UPS Down? Outage Reports Surge as Customers Report Trouble Tracking and Shipping Packages Online

Customers of shipping giant UPS began reporting problems with the company’s website and app starting at approximately 11:40 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday, according to outage-tracking service Downdetector, prompting a wave of complaints on social media under the hashtag #UpsDown.

Downdetector, an Ookla-owned platform that has monitored the health of more than 12,000 online services since its 2012 launch, posted on X shortly after the reports began surfacing. “User reports indicate problems with UPS since 11:40 AM EDT,” the account wrote, asking affected customers to describe how the disruption was impacting them.

Separate outage-tracking service StatusGator listed UPS as operational as of a check conducted Tuesday afternoon, logging only four user-submitted outage reports over the preceding 24-hour period at the time of that assessment, a relatively low figure compared with the volume implied by Downdetector’s own reported spike earlier in the day. That discrepancy illustrates how different outage-monitoring platforms, which rely on varying combinations of user complaints and automated website-performance checks, can produce differing pictures of a company’s service health depending on when and how frequently they update their data.

UPS’s tracking and shipping tools have experienced periodic technical issues in the past, according to user reports compiled by StatusGator’s dedicated tracking page for the service. Previous complaints have included customers unable to complete shipping labels through the company’s website, with one user describing a persistent “spinning wheel” when attempting to reach the payment and printing stage of the shipping process, and another reporting a broader website glitch that repeatedly reloaded pages and blocked access to billing and payment features.

Other user comments compiled by outage-tracking site Outage.Report reflect a range of specific complaints tied to different parts of UPS’s digital ecosystem, including one customer reporting an inability to access a package locker through the company’s Yeep app, a UPS-affiliated delivery locker service, describing the malfunction as leaving them “no way to open a locker.” That same tracking service noted more broadly on a separate recent check that UPS appeared to be functioning within its typical report volume for the time of day, suggesting that any given spike in complaints does not necessarily indicate a sustained, company-wide outage.

UPS, formally United Parcel Service, operates one of the largest package delivery and supply chain management networks in the world, handling shipments for millions of individual customers and businesses across international markets. Given that scale, even brief disruptions to the company’s tracking and shipping platforms can generate outsized public attention, since delayed access to shipment status information or an inability to generate shipping labels can directly affect time-sensitive business operations and personal deliveries alike.

As of this report, UPS had not issued a public statement addressing the scope, cause or expected resolution timeline for Tuesday’s reported issues. The company’s official service status information is typically communicated through its customer support channels rather than a dedicated public status page comparable to those maintained by some technology companies, meaning affected customers experiencing ongoing problems have generally been directed to UPS’s customer service line or social media support accounts for the most direct updates regarding any active service disruption.