As Amazon announced the date for Prime Day in June, sellers have recently entered a period of intense preparation.

However, the law that "problems always arise during peak seasons" is always lingering, especially for sellers targeting the US market. Recently, it has been a series of issues—one wave has not settled before another rises. On one hand, the high customs inspection rate in the US has not been resolved, and on the other hand, unexpected issues have occurred with the platform's system.

AMZ123 learned that on May 8th, Beijing time, Amazon's US site experienced another large-scale outage. Many sellers reported that on the morning of that day, the US site's backend had problems such as slow page loading, delayed order data refreshing, and errors in submitting FBM orders.

"Did Amazon get bombed again? Orders dropped to zero."

"Ads showed sales, but no orders were seen on the order page."

"It turns out I'm not the only one with ridiculously low sales today; it must be a system issue."

Data from the global fault monitoring platform Downdetector also showed that around 8 PM Eastern Time on May 7th (8 AM Beijing time on May 8th), the number of reports related to Amazon issues surged, then slowed down around midnight Eastern Time on May 8th, but surged again around 4 PM Eastern Time (4 AM Beijing time on May 9th).

As of the afternoon of May 9th, Beijing time, the number of reports related to Amazon issues had dropped to double digits, and services gradually returned to normal. However, AMZ123 learned that this outage was not only on the seller side: according to industry news, during the outage, buyers could not place orders normally on the frontend, the settlement process was hindered, and some third-party ERP systems associated with the seller's backend also experienced synchronization anomalies.

Therefore, although the duration of this Amazon outage was not long, it still had a significant impact on US site sellers. Even after the system gradually recovered, some sellers reported a sudden drop in order volume, and even no new orders for several consecutive hours.

As of the time of publication, Amazon has not issued any announcements regarding this outage, and the specific cause of the outage has not been officially explained. However, according to reports from multiple tech media, this outage is likely related to a failure in the AWS regional data center—according to information, Amazon's backend order processing system, inventory management system, FBM shipping system, and other services mostly run on AWS infrastructure.

According to CRN reports, on the evening of May 7th, Eastern Time, the AWS US East-1 region data center experienced server abnormalities due to cooling system failures and equipment overheating, leading to cloud service interruptions. In terms of impact, not only Amazon's US site but also Coinbase, FanDuel, and Chartbeat were affected.

Additionally, according to industry news, Amazon's US site system has basically returned to normal, and other affected companies have also gradually resumed operations. However, the occasional outages and their impacts still make many sellers uneasy.

Almost at the same time, a new compliance policy released by Amazon has also attracted the attention of many sellers.

AMZ123 learned that on May 6th, Amazon issued a new compliance policy regarding lithium battery products, stating that starting immediately, Amazon's US and Canada sites have included lithium batteries in the scope of the TIC direct verification mechanism.

According to the notice, all lithium battery products on these two sites must cooperate with Amazon-approved third-party testing, inspection, and certification (TIC) organizations to verify all declared ASINs through product testing or existing document verification.

Shortly after the news broke, sellers selling related products reported in the backend that there were unresolved ASINs, indicating "product safety issues," and related sellers need to provide relevant documents before May 6th, 2026.

"Those who make laptop batteries, their accounts have been scanned for links in large quantities these days."

"The platform is in a hurry to implement it just after the notice is issued."

In response, many sellers selling lithium battery products felt somewhat nervous, but some sellers were not surprised by the new policy—because before this, Amazon had already piloted and expanded the scope of the TIC direct verification mechanism on the US site.

AMZ123 learned that in September 2025, to strengthen product compliance reviews, Amazon first introduced the direct verification new policy, which was only applicable to the children's toy category at that time. Many related products were removed in large quantities because they did not meet the requirements. By December of the same year, Amazon's TIC policy had expanded to multiple categories such as portable power sources, electric transportation equipment, and dietary supplements.

Its expansion to the lithium battery category this time means that passing the TIC organization audit has also become a mandatory threshold for lithium battery products to be listed and sold on the US and Canada sites. In addition, some industry sellers speculate that Amazon may further expand the TIC audit categories in the future, eventually covering all products sold on the platform.

In view of Amazon's increasingly strict product compliance reviews, AMZ123 hereby advises sellers to pay attention to compliance trends on various sites in a timely manner, plan ahead, optimize supply chain cooperation, control product quality from the source, ensure that products meet various testing standards, and avoid being passive when other compliance new policies are implemented in the future.

What do you think about this? Welcome to discuss in the comments section~

Source: AMZ123 Cross-border E-commerce
Original Link: https://www.amz123.com/t/0n4PVaoq