on March 5, nearly 20,000 users had reported problems with the e-commerce platform. The first spike occurred earlier at about 2:30 p.m., when roughly 18,000 outage reports were recorded. Reports later dipped slightly to around 16,000 before climbing again during a second surge.

Shoppers Report Checkout and Pricing Problems

Many affected users took to Downdetector to describe the problems they encountered while trying to shop on Amazon.

According to the reports, the issues varied widely. Some shoppers said they were unable to complete purchases due to checkout failures or payment processing errors, while others complained about incorrect or fluctuating prices appearing on product listings.

For some users, the site appeared to load normally but displayed inconsistent pricing or errors during the final stage of a transaction.

Amazon Responds to the Disruption

In a statement provided to USA Today, Amazon acknowledged the technical problems and apologized to customers experiencing difficulties while using the platform.

“We’re sorry that some customers may be experiencing issues while shopping,” the company said. “We appreciate customers’ patience as we work to resolve the issue.”

Amazon did not immediately provide details on the cause of the outage or how many users may have been affected globally.

Another Major Platform Outage This Week

The Amazon disruption comes just days after another major technology platform experienced similar problems.

On March 3, thousands of users reported service issues with Facebook, according to Downdetector.

At the height of that outage, more than 10,000 users flagged problems with the social media network.

Several Facebook users reported seeing the same error message when trying to access their accounts:

“Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue. We expect this to be resolved shortly. Please try again in a few minutes.”

Growing Concerns Over Platform Reliability

Frequent disruptions across major online platforms have raised concerns among users who rely on these services for shopping, communication, and daily activities.

Amazon, which handles millions of transactions every day worldwide, rarely experiences widespread outages. When they do occur, they can temporarily disrupt shopping activity for a large number of customers.

As of Thursday afternoon, Amazon said its teams were actively working to fix the issue and restore normal service.

FAQ

Q: What caused the Amazon outage?
A: Amazon has not disclosed the exact cause of the outage but is working to resolve the technical issues affecting users.

Q: How many people were affected?
A: Reports on Downdetector suggest that tens of thousands of users experienced problems, with peaks of around 20,000 reports.

Q: What issues did customers face?
A: Users reported checkout errors, payment failures, and fluctuating or incorrect product prices.

Q: Has Amazon apologized?
A: Yes. Amazon issued a statement acknowledging the issues and asking for customers’ patience.

Q: Has this happened before?
A: Yes. A similar outage occurred on March 3, affecting Facebook, where thousands of users reported access issues.