Amazon Restores Service After Global Outage

Amazon.com said yesterday its online stores had returned to normal service after a global outage disrupted shopping on its country sites. According to outage monitoring website Downdetector, services were disrupted for nearly two hours. At the peak of the disruption, more than 38,000 user reports indicated issues with Amazon's online stores. They occurred on Sunday evening in the United States and Monday morning for much of the rest of the world.

"Some customers may have temporarily experienced issues while shopping. We have resolved the issue, and everything is now running smoothly,” an Amazon spokesperson told Reuters. The spokesperson declined to comment on the reason for the outage. It was the second broad disruption since late June, when users experienced a brief outage on Amazon platforms including Alexa and Prime Video before services were restored.

Total Retail's Take: With most consumers used to a glitch-free experience shopping on Amazon, an outage can be quite a shock. The lesson here is that even a world-class technology company such as Amazon can experience technical downtime. Therefore, if your brand is selling merchandise on Amazon, it's probably a good idea to diversify its channels.

"Being totally reliant on Amazon is great when sales are booming, but when any hiccup such as this occurs, all sales will screech to a halt," said Eytan Wiener, CEO of GETIDA, a global leader in Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) auditing and reimbursement, in an email to Total Retail. "Therefore, sellers should try to find additional ways and channels to offer their products to online shoppers. In addition, they should make sure to be financially prepared to absorb any interruption in sales so that they don't experience any detrimental impact on their business activity. Additionally, any products that have built up sales rank over time can be affected by lack of sales, and it's still unknown what the long-term ramifications will be on a seller's listings."