An AWS crash left automated warehouse bots motionless and delivery vans sitting idle
The Amazon Web Services outage that started this morning might be worse than it seemed. That’s not only because it’s reportedly cutting off some streams from Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, and Netflix, but because the apps that keep warehouse, delivery, and Amazon Flex workers connected are down, too.
Amazon has confirmed it’s “experiencing elevated error rates for EC2 APIs in the US-EAST-1” region, meaning that connections from one of its largest server operations are spotty at best. Posts in the Amazon employee subreddits say many people can’t access the AtoZ app that manages practically everything about their jobs.
Warehouse workers report entire facilities shut down due to network problems and have posted pictures of the company’s automated shelves sitting motionless. Truck drivers report they used pen and paper forms to check each load out, assuming they could leave.
According to Bloomberg, three delivery service partners said the app they use to communicate with Amazon is down, leaving vans sitting idle instead of getting on the road to distribute packages.
The most recent update from Amazon regarding the issue came at 2:26PM ET, saying, “We are pursuing multiple mitigation paths in parallel, and have seen some signs of recovery, but we do not have an ETA for full recovery at this time.”
