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ebaY 2002 Outage Reports
 

November 2002

Jan 2002

Feb 2002

Mar 2002

Apr 2002

May 2002

Jun 2002

Jul 2002

Aug 2002

Sep 2002

Oct 2002

Nov 2002

Dec 2002

On 1 Nov, ebaY was down for maintenance from approx 00:30 PT to 03:30 PT. PT. At 06:14:59 PT users reported title search was not working properly, returning arbitrary search results. Buyers continued to post broken search problems at 06:50:20 PT. At 11:02:13 PT the password jumping problem on sign in continued. At 19:24:08 PT sellers reported that the revise feature was not working, with data disappearing.

On 2 Nov at 09:03:45 PT users reported getting 'page cannot be displayed' messages whilst trying to access ebaY pages. Posts on some of the message boards were not going through.

On 3 Nov at 07:19:38 PT both title and title and description search had not updated since 1 Nov in some categories. At 12:08:58 PT sellers reported that it was taking upwards of 20 hours for title/description search to update and index the listed items. At 12:20:28 PT some categories were still showing a date/time stamp for updates of 1 Nov at 17:38 PT. This severely impacts sellers with critical info in the description. At 12:52:04 PT the password jump at sign in continued. At 23:18:22 PT ebaY posted that in some categories title/description search, indexing was slower than normal. ebaY said it included ebaY Motors, Computers, Home and Pottery.

On 4 Nov at 06:20:07 PT users reported problems with My ebaY. The 'bidding on' section was not showing. At 08:41:11 PT ebaY posted that the ability to view completed items was down from 08:04 PT to 08:15 PT. At 08:18:34 PT the 'about me' pages went down rapidly joined by My ebaY at 08:25:34 PT. My ebaY came back up at 08:31:19 PT. ebaY posted at 08:47:14 PT that My ebaY was down from 08:04 PT to 08:30 PT. At 10:16:56 PT ebaY crashed, with some accessibility if users were willing to way 3 to 5 minutes for pages to load. This affected all searches, viewing auctions and bidding, in addition to My ebaY and all other ebaY functions. ebaY posted at 10:53:27 PT that users were getting slow downloads on ebaY pages. At 11:08:32 PT users continued to report very slow downloads on search, opening auctions and across the site. At 11:16:29 PT ebaY posted that that users continued to get slow downloads on ebaY pages. At 11:27:47 PT ebaY again posted that users were loading much more slowly than normal. At 11:44:50 PT ebaY posted that users, including those using AOL, and Netscape, were not able to access ebaY. At 12:05 26, pages were taking from 1.5 to 3 minutes to download. At 12:09:16 PT users reported problems accessing search. Some users reported page loads taking upwards of 6 minutes. Users reported the site back up at 12:48:40 PT. ebaY Germany users reported outages for over two hours running concurrently with the US outages. At 13:04:26 PT ebaY posted that users experienced slowness across most ebaY pages and functions from 10:10 PT to 12:45 PT. ebaY said, "The issue affected some ISPs and browsers more severely than others" and ebaY claims not all users had problems. As always TAG sees the users not having problems as those who did not attempt to access ebaY during this time, as reports of problems using the US site were universal. At 13:24:03 PT ebaY posted that they had fixed the problems with title/description search going on since 1 Nov. Sellers reported that items in their stores were not showing properly in My ebaY. The seller did not receive email notices that items had sold and the sold items did not appear in the items sold list. The items available had not decrease by one, and the items sold did not increase by one.

On 5 Nov at 13:47:44 PT users posted getting messages saying "Our Site Is Temporarily Unavailable Due To Scheduled Maintenance' whilst trying to access auctions. At 15:28:43 PT users reported intermittent sporadic glitches across the site lasting until 15:35:47 PT. At 15:37:30 PT, users reported getting input errors on reload. At 15:44:11 PT users reported slow page loads across the site. Some users were able to overcome the problems by switching to the Opera browser. At 22:42:08 PT users reported that the jumping password on sign in problem continued.

On 6 Nov at 08:20:17 PT users reported a brief period of "page cannot be displayed" messages whilst trying to access ebaY, but the site was stable for the rest of the day.

