People across the UK have been reporting issues with their Amazon products, including the Alexa virtual assistant, leaving some unable to control their homes.
Users started drawing attention to the outage just before 7am today, with Alexa, Amazon.com and Amazon Web Services all affected according to the website DownDetector.co.uk.
The issue has caused particular problems for those with smart homes, which are largely controlled by the company’s devices.
One Twitter user said: “The downside of having a smart house run by @alexa99 is when the network goes down you can’t work anything, you know lights, heating shower.”
Another tagged Amazon’s UK arm in a tweet, saying: “I’ve had to knock a load of stuff over to unplug my Echo Dot because the alarm wouldn’t stop.”
The outage has since been resolved. An Amazon spokeswoman said: “This morning we had an issue that impacted some Alexa customers’ ability to interact with the service.
“The Alexa service is now operating normally.”
Amazon Alexa hit by other outages
The problems come after Amazon Web Services went down a number of times last month, causing widespread issues around the internet for companies that rely on the service to host them.
The initial outage on December 17 impacted users of apps such as Tinder, Netflix and Disney+, as well as readers of a number of high-profile news websites such as the Associated Press.
It also meant Alexa devices did not work properly, again causing issues for those who relied on them to operate their homes.
Later problems meant people on the east coast of the USA could not access the streaming service Hulu and the office messaging app Slack for a number of hours.
Amazon has not yet commented on the most recent outage, which appears to have largely only affected the company’s own products and services.
