Note: This article originally ran in the December 3rd issue of the AuctionBytes Newsflash newsletter. Several Newsflash readers responded, letters are found in the "Readers Respond to eBay Glitches" section of this issue. ***

eBay sellers may find their stockings full of coal this holiday shopping season, if anecdotal reports of slow sales and technical glitches on the online auction site are true. Some problems are site-wide, most affect subsets of listings. Over the past 4 months, there have been numerous complaints of glitches affecting bidding, listing, disappearing blocked-bidder lists, feedback, end-of-auction notices, outbid notices and search indexing problems.

On November 22, eBay did maintenance on the "Account Status" feature. Since then, some sellers' "Blocked Bidders" lists have mysteriously disappeared. Sellers rely on these lists to block problem users from bidding on their items. One seller affected said eBay refused or was unable to recover his list of blocked bidders and said, "I've been selling since 1997, and [the problems] just get worse and worse."

This week, problems with eBay search were a major topic of concern on several auction industry discussion forums, including eBay's own boards. Users report severe problems with eBay's search functionality for title and description searches that started the week of Thanksgiving. According to users and several tests run by AuctionBytes, the eBay search engine appears to be indexing only the first 4,000 or so characters within an auction description. According to one post on OTWA, an auction users' forum, "the eBay search engine is not delivering all the results that it should be. Diminished returns on search mean diminished bids."

A study released in October found that about 4% of over 1,200 eBay searches for "digital camera" conducted over a two-week period (August 31 through September 15) failed in some way. The Wall Street Journal commissioned Empirix to compare performance of online auction sites, and the findings showed eBay had significant performance issues http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y03/m10/i08/s01. In fairness, eBay has many more items on its site than the other auction sites included in the study.

AuctionBytes contacted eBay spokespersons on Tuesday, November 25, and Tuesday, December 2, about these problems and the problem of glitches in general. eBay has not yet responded, and the search-indexing and blocked-bidders list problems remain unfixed.

There have also been reports of problems placing bids. A glitch affecting third-party sniping services on November 11 was never reported on eBay's announcement board. (eBay does not support sniping services nor does it allow third-party sniping services to enroll in its developer program.)

Sellers whose auctions ended that evening lost money when last-minute bids did not come through. On July 30, eBay posted that some members were experiencing intermittent issues when viewing items or placing bids. Since then, there have been anecdotal reports of ongoing bidding problems.

Technical glitches are nothing new to eBay, but several factors may be fueling the dissatisfaction felt by many users. One is that the problems may be more disruptive than usual. While this appears to be the case, it is difficult for outsiders to measure since eBay does not document every problem on its announcement board.

Another factor is that the holiday shopping season is in full swing, and for many sellers this time of year is when they rack up their biggest sales. Site outages and glitches such as auctions not being searchable, or buyers not being able to place bids, hit merchants squarely in the pocketbook. The frustration of attempting to deal with what many see as eBay's poor customer service only compounds the problem.

Sellers have accused eBay of doing too much tinkering to the site, and adding features, when they should be doing more to attract buyers. eBay has rolled out many new marketing initiatives in the past few months, including points programs, gift certificates, credit card offering, selling tool sweepstakes. Some initiatives affect features, such as the newly implemented 1-day auction listing, pre-filled item information, new versions of listing tools, and category changes and picture services.

The questions are clear: does this tinkering interfere with site stability, and will the potential buyers, being brought the site by these marketing efforts, be turned off by eBay's slow performance and technical glitches?

eBay put a technology moratorium in place this time last year to ease sellers' concerns over the possibility of glitches caused by changes and enhancements to the site during the holiday shopping season. The "quiet period" ran from November 10 through December 31, 2002, when eBay said it would significantly minimize the release of new features.

eBay has made no promise of a moratorium this year, and many users are keeping their fingers crossed that, during the holiday shopping season, site instability does not cut into their holiday profits.