On 7 Nov at 10:07:47 PT, ebaY announced that access to the ebaY home page was slow from 08:45 PT to 09:57 PT. The ebaY navigation bar at the top of ebaY pages was also not visible during this time. At 10:28:07 PT ebaY posted that their help pages were down from approx 08:45 PT to 10:25 PT. At 12:04 PT, sellers reported that Turbo Lister defaulted their listings to include the gift icon, adding 25 cents to the listings for an unwanted "option". The site was stable for the rest of the day.

On Fri 8 Nov, ebaY and ebaY Billpoint payments were down for maintenance from approx 01:18 to 03:20. PayPal was down from approx 00:00 PT 03:00PT for maintenance. At 08:36:46 PT ebaY posted that PayPal was down 08:00 PT to 08:33 PT. At 09:11:27 PT users reported that images on auctions could not be viewed by Netscape browsers. This was caused by an ebaY coding glitch. This problem was corrected at 09:45:36 PT. At :06:18 PT users reported completed auctions search returning error messages, "didn't specify region". At 11:28:40 PT, users reported the words to exclude function was not working. This is and intermittent problem that users have noted for over a month. At 14:03:02 PT ebaY posted that the ability to search for items by attributes using the Item Specifics Product Finder was down from 13:04 PT to 14:00 PT. At 15:31:26 PT users reported ongoing problems with gallery images not showing, being replaced by a box that says, "click here to view the picture". This intermittent problem has been going on for over a year, along with many other gallery related problems. TAG does not recommend gallery as it is very unreliable, and therefore a waste of money. At 21:01:22 PT ebaY reported the ebaY home page was down from 20:41 PT to 20:57 PT.

On 9 Nov at 07:38:48 PT the problem with auction images not showing when using the Netscape browser showed up again. This was happening intermittently with images appearing and disappearing and continued throughout the day.

On 10 Nov at 17:21:18 PT sellers reported that winner email addys were not showing after the auction ended. At 17:35:22 PT, users reported that search was not working, returning,"page cannot be displayed" and "cannot find server or dns error" messages. At 17:39:39 PT users reported more search problems, with the Friday maintenance message showing up whilst trying to access search. At 18:34:20 PT sellers reported receiving questions from bidders ebaY's email system delayed for 20 or more hours. At 18:40:00 PT buyers reported their automated snipe programs were not working, and their bids were not going through. At 19:03:12 PT a user reported that to add a credit card to their PayPal account, they would be charged a $1.95 refundable fee with a 30 day lag time before they could use the new card.

On 11 Nov at 04:18:33 PT, sellers reported Turbo Lister frequently crashing with the problem appearing to be caused by a limit as to how much you can do in one session before the program crashes. At 07:22:11 PT users reported that clicking on a PayPal logo on an auction would reveal the email address of the seller to all and sundry. At 07:24:12 PT sellers reported that they heard from bidders who could not get a bid to go through the evening of 10 Nov. At 11:44:34 PT, buyers reported that seller search was not working, with a message showing up in the block where the seller's ID is entered. At 19:04:39 PT buyers reported a pop up ad appearing after they placed a bid on an item, preventing the buyer from placing a follow up bid. At 20:18:02 PT sellers trying to place a Dutch Auction ended up with a Fixed Price Auction. When entering the dollar amount and quantity, sellers received error messages, and the auction type switched from Dutch to fixed.

On 12 Nov, despite an announcement that store listings were free from 12 to 14 Nov, sellers listing store items were charged for the items. The announcement also said the promotion was for 4 days, but 12 to 14 is three days, leaving questionable the ability of ebaY to count. At 15:05:13 PT ebaY posted that they were delaying the launch of their Listing Designer feature, "because the feature was not performing as we expected". Since these problems caused a delay in the launch ebaY decided to defer the launch until after the holiday "quiet period" was over. They expected to launch the product after 1 Jan 03. TAG applauds this restraint on ebaY's part. At 18:37:34 PT sellers reported that Turbo Lister was not working. At 19:02:02 PT, sellers again reported that email addys were not showing on closed auctions. One workaround for this problem is to use an ebaY co-brand site such as www.ebay.netscape.com, and access auctions from there. At 19:30:46 PT sellers posted that Mister Lister was not working. This was reported again at 19:47:30 PT. At 23:29:49 PT ebaY posted that users could not access some ebaY pages including the Home Page, from 22:07 PT to 22:49 PT.

