eBay explained why it is discontinuing access to its Checkout Redirect feature through the Andale platform beginning on February 1, 2006, a decision that has caused a stir in the online-auction industry this week.

eBay spokesperson Hani Durzy said the company made the decision in order to protect sellers from future disruption after Andale failed to meet requirements of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) it had signed with eBay. The SLA requires vendors to adhere to a 99.9 percent uptime over each month, to have a certain response time, to adhere to certain branding requirements, and to notify eBay within 30 minutes of a technical problem.

eBay said Andale did not meet uptime requirements and did not inform eBay of the technical problem that hit them on October 28 within the required 30 minutes. When asked if Andale kept eBay informed of progress throughout the technical crisis, Durzy said, "to some extent." "Andale is solely responsible for losing their Checkout Redirect privileges," he said.

Andale co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Prashant Nedungadi said eBay is correct on the first point, that it was a difficult situation working with vendors to try and restore service during the first hours of the outage, and he made direct contact with the head of eBay's developer program about 15 - 16 hours after the problem first occurred. Nedungadi said he kept eBay closely informed of the progress after that.

At one point eBay engineers were on location in Santa Clara where Andale servers are located and helped Andale, Veritas and Oracle engineers fix the problems.

Nedungadi said Andale has been putting together additional processes and offered to have eBay audit its system.

Sellers who were affected by the outage are still upset with Andale. Some are pleased that eBay made the decision to pull checkout redirect, while others are upset about it, feeling they are being "dinged" twice: first with the initial outage, and now with eBay taking away the feature. (Even without the Checkout Redirect feature, sellers can use Andale to list items and manage their auctions.)

When asked if Andale at some point could reapply to use Checkout Redirect, Hani Durzy said eBay would continue to talk to Andale as they get closer to the February 1st date, and will ultimately do what's in the best interest of buyers and sellers. Andale's outage led to a negative buying experience and made extra work for sellers, Durzy said.

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"eBay to Pull Andale's Access to Critical Checkout Feature," 11/29/05
http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y05/m11/i29/s01

"eBay's Decision Is Frightening for Developers, Andale Says," 11/30/05
http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y05/m11/i30/s02