Were you affected by the eBay outage this weekend that caused eBay’s search feature to return either limited or no results throughout the day on Saturday and into Sunday?
They say timing is everything, and with most of us online retailers gearing up for a busy few weeks before the Holidays, this was the worst of times for eBay to experience a long search outage. My weekend eBay sales are generally slow and my use of auction format listings so minimal that I barely noticed the effects of the outage myself, but much of the eBay community is ablaze with angry sellers’ complaints and concerns. Chief among eBay sellers concerns is the fear of loss of consumer confidence in the eBay marketplace. And with consumers unable to optimally use eBay’s search and browse options at such a pivotal time of year for sales, this loss of confidence could have devastating effects. At the very least, as we all know, when a buyer finds an online site difficult to use – as they would have on eBay this weekend - it is all too easy for them to click to another site and do their shopping there.
Other concerns and complaints from eBay sellers who faced at least one, possibly two, dismal sales days due to the outage, include poor communication from eBay’s management team to both buyers and sellers about the outage, and lack of clarity about eBay’s responsibility to extend the affected listings as indicated in their outage policy. Some eBay sellers complain that because of the outage, consumers were unable to find their listings unless they were already watching the particular items. This caused a lack of bids and subsequently, a lack of sales and/or low selling prices of auction format listings. Other complaints include the invisibility in searches of a large percentage of sellers’ eBay store inventory and a general loss of sales during the time of the outage.
Some eBayers are asking eBay to offer compensation for listing fees and for items selling below value due to customers’ inability to find and bid on them during the outage. It seems that eBay is blaming the outage on a listings surge – thirty-three percent more than at this time a year ago - and while there are no definitive answers from eBay about compensation as I write this, here is part of Lorrie Norrington, President of eBay Marketplaces, official comment as of 2pm PT 11/22/09:
“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, we will be issuing full fee credits automatically for affected listings.”
This outage and its fallout comes on the heels of some eBay sellers’ – and I include myself here - mounting frustrations with eBay’s DSR rating system and the very difficult to achieve expectations of its new Top Rated Seller status. While I wasn’t seriously affected by the outage this weekend, and I am in general a supporter of eBay policy in theory, I am extremely curious to see how eBay will make it right for its many sellers that were affected.
What do you think?
How well do you think eBay handles the fallout from outages to its site?