On 13 Nov at 02:10:44 PT users reported that email addresses were showing on auction and feedback pages across the site, to anyone viewing the site, signed in or not. This continued for over 6 hours, giving spammers and email address harvesters free access to the email addys of ebaY users. On 13 Nov at 06:10:12 PT the email problem became intermittent. with email addresses appearing and disappearing on different pages and from reload to reload. Paradoxically, sellers logged in to My ebaY could not view the winning bidder email addys on their closed auctions. ebaY's sole announcement board employee, gwyneth@ebay.com posted at 06:58:12 PT that, " ... to answer the questions about why no AB. I just heard about this and we're working on it". At 07:38:24 PT ebaY posted that "Some members are reporting that the winning bidder's email is appearing on the listing page. This issue appears to affect only certain listings, and does not appear on all item pages." They posted about this problem again at 08:30:11 PT and users reported the problem fixed at 08:33:49 PT. At 10:54:19 PT sellers received "this page can't be displayed" messages whilst attempting to list items. At 10:59:15 PT sellers reported they could not view buyer email addresses on closed auctions. Again, a workaround for this problem is to access the listings or sellers closed auction page via an ebaY co-brand site. At 11:02:17 PT, users reported that My ebaY was down yielding "this page can't be displayed", messages. At 11:04:16 PT users reported search down, listing down, and My ebaY down. Functions were back up at 11:07:38 PT and down again at 11:30:39 PT. Users reported problems across the site with many error messages including "page can't be displayed, 504 errors, and "connection reset by peer". The site was back up at 11:39:27 PT, but at 11:53:56 PT, the errors started again. At 12:14:01 PT sellers reported that relisted auctions showed up with blank descriptions, and attempts at revision did not work either. At 12:41:36 PT buyers reported search not working, with blank screens with only categories showing on the left of the screen. This occurred using several different browsers. At 12:51:17 PT bidders reported they could not get the BIN function to work on items and had to use the feature several times to get it to take. More search problems were reported at 13:21:21 PT, and at 13:41:51 PT users reported items showing up twice on search results. At 13:48:30 PT, users reported getting 400 error messages and had problems BINing an item. At 14:42:31 PT users reported that the last title/description update showed, "This page was last updated: Nov-12 14:39". At 14:45:31 PT users trying to access the ebaY chat boards received a message saying, "Invalid Board Sorry, this chat board is no longer available." At 15:42 PT sellers reported that if they listed using the gift option, the listing feeson the auction were multiplied by 4. This was happening using the SYI2.0 form and Turbo Lister. At 20:04:52 PT sellers reported they could not add Vrane.Com counters to their auctions. At 21:25:22 PT users reported that search was finally updating, after delays of 31 hours.

On 14 Nov at 04:41:51 PT buyers reported that they could not view seller email addys on completed auctions. At 04:53:14 PT buyers trying to use PayPal to pay for an auction, received "seller not registered with PayPal" messages. Repeated attempts finally got the payment to go through. At 05:07:18 PT Vrane's relist function was not working with ebaY. At 12:43:14 PT users reported the Auction of America icon was showing up on search results. At 13:36:09 PT sellers reported that Turbo Lister was not working. At 14:01:19 PT a user reported arbitrary letter appearing in the tabs of their My ebaY pages. At 14:47:07 PT users reported receiving bad request messages whilst trying to access ebaY. At 14:48:59 PT users received 596 errors - "browser doesn't support this page" messages. At 17:06:51 PT users reported cgi 6 down making seller's lists unavailable. Messages saying, "Books,Movies,TV items are currently unavailable" showed up regardless of what category users searched. At 17:08:42 PT, buyers trying to open items received "Unable To Process Request-See Announcement Board" messages. At 17:11:35 PT users reported 404 errors across the site. At 17:15:15 PT, users received "reset by peer" messages, across the site. At 17:33:02 PT ebaY posted that the ebaY holiday bid, match and win game, was down for a short time from 21:00 PT. At 20:13:41 PT ebaY iPix pictures services were down.

