eBay suffered a significant malfunction this weekend as an unspecified “technical issue” affected users’ ability to both search and browse listings for most of Saturday. Now, the site’s been restored to working order, but a lot of sellers remain extremely unhappy.
Lorrie Norrington, the president of eBay Marketplaces, tried to do a bit of damage control by stating, “We know this is a really busy time for sellers ramping up for the holiday season. We’re sorry that this technical issue occurred . . . and we regret any potential impact to your business. Our teams worked around the clock to restore functionality as quickly as possible.”
Norrington also hinted at the possibility of a financial peace offering, adding, “We will now be assessing the economic impact of this issue and will be compensating sellers appropriately. In the meantime, we will be issuing full fee credits automatically for affected listings.”
Still, in the absence of significant compensation, many sellers aren’t in a good mood at the moment. A post on eBay Ink, an official corporate blog, has attracted 30 comments so far, and it’s possible to find longer (and less politely worded) threads elsewhere. Given that many sellers were already unhappy with fees and policies, eBay may lose a significant amount of business due to the outage.
Traffic to eBay is up on a year-over-year basis, however (at least according to Compete), and the company’s stock has risen an impressive 2.61 percent so far this morning.
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