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Walmart experienced an online outage impacting customers' ability to add items to their carts and causing errors on certain pages. The outage began shortly after 3:00 p.m. on April 17, 2025, with the majority of reports coming from southern U.S. cities. Over several hours, the issue showed signs of improvement but some users continued facing problems including missing order confirmations.
The Walmart outage first became noticeable shortly after 3:00 p.m., as users began reporting issues via Down Detector. Reports quickly surged to around 3,500, a significant jump from the normal baseline of just two reports. Though Walmart’s site still loaded for many, affected users encountered problems adding items to carts or loading certain pages.
Unlike typical outage patterns centered around cities like Boston or New York, this outage was concentrated in southern U.S. cities such as Tampa, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, with some reports from Chicago. Interestingly, the author noted no issues when accessing the site from Connecticut, indicating a geographic disparity in impact.
Users posted numerous comments on Down Detector indicating that the main issue was the inability to add items to their carts, even if the website was otherwise accessible. This meant browsing was possible but making purchases was often unsuccessful during the outage period.
As time passed, there was a slight decline in the number of outage reports on Down Detector, falling from a peak around 3,600 back down to just over 3,000. This suggested progress toward resolution, though the situation remained fluid.
Customers took to social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to report problems with the Walmart app, including inability to load content and outdated advertisements. Walmart's official handles did not provide detailed responses but asked affected users to send direct messages.
Testing of the Walmart website during the outage revealed specific errors such as pages not being found — for example, when attempting to access the Toys section under 'New'. This added to the evidence that parts of the site were malfunctioning.
Despite signs of recovery, the outage reports unexpectedly spiked again to around 3,600, surpassing the initial peak, indicating further disruption or new problems arising before final resolution.
Walmart’s customer support on X was largely uninformative, responding to user complaints by asking them to direct message for more details without providing broader updates or explanations about the outage.
The author of the article has contacted Walmart’s media relations for official comment and information about the issue, hoping for clarity on cause and expected resolution timing.
Later updates showed the number of outage reports dropping below 3,000, though it was clear the issue was not fully resolved, requiring ongoing monitoring.
The number of incident reports declined significantly and rapidly from the peak, moving from approximately 3,600 down to around 1,100 within minutes, suggesting that the outage was possibly nearing resolution.
Anecdotal evidence from user comments showed that some customers were able to successfully place orders, although it often required multiple attempts, reinforcing signs of improvement.
By just after 5:20 PM ET, reports had dropped further to about 400. Down Detector comments indicated that more users were able to place orders, implying that the Walmart website was returning to normal functionality.
Despite improvements, some users continued to experience issues such as disappearing orders and lack of confirmation emails, indicating that not all service had been fully restored.
As of the latest update around 6:45 PM ET, the outage had largely been resolved with reports down to around 200. Some minor residual issues persisted, mainly delays in confirmation emails, but no new major disruptions were reported.