On 15 Nov ebaY.com and ebaY Billpoint payments were down for maintenance from approx 00:57:25 PT to 03:22:19 PT. At 05:14:48 PT users reported access to the PayPal site was not working and PayPal was down since approx 04:00. PayPal returned messages that, "We are experiencing temporary difficulties. Please try again later. Error 3005". At 05:58:12 PT users reported hearing from ebaY that there was a problem with their gallery image link. The page to fix this problem was returning input errors. ebaY made changes to the categories on ebaY Motors, and there were many complaints throughout the day about the changes made to the Motorcycle categories. This appears to have caused many problems for buyers searching for parts, and TAG thinks ebaY should look at the comments made by buyers and modify the changes they made. In particular the Motorcycle categories need to be separated by country of origin. At 20:02:15 PT sellers reported problems with signing in, with the site not accepting established user ID and passwords, and security number showing up on second attempts.

On 16 Nov the boards continued to be filled with buyer complaints about the changes to the Motorcycle categories. At 14:51:21 PT sellers reported more gallery image problems. The "correct my gallery image" button continued to return input error messages. At 20:03:41 PT users complained that search was not working properly with only the first three pages of 10 pages of search results accessible.

On 17 Nov at 07:50:31 PT a user reported that the Second Chance procedure was so hard to follow, that even though they were long time experienced ebaY user, they had trouble both accessing it and figuring it out. At 08:14:42 PT buyers reported the bid box was missing on auctions preventing them from bidding. Search was not working properly returning arbitrary pages of results, first 2 then 0 on the same search. At 09:35:29 PT users trying to view auction listings received messages that, "Books, movies and TV Listings are not available." though they were searching unrelated categories. The ability to view auctions was back at 09:42:19 PT. At 14:35:45 PT a user reported they could not access their PayPal account and buyers could not make payments. At 17:17:43 PT users reported receiving "This Document Contained No Data" and "Connection Reset by Peer" messages. At 17:39:52 PT, users received "Web Site Not Responding The web site you have requested may be experiencing technical difficulties due to a busy or broken server" messages. At 17:45:06 PT, My ebaY went down. At 18:08:23 PT users continued to report access problems across the site. At 18:31:51 PT ebaY posted that My ebaY was down between 17:15 PT and 18:15 PT. The feedback system was also down. At 19:23:05 PT users reported that they were not getting their end of auction emails. At 21:52:31 PT sellers reported that PayPal was displaying a %40 instead of the @ symbol in user IDs. Sellers reported that end of auction emails were once again showing up at 23:07, after being missing in action from 16:53PT.

On 18 Nov at 07:08:21 PT users reported that PayPal end of auction invoices were running 24 to 72 hours late. At 08:39:54 PT users reported that search was not working properly, with multi page search results showing blank pages after the first page. At 08:57:09 PT users trying to access PayPal received "We are experiencing temporary difficulties. Please try again later. Error 3005" messages. At 12:16:05 PT ebaY posted that between 10:52 PT and 11:52 PT, users were having problems accessing ebaY images and pages, including the ebaY home page. At 17:50:50 PT users reported getting 405 error messages on page reloads. At 18:25:55 PT buyers trying to access item listings received "404 Not Found The Web server cannot find the file or script you asked for." At 18:47:58 PT, users reported Turbo Lister down. At 18:49:46 PT, users reported that when they clicked on a auction listing they received 404 error messages, preventing them from accessing auctions and bidding. At 18:51:13 PT buyers continued to report they could not access auctions. At 19:01:20 PT users reported problems with ebaY log in, where the site arbitrarily rejects valid user IDs and passwords for no apparent reason. At 19:14:41 PT users continued to post messages about the 1 to 3 day delay in PayPal sending end of auction invoices. At 19:39:22 PT buyers reported getting bid problem messages though their bid had gone through. They were still getting messages that said, "Problem with bid amount You a?urrent h8|B`??id amount $8x?. Please go back and bid a higher price. (Please type numbers and the decimal point (.) only)" 19:41:21 PT buyers reported their bidding activity was not showing up on their My ebaY account pages.

On 19 Nov the furor about motorcycle parts changes continued as did the complaints about rebids being blocked by the Hallmark pop-up. At 17:01:42 PT ebaY posted that the ability to view ebaY account status in My ebaY was down from 15:30 PT to 16:55 PT. At 17:41:40 PT sellers reported that their gallery images were not showing next to their auction replaced by the "Click here to see picture" message.

