Thousands of Amazon shoppers had trouble accessing the ecommerce site’s checkout page on Wednesday during one of the busiest shopping months of the year.
“We’re sorry that some customers may have temporarily experienced issues while shopping. We have resolved the issue, and everything is now running smoothly," an Amazon spokesperson told Cheapism.
Although the company still hasn't explained what caused the outage, user-reported issues appeared to decrease at around 11 a.m. ET, according to DownDetector.
Amazon shoppers began experiencing problems early on Wednesday, with around 13,000 users reporting outages at 9:41 a.m. ET.
“Sorry, we’re experiencing unusually heavy traffic. Please try again in a few seconds,” one error message read.
Anyone else's christmas shopping broken?#amazonDown pic.twitter.com/b4OzCH5jce
— Andrew Winter @bbwonder@cmdr.social (@bbwonder) December 7, 2022
Shoppers took to Twitter and Reddit to see if others were experiencing the same issues and to criticize the company’s planned layoffs, with some using the hashtag #amazondown.
“I think @amazon let go some of the wrong people. The site has been reported to be down for hours already,” Bailey Hahn wrote on Twitter alongside an emoji of a graph with a downward trend line. Hahn also attached a photo of a news article referencing the retailer’s plan to lay off as many as 20,000 workers.
I think @amazon let go some of the wrong people. The site has been reported to be down for hours already📉 Not to mention it’s December, their busiest month in sales…. #amazondown #Amazon pic.twitter.com/ewEhfQ9g5y
— Bailey Hahn 🇺🇸 (@IAmBaileyHahn) December 7, 2022
Another Twitter user agreed, retweeting Hahn and adding, “Letting people go right in the midst of the holidays is needlesly (sic) cruel. Apparently, it's also a bad business decision.”
Amazon confirmed that they had begun layoffs in November after news outlets reported that the ecommerce company planned to cut 10,000 corporate and technology employees — the largest job cuts in the company’s history.
According to a more recent Computerworld report, Amazon could lay off as many as 20,000 employees, or around 6% of the company’s corporate staff. Amazon's CEO, Andy Jassy, recently announced that the company hasn't decided how many positions will be impacted.
The move to cut employees comes after the ecommerce giant’s growth slowed to the lowest rate in two decades earlier this year.
Gallery: Companies That Made Big Layoffs Amid Bigger Recession Worries
