Wall Street Journal: eBay glitch repaired after e-commerce site's search falters this weekend

Posted: 6:38 p.m. November 22, 2009

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While Ebay auctions still worked this weekend, some key search capabilities kept users from finding items on Saturday - sending sales totals plummeting to a fraction of what they should have been.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, "Generally, transactions were a fraction for any normal day, much less [a] holiday," said Chief Executive Scot Wingo of ChannelAdvisor Corp., which helps merchants sell on eBay and other sites. "Auction sellers were in a bad state. Some are saying they went all day without bids, and underbidders got their items for a steal due to lack of last-minute bidding."

The site was repaired by Sunday - and it was caused, officials said, by a surge in listings as sellers tried to get their merchandise ready for Thanksgiving Week buyers.

Tthe site had more than 200 million live listings, an increase of 33% from this time last year, according to EBay spokesman John Pluhowski in the WSJ article.

The surge in listings comes about three weeks after it launched a new ad campaign to tout its new merchandise listings.

Meanwhile, sellers affected by the search glitch on Saturday will get credit for their listings.

Read the WSJ report here.