On 20 Nov at 07:00:09 PT users trying to use their My ebaY pages received error messages when trying to access the second page of their information. At 07:22:13 PT the link to view more than 800 items was reported gone from My ebaY. At 07:25:48 PT the "next" stopped working, then the link to view "all" items disappeared. ebaY was obviously jacking with the code. My ebaY functions continued to deteriorate. At 12:28:33 PT users reported receiving error messages when trying to sign in including a new one saying, "%1 is not a valid Windows NT application" along with, "The page cannot be displayed" and "502 Connection Hangup". These problems continued until 12:55:17 PT. At 12:55:54 PT buyers reported that their emails to sellers were not going through, nor were they getting a copy of the email. At 14:01:27 PT buyers reported search was not working with items in the everything else category showing as unavailable and other searches returning arbitrary results with the items out of sequence. At 16:20:36 PT users reported that the ebaY SPAM server partners Mediaplex and Equifax, had expired certificates causing ebaY systems to become inaccessible, being blocked by the invalid certificates. At 18:37:48 PT more reports of search problems were posted with blank pages coming up on search results. At 21:03:25 PT ebaY posted that users could not access ebaY pages including the ebaY home page, from 20:18 PT to 20:47 PT. At 21:35:20 PT a seller posted a work around for the SA Pro problem with not creating sales records for auction listings (mainly store items). The recommended solution was for users to upgrade to the latest version of the program, reset the refresh date, then change the "Num Sold" to zero. When the listings are refreshed, the program should create sales records.

On 21 Nov at 07:28:10 PT, ebaY reported that ebaY Billpoint payments system was down from 06:37 PT to 07:09 PT preventing buyers from making payments. At 11:28:40 PT, users reported more expired Mediaplex and Equifax certificates were causing site access problems. One workaround is to add altfarm mediaplex to your Restricted sites list disallowing them access to your computer. At 18:37:49 PT, ebaY posted that the ability to list items in the Timeshares category was down. This was not fixed until 23 Nov.

On 22 Nov, ebaY took the ebaY system and ebaY payments down from approx 00:50:15 PT to 03:13:29 PT for maintenance. At 10:31:56 PT, users reported having problems logging on to PayPal. These problems were intermittent and sporadic, with some users having access and others not. Buyers reported search problems at 11:23:22 PT with the having to type what they are searching for twice, once in the first regular search box and then again when a second page comes up where you have to type in your search again. At 11:38:40 PT, sellers reported getting " the server name was invalid" messages whilst trying to list with Turbo Lister. At 11:55:23 PT a seller posted a workaround for the Turbo Lister problem, advising to click on the "gift" button even when appears to be checked 'no', click on that 'no' again seems to fix this latest ebaY coding glitch. At 12:03:38 PT, more users reported having problems accessing PayPal. At 21:37:59 PT a buyer reported getting a PayPal auction finder notice that they had won an auction, so paid for the item. Further checking revealed the auction still had almost two days to go. At 22:08:22 PT, users received error messages whilst trying to have PayPal do automatic logo insertions.

