eBay Goes Down But Is Not Accountable

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November 16, 2006 by Ty Tribble | 0 Comments

In a world where brick and mortar auctions are often accompanied by online catalogs and “live” Internet bidding, it would appear few considered what might happen if that technology failed. Yet that is exactly what happened on Saturday, October 21st when one or more servers at eBay which support the live auction component of the site went down at approximately 11AM EST. At 11:24 AM eBay acknowledged the technical difficulties by generating a system announcement saying the situation would be resolved “as quickly as possible.”
That turned out to be a matter of hours, not minutes.

According to eBay spokesperson Catherine England, “Our team corrected the problem and is currently in the process of reaching out to individuals who were impacted by the outage to apologize for the inconvenience.”

Weeks later, however, the impact on the live auctions being hosted that afternoon has yet to be fully realized. It has left many participating auctioneers wondering who is liable for lost opportunities, missed bids, angry consignors and disappointed online bidders.