On 1 Mar 2003 at 08:38:33 PT users reported having problems with the ebaY Spyware toolbar. The downloads were failing. The site was stable throughout the day.
On 2 Mar 2003 at 09:01:46 PT, buyers reported they could not use the "ask seller a question" feature to send emails through the ebaY system. At 14:16:23 PT users trying to access ebaY pages received messages saying, "We were unable to process your request. We are sorry, but we were unable to process your request. Please check the eBay Announcement Board for updates on recent and upcoming changes, major system issues, and other important eBay news." At 14:16:48 PT sellers reported My ebaY was not working with listings appearing and disappearing. At 14:18:01 PT the ebaY system crashed. ebaY posted at 14:33:41 PT that their system was down from 13:56 PT to 14:19 PT. ebaY said it was in certain categories, including ebaY Sports, and that it was intermittent. At 15:16:45 PT users reported they could not register a sellers account, taking the user around in circles but not accepting the information. At 16:08:34 PT, sellers reported their auction counters had disappeared from their auctions. At 17:03:17 PT sellers reported that the SYI2.0 form was not working, not accepting information submitted by sellers. At 18:20:10 PT, users were pulling up blank pages when trying to reload pages on ebaY. At 18:23:55 PT users reported that category indexing was 6+ hours behind in some categories. At 18:24:29 PT, users reported cgi 3 was retuning error messages, preventing sign in and board posts. This lasted through 18:30:44 PT. At 20:38:08 PT users noted that title search had still not updated running over 10 hours behind.
On 3 Mar 200305:37:37 PT users reported that they could not use checkout to pay with PayPal. At 09:17:36 PT sellers reported that relist for fixed price items was not working properly, defaulting to a listing period reflecting the time it took to sell the item rather than the 7 day period as originally listed. At 22:18:24 PT sellers reported receiving error messages when trying to upload using Turbo Lister.
On 4 Mar 2003 at 03:44:39 PT users reported that My ebaY was yielding blank pages. Repeated reloads of the page would eventually bring the page up indicating one or more servers down in the server pool. At 11:47:09 PT buyers reported having problems managing and deleting items in their My ebaY pages. At 11:48:14 PT, sellers reported that their ebaY Sellers Assistant Pro program was losing their customer addresses. At 14:15:31 PT, users reported that the threaded boards had disappeared. At 14:57:01 PT, ebaY posted that the discussion boards were down from 14:20 PT to 14:28 PT. At 19:08:56 PT users reported they were having problems accessing their completed auctions. Attempts to get to these auctions returned an error message saying the seller was not the seller of the item, though that was not true.
On 5 Mar 2003 at 08:25:43 PT, sellers lists were showing up with corrupted information, including ending times changing, bid numbers disappearing and other problems. At 08:31:04 PT users theorized that these seller list problems are as a result of ebaY trying to implement the seller feedback box on the listing page. At 08:33:44 PT sellers reported that listings were showing up twice on their seller lists, changing positions etc. At 16:02:07 PT, sellers reported problems with Turbo Lister, with the program not opening and retuning messages saying it, "Cannot be opened-contact vendor to verify this is a valid windows installer package". At 18:08:02 PT sellers continued to report their sellers lists were corrupted. The ending times had all changed. These problems continued to be reported 18:26:58 PT.
