eBay said it would send email to some customers over the next few days to explain how technical problems affected their accounts and explaining the corrective measures being taken by eBay. Tuesday was the third day eBay experienced technical glitches on its site, having experienced a nine-hour outage on Sunday in two major categories and further problems on Monday.

"Over the last few days, we have experienced some technical difficulties. We realize that this has been an inconvenience for our members, and we sincerely apologize," eBay's announcement read in part. Yesterday's problems included difficulty signing in and intermittent difficulty using Checkout.

eBay experienced a 90-minute outage in mid-March, and it encountered significant technical problems when it integrated the feedback and registration process of its Half.com fixed-price site and the eBay site late last month. eBay had been pleased about its third quarter 2001 performance, boasting that the site achieved 99.9% site accessibility while getting 250 million page views per day during peak usage during that period.