eBay blames success for failure

eBay suffered an embarrassing failure on Saturday as no one was able to search on the site - not a good thing at the start of Christmas shopping season.

The outage is made worse for the online tat bazaar because it is moving away from mom'n'pop traders to more professional sellers who expect better service, in exchange for their fees. Buyers posting on auction forums were still complaining of problems as late as Sunday afternoon, despite eBay's claims that all was fixed on Saturday night.

eBay said:

eBay restored search functionality to eBay.com overnight Saturday after a technical issue resulted in searches returning either limited or no results throughout the day. The unanticipated technical issue resulted from a surge in live listings as sellers ramp up for the holiday season.

eBay currently has more than 200 million live listings, 33 percent more than at this time a year ago. The company said the technical issue, once identified, was easily fixed and was implemented across the site’s servers throughout Saturday afternoon and evening.”

This posting on eBay's US support forum suggest the firm is at least considering compensation for people whose auctions were kiboshed by the outage. ®