On 6 Mar 2003 at 08:16:21 PT buyers could not pay using PayPal from the ebaY site. At 15:46:59 PT sellers received cgi5 errors preventing listing. At 15:48:30 PT the ebaY site crashed, returning messages that, "This function is currently unavailable We apologize that you are not able to access this feature at the present time. Our Technical Support Team has been notified and we are working on resolving this difficulty as quickly as possible. Please visit the eBay Announcements Board for updates on recent and upcoming changes, major system issues, and other important eBay news." At 15:50:07 PT users continued to get connection reset by peer error messages. At 15:51:22 PT users received messages that the chat boards were no longer available. These board problems continued throughout the day and for several days after. At 16:08:06 PT users reported that seller search was down, retuning error messages. At 16:13:46 PT ebaY posted that users were having intermittent problems getting to ebaY including certain tabs in My ebaY and the ebaY Chat Boards, and that they were working on it. At 16:16:01 PT users trying to access the site reported getting messages that, "This function is currently unavailable We apologize that you are not able to access this feature at the present time. Our Technical Support Team has been notified and we are working on resolving this difficulty as quickly as possible". At 16:16:52 PT users received messages saying, "This page can't be displayed", "Http 400 Bad Request", and "invalid board", whilst attempting to access various ebaY pages. At 16:28:11 PT ebaY posted that from 16:00 PT to 16:15 PT, some ebaY functions were down, including certain tabs in My ebaY and the ebaY Chat Boards. Though ebaY claimed to have fixed the board problems, they hadn't, and starting at 16:28:13 PT users once again reported getting frequent intermittent invalid board messages. At 17:05:35 PT, users reported that ebaY was jacking with the code affecting the auction listing description box causing problems with fonts. Invalid board messages continued to appear relentlessly. At 20:26:02 PT users reported receiving 404 errors on reloads on various ebaY pages. The invalid board messages continued throughout the night.
On 7 Mar 2003 the PayPal website and functions were down for maintenance from 23:00 PT on Thu 6 Mar to 03:30 PT on Fri 7 Mar. ebaY was down for maintenance from approx 00:18:03 PST to 03:14:11 PST. At 10:31:38 PT the ebaY site crashed. At 10:32:06 PT users reported cgi3 down, preventing sign in and board posting. At 10:37:16 PT the site crashed again. At 10:45:22 PT users reported their My ebaY preferences had been reset and that ebaY was not allowing them to change them back. At 11:06:16 PT the invalid board messages continued. At 11:14:14 PT ebaY posted that the ebaY Live auctions were down from 10:29 PT to 10:35 PT, with users being unable to sign into ebaY Live auctions. We have resolved this issue, and apologize for any inconvenience. At 14:53:52 PT users posted that their feedback information was corrupted showing "negatives 22 are from unique users and count toward the final rating. 2 are from unique users." At 17:59:19 PT users again reported My ebaY down. At 18:49:04 PT, SYI2.0 was not working and users could not view images on auction listings. At 19:19:09 PT My ebaY was back, though users were still accessing the chat boards through ebaY Canada, and the invalid board messages continued on the ebaY US site.
On 8 Mar 2003 at 03:12:50 PT users of the ebaY Spyware toolbar was not working, and users could not get their My ebaY link to work. At 06:37:20 PT, users noted that the invalid board messages continued to show up on the chat boards for the third day. At 08:36:13 PT sellers reported that auctions scheduled to end at 15:13 PT were intermittently showing ending times of 00:13 and showing messages that the auction had ended. This continued intermittently through 10:34:58 PT. At 16:08:59 PT the invalid board messages continued, and were reported throughout the evening.
On 9 Mar 2003 at 09:29:39 PT the invalid board message continued for the 4th day. At 09:40:47 PT cgi3 returned error messages preventing sign in and board access. At 09:54:43 PT ebaY reported that ebaY Live auctions and the ebaY chat boards were down. At 11:18:46 PT ebaY posted that the chat boards were intermittently down and ebaY was working on the problem. At 11:26 PT sellers reported that they could not open the link to end an auction. The customer support links on both the regular and powerseller pages were also not working. End of auction notices were showing up approx 24 hours late. At 11:57:05 PT ebaY posted that ebaY Live auctions were still not working. and ebaY was still working on it. The chat board problems continued. At 12:26:14 PT ebaY posted that were still not working and ebaY was still working on it. At 12:29:26 PT users reported that they could only access the chat boards through ebaY Canada. At 13:11:38 PT, users reported that ebaY was jacking with My ebaY, and every refresh of the My ebaY page brought up a different configuration. At 13:14:55 PT users received "This function is currently unavailable" messages when trying to access ebaY. At 13:22:14 PT ebaY posted that ebaY Live auctions were still not working, and some of the auctions may have been ended by sellers and rescheduled. At 13:26:15 PT a user reported that while trying to post a message on the chat board, a page came up listing 60 user ids and passwords. This came up on a blank white screen titled ID password. At 13:27:00 PT ebaY posted that the problem with the chat boards was fixed. At 13:36:49 PT a second user reported seeing a list of user ids and password whilst trying to post on the chat boards. At 13:40:14 PT users continued to report invalid board messages, negating ebaY's message that the problem had been fixed. At 13:56:59 PT sellers reported that items they had listed were not showing on their seller list. The item showed on in number search. At 14:09:51 PT seller's lists were showing up as having no auctions, though the sellers actually had open auctions. Buyers also reported that search was not working. At 14:14:48 PT seller's auctions were missing from My ebaY, seller search and all seller links. At 14:19:45 PT buyers reported their My ebaY bid page was not showing any of their items bid on, and their watch page was empty. At 19:19:13 PT sellers reported that they were not receiving notices of payments made to PayPal. At 19:27:28 PT buyers reported that their saved searches had disappeared from their My ebaY pages. users reported invalid board messages throughout the day, and night.
