Online retailer eBuyer has apologised to customers forced to wait for purchases and blamed a problem with its inventory management system for the problems.

The Register started getting emails late last week complaining of renewed problems with eBuyer. Back in July the site had a series of problems which led to 282 complaints to Sheffield Trading Standards. A quick look at tribute sites ebuyersucks.org and ebuyersucks.com showed complaints had increased. The administrator of ebuyersucks.com said she had a further 38 complaints to post up on the site.

Helen Slinger, marketing manager at eBuyer, told us: "On Friday we found a problem with the inventory management system. It wasn't dispatching orders but items would appear to be in stock to customers. Volumes of enotes (emails the company uses for customer service) increased and the phone system was hitting full capacity."

Slinger said the problem was now fixed. She said the problems happened at a busy time with the company dealing with 6,000 orders a day. She apologised to customers for any inconvience caused and said service would improve in the next week.

She said the volume of enotes meant it would take some time to process - people might get their purchases before they get an answer to their queries.®

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