An eBay seller contacted AuctionBytes last Friday to report a problem with a PayPal feature called "Winning Buyer Notification." The feature is designed to send out notification emails automatically to winning eBay bidders. Sellers have the option of using the feature, which works with eBay Auctions, eBay Stores, and eBay Fixed Price Listings.

When PayPal initially introduced the feature, the seller tested it for about a week, decided it did not meet his needs, and shut it off.

Early on the morning of June 6, however, Paypal reportedly started sending out winning bidder notices from his account to buyers winning closing auctions. "We did not turn on this feature, it just suddenly turned itself on," said the seller. "The worst part is that the message it is sending out is from 3 years ago, contains old address information and shipping costs which are significantly lower than we currently charge."

eBay did not get back to AuctionBytes to confirm or deny the glitch or advise sellers what to do if this should happen.

"We talked to Paypal customer service, and they could not determine the problem, nor did they have any record of anything changing on the account regarding bidder notifications," said the frustrated seller. "We asked several times about reimbursement for our losses because of this problem in their system, but we were ignored. Can you please notify others of this critical problem to see if others have been affected without their knowledge, or whether this is an isolated glitch? I'm concerned that others could be affected as we were, and may not notice it until inaccurate emails start going out to their customers without their knowledge."

The seller said he had to manually log on to PayPal and turn the "Winning Buyer Notification" feature off.