“America, something’s up”: Walmart shoppers mystified by widespread in-store outages nationwide turn to social media
Earlier this week, videos began going viral showing Walmart locations where people had abandoned their carts in the aisles, or locations where people were not being let into the store altogether.
According to people posting videos on the topic, this bizarre scene was the result of Walmart stores around the country experiencing a major computer outage.
Some said they were still able to make transactions in cash, while others reported being instructed to leave the store. However, many more are left with a single question: What happened?
Did Walmart experience a major outage this week?
In videos on the subject, customers can be seen walking through Walmart locations that appear to have been abandoned. Carts are scattered throughout the store, and the aisles do not appear to have any customers in them.
Other videos simply show the exterior of the store, with either text over the video explaining that Walmart was having an “outage” or a conversation in the video indicating that there was a problem at the store.
@yallison09 #walmart #emergency #wierd #somethinghappens ♬ Nuclear Alarm Siren - Prestigigator
@serialfunseeker They made like 12 people in wheelchairs go outside and sit in the Florida sun at 330
♬ original sound - serialfunseeker
@thatzwatshesaid The Chaos was unreal! Headquarters at Arizona noted it's nationwide! #outage #systemsdown #walmart #shopping #WalmartOutage #breakingnews #nationwideoutage #fyp #nationwide #Florida #772025 #July2025 ♬ GTA San Andreas Theme (Remake) - Ben Morfitt (SquidPhysics)
X users report more of the same
Evidence of this outage wasn’t limited to TikTok. On X, many users claimed that either their local Walmart was experiencing an outage or that there was an outage being experienced nationwide.
Several Redditors also posted on the topic. Employees across the country claimed that they were having issues with ringing people up or providing any sort of assistance that relied on Walmart’s digital network.
“That was the worst thing that I’ve ever had to endure,” wrote one commenter. “I work Service Desk and EVERYBODY and their mother was coming up and yelling at us, like SORRY ITS BEYOND USSS we told everyone cash only, shut the doors, and filled up carts with cold stuff that was still good to run back.”
“About 2 hours ago, all the self-checkout and registers shut down,” recalled another. “It lasted for about two hours. Even now as I’m typing this, some registers are still not working. Lots of customers didn’t want to wait and just left. And now we have to look for any abandoned carts left by the customers. Never had this happen before.”
DownDetector, a site that monitors outages, noted that on July 7th, an abnormally high number of people claimed to be having issues with digital payments and processing at the store.
That said, some commenters under these threads and videos claimed that they didn’t experience any issues in their stores, with employees chiming in to state that their July 7th was just a normal workday.
So, what’s the truth of the matter?
Walmart’s history of outages
From assembling the evidence of user posts, it appears that many locations around the country did experience an outage on July 7th. Depending on the location, the problem lasted anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours, and as the above videos show, each store handled the outage differently. Some shut down payment processing altogether, some only accepted cash, some closed their stores, while others simply waited out the outage and were able to accept payments again soon after.
While this may be jarring for the average customer to see, there’s significant precedent. There are over 5,000 Walmart locations in the United States alone. Occasionally, the systems keeping all of these stores connected and processing information fail.
For example, in mid-April of this year, Walmart employees reported another major outage. Stores everywhere, from Texas to Florida, Arkansas, and southern California, claimed that payments were not working in-store, and that customers were having difficulties placing orders on the app. This spike in issues was also noted by DownDetector and covered in the media.
At the time, Walmart declined to comment, though the company’s website presented a standard “We’re having technical issues, but we’ll be back in a flash” message whenever a customer tried to search for an item.
Why do outages happen?
Presently, it’s not certain why the company’s systems reportedly went down on July 7th.
That said, there are a number of reasons that a company may suddenly stop being able to process payments.
For example, a faulty software upgrade or patch can occasionally cause systems to crash. Many people became familiar with this idea in July 2024, when a bad update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused millions of Windows machines to crash, causing computer system failures worldwide.
Other possible reasons include cloud or network provider failures, third-party vendor or POS system failures, a shutdown prompted by a cybersecurity concern, or simply human error.
Now, it seems that Walmart’s systems are back up and running. Walmart has not released an official statement regarding the July 7th outage. The company has not responded to the Daily Dot’s request for comment via media relations contact form.
We’ve reached out to @yallison09 and @thatzwatshesaid via TikTok DM, and @serialfunseeker via TikTok and Instagram DM.
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