The Independent's journalism is supported by our readers. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn commission.
Amazon down - latest updates: Company says it does not have ‘ETA for full recovery’
Follow the latest updates
Amazon Web Services, the shopping giant’s internet infrastructure arm, is experiencing technical issues that are echoing across much of the rest of the internet.
A variety of websites and services were hit by problems, which started at approximately 5:00pm GMT yesterday, apparently because of issues with the underlying technology.
That included many of the world’s biggest apps and services, from Disney Plus and Tinder to Coinbase. Games were also hit, with PUBG and League of Legends seeming to go down.
It also hit other Amazon-owned services, including the Alexa voice assistant, the Kindle, Amazon Music and its Ring security cameras.
But it did not appear to be a problem in all locations. Amazon said the problems were in the “US-EAST-1” which is hosted in Virginia and serves areas nearby, meaning that people reliant on other parts of the AWS network may still be able to load services, though it might perform more slowly than usual.
Toyota dealer services goes down and Netflix traffic drops
Toyota spokesperson Scott Vazin said the company’s US East Region for dealer services went down. The company has apps that process dealer warranty claims and other services, over 20 of which were affected.
Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik Inc, a network intelligence firm, said he did not believe the outage was anything nefarious. He said a recent cluster of outages at providers that host major websites reflects how the networking industry has evolved.
“More and more these outages end up being the product of automation and centralization of administration,” he said. “This ends up leading to outages that are hard to completely avoid due to operational complexity but are very impactful when they happen.”
Kentik saw a 26% drop in traffic to Netflix, among major web-based services affected by the outage, Madory said.
It was unclear how, or whether, the outage was affecting the federal government. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in an email response to questions that it was working with Amazon “to understand any potential impacts this outage may have for federal agencies or other partners”.
AWS may be down, but memes and karaoke (?) continue online
Amazon’s flagship cloud computing service AWS may be experiencing difficulty at the moment, but that hasn’t stopped social media users from finding moments for levity, from making memes about abandoned Amazon packages, to Amazon drivers singing karaoke.
Here are some of the best jokes below, ranging from Bo Burnham references to “porch pirates”:
Delta Airlines struggle amid AWS outage
Customers trying to book or change trips with Delta Air Lines were having trouble connecting to the airline. “Delta is working quickly to restore functionality to our AWS-supported phone lines,” said spokesperson Morgan Durrant. The airline apologized and encouraged customers to use its website or mobile app instead.
Dallas-based Southwest Airlines said it switched to West Coast servers after some airport-based systems were affected by the outage. Customers were still reporting outages to DownDetector, a popular clearinghouse for user outage reports, more than three hours after they started. Southwest spokesman Brian Parrish said there were no major disruptions to flights.
Also according to DownDetector, people trying to use Instacart, Venmo, Kindle, Roku, and Disney+ have reported issues. The McDonald’s app was also down. But the airlines American, United, Alaska and JetBlue were unaffected.
Amazon outage hampers popular online video games
In addition to causing problems for customers of companies like Netflix and Ticketmaster, the ongoing Amazon Web Services outage has impacted players of popular video games.
Titles like Destiny 2, League of Legends, Valorant, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and Dead by Daylight have all reported issues with the online components of their gameplay, according to games news site Kotaku.
“We’re aware of a problem causing login attempts to fail and are working on a fix,” a notice on the League of Legends support site reads.
Amazon faces losing up to £1.4bn from UK shoppers over Visa ban
Amazon faces losing nearly £1.4bn from UK shoppers when it blocks payments made using Visa credit cards in Britain from January 2022.
A poll of 2,000 adults found that 13 per cent of Amazon’s 48 million UK customers - equivalent to 6.15 million people - intend to either slash the amount of their purchases, or totally quit buying from the corporation.
As Amazon’s total UK revenues in 2020 were £20.63bn, the loss of this part of its British customer revenues could cause the firm to lose £1.356bn in purchases.
Data suggests Visa credit card transactions last year accounted for around £1.4bn of the firm’s net sales in the UK.
It also emerged that one-third of those polled have been left with “negative” feelings against the firm for stopping Visa payments from 19 January 2022.
Read more:
Amazon faces losing up to £1.4 billion from UK shoppers over Visa ban
Amazon worker shares dystopian gameboard which monitors how hard staff are working
A TikTok user shared what appeared to be a screen turning Amazon warehouse work into a kind of game.
The video posted by @chutuo, which has garnered almost two million views, shows what seems to be a screen in an Amazon warehouse listing possible “achievements”.
Other items on the list include “punctual” and “picking up speed”. The item entitled “make history” urges workers to pick up one million products.
In a separate video posted on Sunday, TikTok user @couryeo wrote that working at Amazon was “the worst job I’ve ever had”. The TikToker said she was “overworked” and “underpaid”. She added that she was “treated like a machine” and that there was “no socializing at all”.
“Basically a prison [in my opinion],” she wrote.
Read more:
Amazon worker shares dystopian gameboard which monitors how hard staff are working
Adele fans forced to wait to buy concert tickets as Ticketmaster goes down
Adele fans have been forced to wait to buy tickets for her tour after the Ticketmaster website went down amid the AWS chaos.
Other sites, such as Coinbase, Robinhood, and Netflix, also experienced problems.
“Due to an Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage impacting companies globally, all Adele Verified Fan Presales scheduled for today have been moved to tomorrow to ensure a better experience. Fans will receive an email with updated info on their new presale time,” Ticketmaster tweeted on Tuesday.
Adele released her album 30 in November and will hit the road in July 2022, five years after finishing her last world tour, Bloomberg reported.
AWS say they ‘continue to experience increased error rates’
Amazon Web Services said in an update that they “continue to experience increased” error rates in application programming interfaces – connections between computers and between computer programmes – in the eastern US.
“We continue to work toward mitigation and are actively working on a number of different mitigation and resolution actions. While we have observed some early signs of recovery, we do not have an ETA for full recovery,” the company said.
“For customers experiencing issues signing-in to the AWS Management Console in US-EAST-1, we recommend retrying using a separate Management Console endpoint,” they added.
The company also said that some users outside the eastern region may be unable to log in to their service.
Outage hits Amazon during busy season as some workers celebrate
The Facebook group “Amazon Delivery Driver Venting and Troubleshooting Group” has almost 9,000 members.
“I’m not working today, but [my warehouse in Idaho] is eating s**t,” one person wrote in the group .
A post celebrating the outage had garnered more than 200 comments.
“Looks like we’re getting paid to sit on the clock, works for me,” another person wrote.
The app used by Amazon delivery drivers to determine their routes is called Flex and while outages do occur, they’re usually short and doesn’t last for hours as happened on Tuesday, Motherboard reported.
As people order gifts for the holidays, the outage has hit Amazon in the middle of one of their busy periods.
Workers report outages across US and Canada
Dozens of people have said on the subreddit FASCAmazon, a page used by workers at Amazon’s fulfilment centres and delivery stations, that they have been able to work for hours due to the outage.
Issues have been reported in Texas, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Indiana, Michigan, Florida, Illinois, Arizona, and Ontario, including other locations, according to Motherboard.
“We’ve just been chilling on the clock for almost 2 hours cause the network has been down lmaooo. Guess somebody didn’t like the fact Amazon is making us work Christmas/Christmas eve,” one Reddit user wrote.
“The warehouse never been so quiet it’s eerie,” another wrote.
“I’m loving just sitting here on my phone,” a third posted. “They can only tell us to make sure our area is clean so many times.”
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments