Technologies

Amazon warehouse operations reportedly at a standstill amid AWS outage

Karaoke, anyone?

Amazon workers are reporting in social media posts that the company’s warehouses are at a standstill while it struggles to resolve an AWS outage, leaving workers without much to do but hang around or, apparently, sing karaoke. The outage also took down multiple major websites and apps for some people Tuesday.

The service, also called AWS, stores and serves up much of the internet, including websites and apps for Disney Plus, Robinhood, Barclays and Slack. Website outages were concentrated in East Coast cities including Washington, DC, and New York City, but Amazon’s internal systems appeared to be affected around the country, according to social media comments from dozens of people who say they work for the company.

Amazon didn’t respond to requests for comment on the AWS outage or its warehouse operations. Down Detector, which collects data on outages, showed a spike of more than 11,000 outage reports for AWS-run sites on Tuesday in the late morning hours East Coast time. While some progress has been made in lowering that number, the outages persisted hours later.

On an AWS status page for monitoring system activity, Amazon noted issues originating in a Virginia facility affecting its US-EAST-1 region. The problems appeared to be affecting multiple AWS products used by businesses to run their websites and apps.

The dashboard noted the company was troubleshooting shortly after reports came in. By evening, the company said it was still seeing some of its services «severely» affected. «Many services have already recovered,» the update said, «however we are working towards full recovery across services.»

On Reddit and Twitter, people who say they’re Amazon workers posted comments and videos about a complete halt of operations due to internal systems not functioning. Multiple workers wrote that they were singing karaoke or reading their phones while waiting for systems to come back online. Vice spoke to delivery companies that contract with Amazon and said their drivers were unable to log into Amazon systems to make deliveries Tuesday morning.

Down Detector also showed outage reports from dozens of services all originating at the time the AWS outage began. Included were Amazon itself, as well as its Ring, Prime Music, Alexa and Chime services. TicketMaster, Google, McDonald’s, Venmo, Cash App, and My Social Security, a portal for online accounts with the US Social Security Administration, were also among the services that all showed outages beginning around 11 a.m. Eastern Time.

Technologies

Yes, Trump’s New 25% Apple Tariff Could Drive Up iPhone Prices Even More. Should You Buy One Now?

Technologies

Trump to Apple: Build iPhones in the US or Face 25% Tariffs

The president is putting pressure on the world’s biggest tech company to move manufacturing stateside.

Even as Apple has been shifting some of its manufacturing and supply-chain strategies in recent months in response to US-imposed tariffs against China, the world’s biggest tech company has another tariff issue it may need to content with.

President Donald Trump posted on TruthSocial Friday that a tariff of «at least 25% must be paid by Apple» if the company doesn’t manufacture and build iPhones in the US.

The post reads in full:

I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the UnitedStates of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else. If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S. Thank your for your attention to this matter!

The post follows previous comments made by the president about Apple CEO Tim Cook in which he said, «I said to him, Tim, you’re my friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming here with $500 billion but now I hear you building all over India. I don’t want you building in India.»

Trump said at the time that Cook promised to increase iPhone manufacturing in the US, but experts have said that full iPhone production based in the US would take years and would probably not apply to some of the company’s more advanced iPhone models, which would still be primarily made in China.

Earlier this year, the US imposed steep tariffs against exports from China, but rolled back some of them for 90 days. An exemption was made for smartphones and computers, but it’s unclear if that will hold and for how long.

A representative for Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Technologies

Why Amazon Is Giving Surprise Refunds for Years-Old Purchases (And If You’ll Get One)

Recent internal reviews at Amazon unleashed a wave of new refunds: Some are getting more than $1,000 back from purchases made up to 7 years ago.

Amazon buyers are reporting an influx of unexpected refunds from products they ordered months or even years ago, with one customer on LinkedIn saying he received a refund of $1,800 for a smart TV bought seven years ago. Others made similar comments about products bought long ago.

According to Bloomberg, the new refunds are because of changes Amazon made after an internal review. That review may be related to a 2023 consumer lawsuit by a group of Amazon shoppers who claimed that Amazon had reversed their legitimate return-related refunds.

A representative for Amazon told CNET that only a small number of customers would be affected.

«Following a recent internal review, we identified a very small subset of returns where we issued a refund without the payment completing, or where we could not verify that the correct item had been sent back to us so no refund was issued,» an Amazon representative said. «There is no action required from customers to receive the refunds, and we have fixed the payment issue.»

In its latest earnings call, Amazon reported a one-time expense of $1 billion connected to refunds that the company had not yet sent out. These earmarked funds could be responsible for the sudden updates that shoppers are now seeing regarding purchases as far back as 2018.

Read more: I’ve Been Tracking Tariff Price Impacts Every Day and Here’s What I’ve Found So Far

If you receive an email about a surprise refund from Amazon orders, it may be related to these changes Amazon has made behind the scenes. You may still want to confirm it’s not fraud by logging into your Amazon account or making a quick service call, especially if it’s a larger amount like a payment for a TV. Scammers may be taking advantage of this news, too, so be wary of any notification that asks you for financial information, which Amazon should already have.