On 10 Mar 2003 at 08:03:07 PT sellers continued to report that the ebaY PayPal link in auctions was still showing the sellers email address to anyone clicking on the link. At 11:09:57 PT users continued to report invalid board messages for the 5th consecutive day. At 12:10:21 PT the feedback forum also showed invalid messages. The invalid board messages continued throughout the day, but the site was otherwise stable.
On 11 Mar 2003 at 09:34:15 PT ebaY posted that the view account status function was down from 08:48 PT to 09:17 PT. At 11:26:12 PT ebaY posted that the gallery images had not been displaying properly for the previous 24 hours in several categories including Collectibles. At 11:39:42 PT PayPal payment notices were not being sent to sellers. At 15:15:27 PT sellers again reported problems with gallery images not showing on their auctions, only showing the "click here to see picture" box. At 15:56:50 PT users reported they could not access their My ebaY pages, getting error messages.
On 12 Mar 2003 at 08:05:15 PT sellers reported they were not receiving end of auction notices from ebaY. At 12:12:20 PT users reported that when trying to access auction listings they received "Item details currently unavailable" messages. At 12:41:29 PT ebaY was again jacking with the code on the seller pages, causing problems for sellers trying to manage their auctions. At 12:44:19 PT buyers using Netscape could not access any auctions, just getting blank pages. At 12:46:54 PT more users reported getting "item details currently unavailable" messages whilst trying to view auction listings. At 15:12:02 PT buyers reported that when trying to rebid on an auction, they received "Page Expired" messages or a message that the bid was not high enough, preventing a rebid. When checking the auction again, the buyer would find they actually had the high bid. At 15:47:05 PT sellers reported that there was a problem with the pre-approved bidder function, and that ebaY had acknowledged the problem and were looking into it.
On 13 Mar 2003 ebaY took the PayPal website down for maintenance from 23:00 PT on Wed 12 March to 03:00 PT on Thu 13 Mar. At 06:15:07 PT users reported that PayPal was intermittently not working properly. The auction finder was not working, and the buyer would have to select "other auction" in order to pay for an ebaY auction. At 16:28:03 PT users reported that the ebaY Spyware toolbar was not working. Reinstalling it did not help. At 19:52:45 PT users reported they could not get the ebaY Spyware toolbar to download. At 15:09:32 PT sellers reported that they were receiving end of auction notices from 5 to 24 hours after the auction ended.
On 14 Mar 2003 ebaY took their system down for maintenance from approx 00:41:51 PT to 03:03:56 PT. The site was stable for the rest of the day.
On 15 Mar 2003 at 04:08:04 PT, sellers reported receiving end of auction notices from 25 Feb. At 10:22:14 PT users reported the ebaY clock was off, showing listings that should have been 10:37:40 PT as 00:37:40 PT. At 11:07:08 PT an established seller posted that ebaY was suddenly requiring them to register a credit card in order to view their sales on ebaY. TAG has heard similar reports from many sellers. This was occurring on sellers who used direct debit to pay ebaY, and also those who use a check or money order to pay, though none had deficit balances. At 11:37:08 PT, users trying to access PayPal received, "Because we are currently experiencing heavy traffic to our site, we were unable to complete your request. Try clicking the 'Refresh' button on your browser. If you are still unable to access the site, please try again later." These error messages continued for 25 minutes. At 12:19:36 PT users posted they were no longer able to use their My ebaY page as their home page without signing in each time they accessed it. This has been going on for a couple of weeks due to some ebaY coding change. PayPal continued to be down, returning "The PayPal website is temporarily unavailable due to maintenance. It will be available again at approximately 1:30 pm PDT" messages. PayPal was back at 13:17:55 PT. At 18:23:58 PT feedback numbers were appearing and disappearing as ebaY once again was jacking with the code. At 18:53:18 PT auctions that were still running were showing as ended, as ebaY continued to mess with the site.
