Shoppers and sellers using eBay were left scratching their heads over the weekend when parts of the internet auction site stopped working.
The outage began on Sunday and continued through Monday. By Tuesday morning it appeared as though the site was working as intended again, though individual user experience might vary.
It's unclear what led to the outage. If eBay knows, it isn't letting on.
“We’re aware that some customers have been experiencing intermittent technical issues since Sunday afternoon on parts of the eBay platform,” a spokesperson told Retail Dive. “Our teams are actively working to restore full functionality as quickly as possible. We appreciate our customers’ patience as we work to resolve this.”
According to Downdetector, which logs user reports anytime a website or digital service stops working, complaints that the site was down began to spike around 3:30 p.m. Suday and worsened as the evening continued.
By 10:30 p.m., there were more than 1,300 outage reports. That number dropped by half a little more than an hour later.
The outage was particularly frustrating for sellers operating their businesses on the site. According to Cyber Express, some complained that they could not access the site's API, and thus could not list their products for sale.
“It’s been nearly 6 hours since the API went down, and we have no word from support,” one user wrote in a complaint.
Another user complained that they couldn’t pay for the item they bought.
The Independent has requested comment from eBay.
The Iran-linked hacktivist group 313 Team claimed responsibility for the outage, saying on social media that it launched an attack targeting eBay. That claim has not been verified.
The hackers have claimed responsibility for other disruptive acts, including an attack against Bluesky and an attack on the Kuwaiti government's infrastructure amid the U.S. war with Iran.