On 23 Nov at 01:51:38 PT ebaY posted that they had fixed the Timeshare category problem. In an ebaYesque posting ebaY said the "Timeshares category was temporarily unavailable." This temporary outage lasted approx 32 hours and demonstrates what ebaY considers "temporary". At 07:15:55 PT users continued to receive invalid altfarm.mediaplex SPAM, Inc., expired security certificates. At 07:44:49 PT user observed that the ongoing search problems were increasing, with search ability on the site continuing to deteriorate. At 12:28:09 PT users reported having problems with the main search page. Using it for search would send the buyer to a more limiting search. At 16:06:15 PT, users reported problems accessing ebaY with Netscape 4.78 or 7.0. Attempts to sign in yielded messages saying, "The browser you're using is rejecting cookies." when in fact they were enabled. Users posted more PayPal log in problems at 18:57:26 PT. Users posted that there were incompatibility problems with the AT&T ISPs and PayPal that PayPal was aware of, though problems were reported by users of other ISP's. At 19:49:29 PT ebaY reported that the ability to view auction listings was down. At 19:54:13 PT buyers reported they could not pay for their purchases using PayPal. At 19:59:12 PT buyers reported widespread problems trying to access auctions. Clicking on an auction would return a, "The page cannot be displayed The page you are looking for is currently unavailable." message. Continued tries to open the same item would eventually open the item. This usually indicates that several of ebaY's servers are down. At 20:13:56 PT users reported that toy category auctions were inaccessible. At 20:23:06 PT users continued to report auctions inaccessible. At 20:30:15 PT more sellers reported problems with adding PayPal logos to their auctions and that auctions were opening very slowly or not at all. At 20:46:34 PT ebaY posted that the ability to view auction listings was down from 19:08 PT to 20:38 PT. At 21:09:13 PT ebaY posted that the ability to view auction listings was down and at 22:26:57 PT ebaY reported that the ability to view auction listings was down from 21:03 PT to 21:22 PT. Since this hard outage (by ebaY's definition of an outage) lasted for over two hours, ebaY, by their own rules should have issued refunds and auction extensions. ebaY did neither, once again violating the user agreement. All sellers who had auctions impacted by this outage should request refunds of listing and final value fees from ebaY.

On 24 Nov at 03:11:52 PT a user trying to revise an auction received a message saying, "your listing is scheduled to end during our downtime' message" though the auction was scheduled to end on Sunday, not during scheduled maintenance on Friday. At 09:29:17 PT users reported the Hallmark pop-up ad prevented them from re-bidding. Search was also not working properly with results of 48 pages only showing items on the first page with all subsequent pages blank. At 11:23:17 PT users reported the ebaY email system was down, returning messages saying , "Warning: Unable to send your question(s) Unfortunately, we were unable to send your question(s) to the eBay user via email." At 11:26:05 PT ebaY posted that ebaY Billpoint payments was down from 10:47 PT to 11:20 PT. At 12:18:57 PT users reported 404 errors whilst trying to access many site functions such as search and auctions. Users also reported problems accessing PayPal. At 12:36:26 PT more users reported not being able to access PayPal. At 12:50:06 PT ebaY posted that access to auction item listings was down from 11:00 PT to 12:45 PT. At 13:08:55 PT buyers reported they could not get in to auction listings to bid. A steady stream of these auction item access reports continued non stop through 13:37:17 PT when ebaY reported that the ability to view auction listings was down. At 13:42:09 PT some buyers were able to get to auctions if they searched by auction number. At 13:44:13 PT users reported that search was down. At 13:57:19 PT search returned "Page cannot be displayed" messages. At 13:59:18 PT sellers reported Mister Lister was down. At 14:20:37 PT ebaY reported that site emails, including the end of auction notices, were not going out in a timely manner. At 14:23:19 PT users received site wide messages saying, "The page you are looking for is currently unavailable." At 14:36:58 PT sellers reported not receiving payment messages from PayPal. At 14:45:53 PT buyers could still not access auction listings. At 15:04:40 PT claire@ebay.com posted "Hi folks, They are working on getting things straightened out. If you get errors when trying to view item pages, please refresh - the errors are intermittent so a retry should get you through." even though most users would not know to do this, and it did not necessarily work even after many attempts. At 15:15:45 PT ebaY reported that attempts at viewing an item description page were returning an error message from 12:57 PT to 14:30 PT. At 15:17:05 PT users reported that search was not working so that a search for model trains returned lexmark printers. At 15:24:00 PT ebaY posted that Mister Lister had been down but was working again. At 15:49:32 PT and 15:53:14 PT sellers continued to report that their auctions were not accessible and retuning 404 errors. If the user persisted they might get the auction to open after 3 or 4 tries. At 15:54:24 PT buyers reported that basic search was not working properly, returning error messages and a second submission screen. At 16:22:28 PT ebaY again acknowledged that the ability to access auction listings was down from 15:49 PT to 16:10 PT. This time the site was not working for 4 hours (12:18:57 to 16:10). At 16:37:25 PT users again reported access problems receiving "502 Connection failed: Web Site Not Responding The web site you have requested may be experiencing technical difficulties due to a busy or broken server." messages. This was still happening at 16:47:16 PT with cgi3 problems reported also, preventing log in and chat board access. The site appeared to come back at 16:57:51 PT and back down again at 17:19:18 PT with auctions once again inaccessible. At 17:38:09 PT ebaY reported that users were having problems accessing PayPal and that this appears to be limited to certain ISPs. ebaY claimed that access had been restored to all users. Users reported more access problems to cgi3 at 17:56:14 and 17:59:19 PT. At 18:02:33 PT users once again reported widespread access problems and had to use ebaY Canada and ebaY Australia to access the US site. At 18:27:28 PT access to auctions was down again returning, "The page cannot be displayed The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser settings." messages. At 18:38:34 PT ebaY reported that the site was down once again from 15:55 PT to 18:05 PT. This brought the days outage time up to 6 hours, with ebaY once again minimizing the problems, lying about the extent of the outages and violating their user agreement by not providing automatic refunds and auction extensions. Sellers with auctions affected by this outage should request refunds of listing and final value fees. At 20:25:08 PT sellers reported they were not receiving end of auction notices.