On 16 Mar 2003 at 06:57:03 PT yet another established seller reported they could not relist items or access their auctions as ebaY was demanding they register a charge card from a credit card screen. This seller also used direct debit to pay ebaY. At 18:21:43 PT users reported getting blank pages when trying to open auction pages and bid. At 19:38:18 PT users trying to use the ebaY email system received error messages. At 22:13:56 PT ebaY was not recognizing established sellers and was not allowing them to get the email addresses of their buyers on closed auctions, saying the seller was not the seller.
On 17 Mar 2003 at 04:41:20 PT sellers reported having trouble getting My ebaY to load as it was very slow. At 08:53:59 PT users trying to access ebaY pages received page cannot be displayed errors. Users also received board unavailable messages when trying to post on the boards. 22:59 PT ebaY's iPix images were down and iPix images were not showing on auctions coming up with broken pictures. This lasted through 23:35 PT.
On 18 Mar 2003 at 07:51:19 PT users reported that cgi6 was not working, preventing access to sellers lists. At 09:06:04 PT users received HTTP 400 errors. At 10:55 PT, buyers reported that their was something strange going on with the bidding and the auction clock, as auction ending times kept changing on refresh, and the auction would close showing a high bidder and then on refresh, show more bids and a different winner.
On 19 Mar 2003 at 00:00:18 PT users reported they were having trouble setting up their ebaY account to sell. At 05:27:16 PT users received input errors whilst trying to access ebaY. At 06:48:04 PT ebaY posted that for several hours ending at 06:33 PT, users were not able to access the View Item page for newly listed items in several categories, including Sports and Collectibles. Though buyers could not get to these listings to bid or buy, for several hours, ebaY did not extend auctions or issue refunds. At 10:55 PM PT users reported that ebaY iPix images were not showing up on auctions. At 15:16:19 PT sellers reported they were not receiving email messages when items sold in their store. At 16:32:20 PT, users reported receiving input errors when trying to access pages. At 17:47:11 PT, sellers reported they were having problems with Turbo Lister, getting messages that it was not communicating with ebaY. At 21:14:15 PT users reported they could not sign in to ebaY.
On 20 Mar 2003 at 10:16:55 PT, sellers trying to list via Turbo Lister received messages that they had a payment overdue, even though that was not so. At 11:20:39 PT users reported that title search indexing was running 24 hours behind. At 14:50:15 PT users reported that ebaY was running very slowly. At 18:49:50 PT completed auctions, both sold and unsold, were showing up as relisted on My ebaY, though they had not been relisted. At 21:14:23 PT sellers reported that auction ending times were changing. Auctions actually ending in 23 hours, were shown as ending in 3 hours. At 22:25:26 PT users again reported ebaY running very slowly.
On 21 Mar 2003 at 06:04:36 PT buyers trying to access auctions received invalid item messages. At 06:04:37 PT users reported that there were coding problems, with apostrophes appearing as double quote marks, and quote marks appearing as triple quote marks. At 06:55:50 PT users reported that auctions were showing 00 hours remaining, though the auctions were still running. At 13:00:52 PT users trying to access feedback received internal error messages. At 22:03:45 PT sellers reported getting charged either 1 cent or 10 cents for the listing designer fee, with no logic as to which fee they received. At 22:25:01 PT sellers got a pop up window whilst revising an item that said, "A Note About eBay Fees Fees pay for the right to sell on eBay. Sellers do not purchase exclusive rights to Web pages on eBay. eBay may, in our sole discretion, and without your consent or payment to you, place third-party advertisements on any Web page within our site"
On 22 Mar 2003 at 15:28:18 PT sellers reported that auctions ending in 18 hours and 38 minutes were showing as 8 hours 38 mins on the sellers list. At 15:32:46 PT users reported the problem was happening intermittently alternating between normal ending times and ending minus 10 hours. At 15:32:55 PT cgi 6 was down and seller's lists were showing open auctions with 00 ending times. This continued intermittently until 17:27:06 PT.
