Amazon websites go down

NEWS A problem with Amazon's UK and German websites left the retailer's sites unavailable to customers up until lunchtime today after going down earlier this morning. The problem does not appear to be planned with visitors to www.amazon.co.uk and www.amazon.de faced with a blank screen displaying the message "Http:/1.1 Service Unavailable". Both sites had been down for well over an hour but appeared to come back online at about 1:00PM UK time. Amazon's US site appears to have been unaffected and is still up and running, suggesting a problem with the European IT operations. Back in March the Amazon's UK site was taken down following the demand for a wrongly-priced HP iPaq that was being offered to customers for just £7.32 instead of the usual retail price of around £300. Amazon was contacted for comment but was not immediately available for a response. We'll bring you more on this story later.