On 25 Nov at 05:54:17 PT users reported that search was not working properly. At 07:20:31 PT the search problems continued with the entry on the search box taking the user to another search page where the search parameters had to be reentered. At 12:11:09 PT users noted that bid prices were not being updated on the search results pages. Sellers reported that My ebaY was not working and had sold items showing in the unsold section. PayPal's auction finder was also telling buyers to pay for items whose auctions were still running. At 16:32:22 PT some users were still reporting no being able to log into PayPal. At 16:33:24 PT ebaY posted that the saved searches emails had a non functioning opt out link. ebaY said the resolution might take several days. Users could opt out of the emails from the My ebaY page. At 17:36:59 PT users reported having trouble updating Turbo Lister (TL). Sellers received messages that "1608:Unable to create install driver instance- return cod-2147467262" At 17:42:08 PT other sellers reported that attempts to update TL returned a message saying "Network problems are preventing turbo lister from communicating with ebay". At 18:29:58 PT sellers reported that My ebaY was showing scrambled information completely different than the actually status of the items listed. At 18:51:53 PT a seller reported their gallery featured item, listed several days previous, was not showing up as featured though they were charged for it. At 19:55:49 PT ebaY posted that they were going to have to take PayPal down for emergency maintenance from 23:00 PT and 23:45 PT. At 21:00:48 PT sellers continued to report inaccurate information in My ebaY with sold items appearing in the unsold section and no end of auction notices.

On 26 Nov at 07:01:17 PT users warned that ebaY had once again reset their preferences in My ebaY, so that ebaY opted the seller in for ebaY iPix picture services, even though the seller did not use ebaY iPix pic services. Other users reported that ebaY had also changed their marketing preferences. All users should check their preference selections and make sure they are set in accordance with the users wishes and not ebaY's. At 07:43:23 PT users reported ebaY's email system was down, and when trying to send messages received, "Warning: Unable to send your question(s) and forward a copy (Bcc) of your message. Unfortunately, we were unable to send your question(s) to the eBay user via email nor were we able to forward a copy to you. You may both be experiencing problems receiving email at this time." Users also reported they were not receiving ebaY or PayPal notifications. At 10:34:07 PT sellers posted that they were having problems with Mister Lister. At 11:59:22 PT sellers reported that the end of auction emails from ebaY were showing up with garbled HTML code. Sellers reported that ebaY was also randomly deleting independently hosted images. The site remained fairly stable for the rest of the day.

ebaY was stable on 27 Nov with no widespread outages.

On 28 Novat 02:13:19 PT a user reported that they could not bid on a car. When they tried they would get an agreement page, which would then result in a message saying, "We did not successfully receive all the required information from the page. Please go back and ensure that all fields are filled in." The site was stable for the rest of the day.

29 Nov ebaY will next take the site down for maintenance on 6 Dec. If you scheduled any listings to end between 01:00 PT and 03:00 PT on 6 Dec, these items will end whilst ebaY is down. Be careful. ebaY acknowledged at 20:36:53 PT that PayPal was late in sending Winning Bidder Notifications, and the Automatic Logo Insertion services were not working. ebaY said that it might take several more days for the problems to be corrected.

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