On 23 Mar 2003 at 01:32:18 PT users reported they could not view images on auctions. At 06:10:53 PT users reported problems logging into ebaY.
On 24 Mar 2003 users reported the problems with auctions closing and reopening were continuing. Threads on the subject could be seen at - http://answercenter.ebay.com/thread.jsp?forum=7&thread=38329 http://answercenter.ebay.com/thread.jsp?forum=7&thread=38008 http://answercenter.ebay.com/thread.jsp?forum=7&thread=37962 http://answercenter.ebay.com/thread.jsp?forum=19&thread=38082 http://forums.ebay.com/db0/thread.jsp?forum=110&thread=129029&modifed=20030324133002 http://forums.ebay.com/db0/thread.jsp?forum=110&thread=129274&modifed=20030324070556 At 18:16:09 PT users reported that the characters in their auction titles were once again corrupted. At 18:41:04 PT users reported that search results were failing to open past the "Featured" items, so only featured items were available to buyers. At 20:29:02 PT users reported they could not access PayPal. At 20:54:22 PT PayPal problems continued with some access but very slow page loads. This continued to be reported until 21:21:29 PT.
On 25 Mar 2003 at 04:29:19 PT sellers reported they were hearing from buyers that the buyers were unable to pay with PayPal. A block kept coming up on the screen. At 13:59:58 PT users received page cannot be displayed messages whilst trying to access ebaY pages. At 16:12:58 PT sellers were prevented from listing by an error message saying they had to accept an online payment as a seller in order to list an auction. At 17:16:37 PT sellers reported they were not receiving payment notices from PayPal.
On 26 Mar 2003 on 07:31:24 PT users received "Page Cannot be Found" messages whilst trying to get to My ebaY. At 07:35:18 PT buyers could not access their watch pages to look at or bid on auctions. At 07:36:37 PT sellers reported some of their items were showing as "item details unavailable". At 07:38:47 PT users received connection reset by peer errors by clicking on My ebaY links at the top of ebaY pages on cgi1. Some could get to My ebaY via cgi6. At 07:45:43 PT more sellers reported some of their items were missing. At 07:49:46 PT ebaY posted that from 07:29 PT to 07:39 PT the Pottery and Glass category were not working properly. At 08:27:24 PT users reported the ebaY spyware toolbar was not working. They were receiving signature error messages. At 10:37:46 PT users reported that revise an auction was not working. Revisions would not go through saying there was a bid on the auction, though there wasn't. At 14:47:08 PT buyers reported the search engine was not working preventing searching for a specific region. At 15:05:01 PT users reported the feedback system was not working returning, "This function is currently unavailable We apologize that you are not able to access this feature at the present time. Our Technical Support Team has been notified and we are working on resolving this difficulty as quickly as possible...". At 17:00:26 PT there were more search problems, with search not returning the asked for items. At 17:44:28 PT users reported that various parts of the ebaY system were crashing. The ebaY email system was not working, preventing users from sending messages. At 17:48:50 PT users reported more problems with the feedback system. At 19:41:09 PT items on sellers lists were once again showing as 00 on the clock, though the auctions were still open. The ebaY clock on the chat boards showed the following times consecutively - 00:44:14, 00:17:14, and 00:33:45. It was actually between 19:41 and 19:46. At 19:46:35 PT users reported cgi6 was back up, allowing access to sellers lists. At 19:54:22 PT sellers trying to use Turbo Lister were getting CRITEM.DLL errors. At 21:29:17 PT sellers reported the emails they were sending through ebaY's email system were not getting to their buyers.
On 27 Mar 2003 at 10:09:45 PT sellers reported that Turbo Lister was not working. Closing the update box closed the whole program and when reopened would go through the update cycle, preventing it from being used. At 14:34:30 PT sellers reported more problems with Turbo Lister. Sellers could not sign in. At 14:10:18 PT users could not log out of ebaY. At 19:01:38 PT the stores tags disappeared off the chat boards and the power seller logos appeared on all sellers who were eligible to have it, even those who had not joined the power seller program and did not want the logo.
