eBay warned its members that they may experience problems trying to contact trading partners who use AT&T's Worldnet email service. AT&T announced that some of its customers are experiencing difficulty with its AT&T WorldNet E-mail service, and said network engineers are actively trying to resolve the problem (http://worldnet.attecc.com/bulletins/index.html). Due to a severe backlog, which continues, some inbound email may have been rejected. eBay warned its members that this could present difficulty for them if they are involved in a transaction with a member who holds an AT&T email address. eBay asked that members "give them the benefit of the doubt," and to consider requesting contact information from eBay that includes active telephone numbers.

Meanwhile, AT&T is also changing the email addresses of its broadband Mediaone customers. The new domain name attbi.com will replace the mediaone.net domain name. Other broadband service providers have begun changing domain names as well, causing online auction users to scramble to keep up. The first round of problems started when Excite@home email addresses changed when the service ceased operations. ISPs do not usually forward email when the domain name changes, and quite often they fail to send bouncebacks when email is undeliverable. There is concern that auction users may be assuming people are getting their email when they are not, causing bad feelings between buyers and sellers.

In related news, AltaVista announced that it is doing away with its free Web-based consumer email service (http://help.altavista.com/email/transition). Effective noon, March 31, 2002, all free AltaVista email accounts will be permanently closed.