Amazon Web Site Slowly Returning After Shutdown

The Web site of Amazon.com Inc., the largest online retailer, went down at 10:37 a.m. Pacific time, according to a post on an Amazon discussion forum for sellers.

About 1:30 p.m. Pacific time, the site seemed to be slowly coming back online.

The post entitled "Amazon Un-Planned Event (06/06)" says, "We are currently investigating an issue that has impacted the availability of the Amazon.com website. Engineers are actively engaged in resolving this issue and we will provide an update once the issue is resolved. We appreciate your patience during this time."

Amazon did not respond to requests for comment.

Attempts to log on to Amazon.com were initially met with this error message: "We're sorry! An error occurred when we tried to process your request. Rest assured, we're already working on the problem and expect to resolve it shortly. If you were trying to make a purchase, please check Your Account to confirm that the order was placed. We apologize for the inconvenience."

During that time, the home page appeared to be available using Amazon's secure Web site but the links on that page weren't working.