Lorrie Norrington

On Saturday we fixed a software issue that resulted in a disruption to our site.  Because this was an isolated incident and not systemic, we were able to correct the problem and resume normal operations. By Sunday, the site was performing well in stress tests, handling increased activity levels throughout the day. 

While we’re confident that we remedied the software problem and that it won’t reoccur, we deeply regret the impact it had on the eBay community. To minimize the impact, we’re working to ensure that sellers and buyers whose transactions were affected by the disruptions will be made as whole as possible. This includes listing fee refunds and protection against negative or neutral buyer feedback as well as detailed seller ratings (DSRs) lower than 5 stars for impacted sellers, and coupons for buyers of items that were impacted by the disruption.  

To the eBay community, you have our most sincere apologies for the disruption and inconvenience caused by the software problem … and our commitment to continuing to provide the best marketplace for sellers and the best deals for buyers.

Sincerely,
Lorrie Norrington
President, eBay

Lorrie Norrington

We are happy to report that critical search functionality was restored overnight on Saturday and we are seeing normal activity levels today. As part of our effort to restore critical search functionality as quickly as possible for sellers and for buyers, we have kept some secondary search features temporarily offline. This includes refining search by certain item specifics, such as color or clothing size, and having Store Inventory Format results included in the main search results. We expect to bring these features online today as part of a phased approach to restore full functionality.

We encourage you to keep checking the System Announcement board located in the right side on eBay’s Announcement board for the latest updates on these secondary features.

We know this is a really busy time for sellers ramping up for the holiday season. We’re sorry that this technical issue occurred, causing search to return limited or no results throughout the day Saturday, and we regret any potential impact to your business. Our teams worked around the clock to restore functionality as quickly as possible. Please accept our sincere apologies, and thanks for your patience as we resolved this issue.

Our first priority has been to fully restore search functionality. We will now be assessing the economic impact of this issue and will be compensating sellers appropriately.  In the meantime, per our policy, we will be issuing full fee credits automatically for affected listings.