According to a notice on Amazon Web Services' status page, the company was having issues with certain APIs and the AWS Management Console. Because the problems are affecting AWS' main US-East-1 region, which is hosted in northern Virginia, not all users may be experiencing outages.
Around 11 a.m. EST, the outage began. As of Tuesday evening, AWS stated in an updated notice that many of the underlying issues that were causing the outage had been resolved.
According to AWS' status page, all issues affecting its popular EC2 cloud computing service had been resolved as of 6:30 p.m. EST, while other services were still experiencing issues.
The notice stated, "We are seeing improvement in availability across most AWS services." "We are working hard to restore full functionality to all impacted AWS Services and API operations."
Among the services that experienced issues as a result of the outage were Disney+, Netflix, Slack, Ticketmaster, stock trading app Robinhood, and Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States.
The outage also affected critical tools used by Amazon. Warehouse and delivery employees, as well as Flex service drivers, reported on Reddit that they couldn't access the Flex or AtoZ apps, making it impossible to scan packages or access delivery routes.
Amazon spokesperson Richard Rocha confirmed in a statement that the AWS outage was causing issues with Amazon's warehouse and delivery operations. Rocha went on to say that the company is "working to resolve the issue as soon as possible."
Amazon did not respond to questions about how many warehouses and delivery stations were affected by the outage.
Amazon sellers were also unable to access Seller Central, an internal website used to manage customer orders.
The company said it was "currently monitoring a network-wide technical outage" affecting delivery operations in a notice sent to delivery drivers via Amazon Chime, an internal chat app, and viewed by CNBC.
"Should drivers be unable to continue delivering due to the outage, they should go to a nearby safe location and stand by," the message said.
Samuel Caceres, a Washington state Amazon driver, told CNBC that his delivery facility has been "at a standstill" since 8 a.m. PST. Since then, drivers and warehouse workers have been on standby, he added.
Many warehouse and delivery workers were instructed to wait in break rooms until the issues were resolved, as they were unable to complete their workday. Some Flex drivers, who are contracted workers who deliver packages using their own vehicles, were unable to sign up for shifts and were sent home for the day.
The outage has come at a particularly inconvenient time for Amazon's retail operations. The company is in the midst of "peak season," when holiday shoppers place a flood of orders and the e-commerce behemoth is under enormous pressure to ensure their packages arrive on time.
Amazon's in-house delivery arm, which is made up of contracted delivery companies and independent Flex drivers, is increasingly in charge of that puzzle piece. According to ShipMatrix data, the company delivers roughly two-thirds of its own packages in the United States.