Big Ebay Fail last night

[Runscott]

If you listed items that ended between 7:00-7:30 Pacific last night, you might want to read this.

I had a $2,400 snipe in on an item that ended last night at 7:30PM Pacific. A little after 7:00 I noticed that I could no longer get to the item to view it - I was in the middle of listing items for sale, and that feature also stopped working (couldn't use the 'selling' link).

I put in snipes just in case I forget about an important auction, or I'm away from the computer, so I started thinking that it was a good thing that I had the snipe in. When I clicked on the auction link from the 'item about to end' ebay email, I got an 'Invalid Item' message. I tried to click auction links for some of the items I had listed earlier that evening, and same thing: 'invalid item'. This continued until shortly after the auction ended, at which time I found that a bid put in prior to the ebay problems won at $1,225 - half of my snipe!

This morning I got an auction sniper report that my snipe had failed because it was an 'invalid item'. I clicked the link and it worked fine. I'm not surprised, as the item had a value of around $2,500-3,000 and I wasn't expecting my $2,400 snipe to win - the only way it went for such a low price was because no one could either bid or snipe. I let the seller know that he got screwed and explained what happened from my end.

Does he have any remedies?

[Leon]

Originally Posted by Runscott

If you listed items that ended between 7:00-7:30 Pacific last night, you might want to read this.

I had a $2,400 snipe in on an item that ended last night at 7:30PM Pacific. A little after 7:00 I noticed that I could no longer get to the item to view it - I was in the middle of listing items for sale, and that feature also stopped working (couldn't use the 'selling' link).

I put in snipes just in case I forget about an important auction, or I'm away from the computer, so I started thinking that it was a good thing that I had the snipe in. When I clicked on the auction link from the 'item about to end' ebay email, I got an 'Invalid Item' message. I tried to click auction links for some of the items I had listed earlier that evening, and same thing: 'invalid item'. This continued until shortly after the auction ended, at which time I found that a bid put in prior to the ebay problems won at $1,225 - half of my snipe!

This morning I got an auction sniper report that my snipe had failed because it was an 'invalid item'. I clicked the link and it worked fine. I'm not surprised, as the item had a value of around $2,500-3,000 and I wasn't expecting my $2,400 snipe to win - the only way it went for such a low price was because no one could either bid or snipe. I let the seller know that he got screwed and explained what happened from my end.

Does he have any remedies?

It might be against their rules but if it were absolutely an outage I would seriously consider voiding the sale. An internet malfunction that greatly impairs or disables the site should be just cause.

[bn2cardz]

The fault went through paypal as well. So any site that functioned off the paypal store was down as well. It was a huge issue last night with EBAY and PAYPAL being the biggest ones that hit our hobby.

[buymycards]

I had the same problem last night. Everything was working fine and then every link stopped working.

[bobbyw8469]

Does he have any remedies?

In a nutshell, NO. This is not the first time this has happened. I gave away a valuable program around 6-8 months ago when almost the exact same thing happened. I sent it off, knowing it was a steal. Also sold a 1954 Bowman Ted Williams card around a year ago for a steal. No one could bid. The winning bidder promptly paid, and flipped it for $500 more in only a week. It's just the nature of the beast. Ebay expects sellers to suck it up and take it on the chin. It's the cost of doing business.....

[Darner]

I was trying to bid on a ticket stub that ended a couple of minutes after 10 PM Eastern. The best I could get was getting my watch list to load on my computer. Couldn't even log in through mobile. It wasn't a rare or valuable item but frustrating nonetheless.

[Stonepony]

Originally Posted by bobbyw8469

In a nutshell, NO. This is not the first time this has happened. I gave away a valuable program around 6-8 months ago when almost the exact same thing happened. I sent it off, knowing it was a steal. Also sold a 1954 Bowman Ted Williams card around a year ago for a steal. No one could bid. The winning bidder promptly paid, and flipped it for $500 more in only a week. It's just the nature of the beast. Ebay expects sellers to suck it up and take it on the chin. It's the cost of doing business.....

I may be wrong , but wasn't your situation due to sniping services not being able to cast bids? This situation is different in that you couldn't bid thru EBay itself. That would be a hard pill to swallow as a seller being that the auction process was completely compromised. I wasn't a buyer or a seller last night, but it's a bad situation for many people.

[Runscott]

Some sellers cannot afford such hits. I contacted this particular seller and he thought it was because the high bidder was a zero-feedback bidder. I gave him the details of last night's system-wide event and he will not be selling at the half-price bid. It was a non-baseball rare item that several collectors had snipes ready for. Very doubtful I would have gotten it even at $2,400. This got me to wondering, though - if I had put in a bid prior to the outage and won the item for a song, would I have been pissed when the seller refused to sell? Knowing the problems ebay was having, I like to think I wouldn't have