eBay told Andale users it would discontinue access to Checkout Redirect through the Andale platform beginning on February 1, 2006 (http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y05/m11/i29/s01) in a move that puzzles and angers both Andale and some of its customers.

Andale CEO Linda Hayes said she feels terrible about the problems that disrupted her customers' eBay businesses in early November and blames the problem on a third-party software vendor. When asked how much revenue eBay might have lost due to the problem, Hayes said she had no idea and no way of knowing. There were two days when Andale sellers were unable to use the listing tool to list items on eBay.

Hayes said the database that had been corrupted and was the cause of the problem has been rebuilt and is running better than it's ever been, so she was "surprised and highly disappointed" over eBay's decision regarding the checkout redirect feature. When asked why eBay made the decision, Hayes was baffled. "It seems punitive to me," Hayes said, "but I'm on the other side of the fence."

Hayes said she was told about the decision not long before an email was sent out to her customers, and she tried to convince eBay that the decision was not in the best of interest of eBay or Andale. "This is a scary thing for all third-party vendors, it's frightening for all developers," she said. "None of us are immune from technical problems."

Hayes said not all Andale customers use the company's checkout feature. Of those who use it, well over 50 percent don't use the checkout redirect feature. Without checkout redirect enabled, buyers simply have to make one extra click to process their eBay transactions, she said.

When asked about how she felt about eBay's suggestion to Andale customers that they use eBay's solutions directory to find another vendor if they wanted the checkout redirect feature, Hayes said, "Our customers have been as incensed about that as we were. I'm surprised they would do that."

Several CEOs of competing firms reached out to Hayes with offers of support when the technical problems occurred earlier this month, she said.

"We are financially strong and technically strong," Hayes said. "We are cash-flow positive, and we have some of the most innovative products. We have a great relationship with eBay's strategic partnership department and with eBay's developer program,...we view eBay as a partner."

Andale has been criticized for not having a backup of its database. Hayes said the company did have a backup, but the corruption in the storage system caused by the vendor caused it to corrupt both the database and the database backup.