On 28 Mar 2003 users reported they had sign in problems all day, with the cookie not holding. At 02:50:11 PT the time on the board posts was showing it was 18:16:05 PT. The unwanted power seller logos were still showing up and the store logos were still missing. At 4:05:49 PT a seller reported that the sort feature in My ebaY was only showing 733 of 912 items listed, somehow restricted by the 800 item sort limit. At 5:02:08 PT the feedback numbers for sellers were completely corrupted, for example a seller with a total of 200 feedbacks showed a rating of 600. ebaY crashed completely at 5:38:59 PT until 5:39:03 PT. At 5:41:48 PT users reported many site problems with pages loading very slowly. At 9:05:46 PT sellers reported that items were missing from their seller lists. At 18:32:25 PT users reported widespread problems on the ebaY chat boards with very slow reloads.
On 29 Mar 2003 at 15:08:16 PT the unwanted power seller logos were still showing up and the store logos were still missing. At 21:12:16 PT item number search was not working on the chat board search box. At 21:39:15 PT users reported that sign in was not holding, causing users to have to sign in for every site access attempt. At 21:49:16 PT the chat board reloads were hanging. At 22:15:45 PT a verified member of Square Trade for the property rental program reported they could not list their rental under the travel-lodging-vacation rentals category.
On 30 Mar 2003 at 7:13:48 PT more users reported corrupted feedback numbers with feedback rating in the thousands showing for users with less that 500 total feedback. At 11:09:55 PT ebaY posted that users were not getting PayPal's winning bidder notification emails. At 11:53:38 PT seller's lists were once again missing, showing all items as not available. At 12:13:13 PT users reported gallery images were not showing on auctions. Indexing of images was running 16 hours late. At 12:13:34 PT users reported cgi6 crashed, preventing access to seller's lists. All auctions on sellers lists were again showing 00 times on open auctions. At 12:14:01 PT auctions started to disappear and reappear. Post times on the chat boards were once again appearing with arbitrary times, consecutively showing as 12:27:48 PT, 7:59:31 PT, 11:46:52 PT, 14:37:12 PT Auctions and finally back to 'real' time at 12:14:43 PT. At 16:05:15 PT sellers reported their auctions were showing as ended on their seller's list but the auction was actually open and had over an hour to run. At 16:39:20 PT attempts to access advanced search returned a runtime error. At 18:44:17 PT cgi 6 timed out when a Pop-up Survey came up on it. When the screen was refreshed the '00' time bug was back. At 18:59:31 PT attempts to post on the chat boards bounced users to the maintenance screen. At 19:00:59 PT users trying to access ebaY pages received the ebaY down for maintenance message, and also network error problems across the site. At 19:26:06 PT users received connection refused messages. At 19:29:00 PT cgi 5 was down preventing listing. At 19:30:25 PT sellers were prevented from relisting items because the site would not recognize them as the owner of the item. At 19:32:06 PT users reported it taking 10 minutes to sign in. At 19:45:44 PT users were receiving timeouts on pages across the site. Sellers could not list items as the site did not recognize them as sellers.
On 31 Mar 2003 at 5:12:48 PT users reported that ebaY's iPix images were down. At 5:28:07 PT the iPix image problems continued across the site. At 8:40:57 PT the dates on chat board posts continued to be corrupted and arbitrary. At 9:39:18 PT users reported problems with log in. the ebaY site crashed at 9:44:11 PT returning at 9:51:43 PT. At 10:34:02 PT users reported that search was not working. On common searches normally showing many items search was retuning 0 items. At 10:44:48 PT sellers reported they could not list. At 11:05:46 PT users received 504 Gateway Timeout messages while trying to list. At 11:09:52 PT users trying to access the chat boards received "Community Forums Error - The requested thread was not found." This occurred intermittently through 15:46:07 PT. At 16:45:36 PT users reported the chat boards loading very slowly with broadband connections, taking over 4 minutes to load. At 19:14:21 PT reloads were again very slow. Users had to continually sign in. These problems lasted until 21:01:58 PT.
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