eBay sellers were scurrying to ship packages before the snow storm Monday, but were stymied due to technical issues on the site.
“Is eBay Monday mean no shipping again? Got the first items out and now nothing will process on eBay shipping,” an EcommerceBytes reader wrote.
Sellers also reported the problem on the Ecommerce EKG announcement board.
A quick search of the eBay boards revealed other sellers reporting similar frustrations. “I can’t select a shipping service from the drop-down menu, on Chrome or Firefox. Anyone else too,” asked a seller. The thread, titled, “Shipping down again?” was in reference to previous glitches that prevented sellers from printing shipping labels through the eBay system.
This major incident on January 13th, for example, also occurred on a Monday, a busy time for sellers who rack up orders over the weekend.
Yesterday (January 26) was particularly bad timing for sellers on the East Coast – not only was it a Monday, but a blizzard was bearing down on sellers located on the East Coast.
Some sellers begged eBay to put up an announcement: “Shipping has not worked for hours, PLEASE PUT UP AN ANOUNCEMENT AND THEN TELL US WHEN IT’S FIXED.”
It wasn’t lost on sellers that eBay failed to communicate the technical issue in a timely manner while at the same time the company judges sellers for their timeliness in communicating with buyers. “Funny how when you fail to meet your obligation, immediately it’s counted against you,” wrote one seller, “but eBay’s failure seems to be a black hole of no communication and no penalty.”
Sellers also had problems printing shipping labels via PayPal.
