PayPal's scheduled maintenance last Thursday night (http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200508311112161.html) may have led to a glitch that began affecting some of its debit-card users right before the holiday weekend. Users posted on an eBay message board that their accounts showed negative balances after PayPal made duplicate withdrawals from their accounts (http://digbig.com/4embx).

Affected users said they needed money for the long weekend and to pay for personal and business purchases. Those who called PayPal customer service reported long waits on hold, and appeared to be getting different answers from representatives when they finally got through. Some users said the duplicate withdrawals were immediately reversed, others said they were told it would be taken care of after the long weekend, others were told they would have to fill out paperwork proving the withdrawal was a mistake.

One poster to the board said the PayPal representative told her the problem occurred when the company was updating pending charges to completed charges. "Instead of being reflected as completed they were submitted as new charges," she wrote.

eBay, which owns PayPal, announced the scheduled maintenance on its Systems Status board. However, there were no reports of any problems with PayPal accounts on the status board.

In related news, the focus of eBay's next Town Hall meeting on September 16 will be PayPal (http://pages.ebay.com/townhall).