Outage Hits PayPal Again Impacting eBay and Merchants

by: justsaying

OMG--unbelievable!  I use Paypal on all 3 of my sales sites.  At least, on two of them, I have alternate payment methods, but not on eBay.  Not only that, since I added Google Analytics to my eBay listings, I can SEE with my own eyes how bad traffic and views are for my items!  My 350 Etsy listings (same exact inventory as eBay) are getting anywhere from 4x to 8x the amount of views as they are on eBay!  I get anywhere from 12-30 views daily on eBay total for 350 listings (antiques and vintage), whereas I get anywhere from 125 to 250 views daily from Etsy!  Now, what does that tell you?  And, now the few piddly views that I do get that might possibly convert into sales won't happen because Paypal is down!  Not cool--not cool at all!

by: Volvo351

@Justsaying

BTW, are your PRICES lower on the alternate sites? Whenever I get a Q from a prospective buyer via eBay, I "remind" him that he can find the SAME ITEM 20-30% CHEAPER on the Boston C/L site!

by: FREDDY

They are sure in a hurry to bury ebay.

It appears that they are not two seperate companies except for on paper.  Sounds like a tax move???

by: iheartjacksparrow

I can't imagine what the uproar would be like if it was any sites other than eBay and PayPal having this on-going problems. Nothing bad ever happens to them no matter how many glitches/outages/hacks which seem to occur. eBay and PayPal (thanks, no doubt to the meddling of JD) are the two most unstable sites on the internet (at least it seems that way). Devin and his longtail inventory aren't going to do much to improve eBay if their site, and the site of their "preferred" payment method, can't stay up and running for more than a couple hours at a time.

by: FEEbay

We are down to only using Paypal on EBAY, because we are forced to....
Once we are rid of the criminals at EBAY, we will never accept PAYPAL ever again

by: FEEbay

PS...There is a lawsuit in California that is sure to get class action status soon. I am a participant. It contends that the whole EBAY/PAYPAL thing is Anti-Trust, and they are surely going to lose...

by: RL15

Thats the HO doing his "destructive disruptive innovation"

and the complaints/oh, "thats just noise"  

by: JQ

Well, I did not make any sales on eBay today until an hour ago, and I guess this might have been part of the reason. But business has been so unbelievably slow for me on eBay all month that the lack of sales did not hit me as unusual.

To make what I wrote above specific, here are my eBay net revenue totals from the month of November over the last three years:

2013 1,314
2014 903
2015 394 (with 7 hours left to go)

Over the above time period my inventory on eBay grew each year. Right now I have 1,200+ items active with a GMV of about $7.5K.

Things are really bad at eBay. I don't see them making it through 2016 without either new ownership or a complete housecleaning of all senior management. I never thought it could get this bad (I keep writing that every six months).

by: Ric

These outages are little more than window dressing to allow the new CEO's of eBay and PayPal some breathing room in the form of convenient excuses.

eBay and PayPal are likely heading for disappointing Q4 financial results.  What better way to massage investors than to dismiss the disappointing revenue statistics on unforeseeable system issues?

Of course, the worn out excuses of the hack, the downgrade by Google and currency fluctuations will also be trotted out as usual in desperate (but now transparent) attempts to justify disappointing revenue figures driven by management's gross across the board incompetence.  

by: eXtinctBay

....and PayPal wants to gain business in the "online payment goldrush" over ApplePay, Square, Google Payments, Visa, etc., etc..

An outage any time, for whatever reason (let alone two in the last 60 days) does not instill consumer confidence.

by: sasikat9

And the Christmas nightmare continues.... WIll it get worst.

Ya betcha.

by: lalaland

 No doubt that Donahoe has taken up residency at PayPal.  One problem after another, just like eBay.

by: Jester

Everything JD touches goes to mush. Watch him sink this ship. It looks like eBay all over again.

by: val2525

Expect this to become a regular event, now that Donohoe is in charge of PayPal. The guy is serious incompent.  As apparently the PP Executive Board, for approving Donohoe as CEO.  Geez.

by: The End

KILL PayPal.
Change to STRIPE.

by: Bloggo

Facebook has over a Billion active users, posting content 24/7. Rarely any downtime.

Amazon has close to 250 Million users.
Rarely any downtime.

eBay? PayPal? What a joke.

by: Rexford

I agree with what some others have stated--Donahoe is business poison. Did PayPal have any problems such as are going on lately until JD arrived?

I hope that there is a huge law suit against these companies. They do not operate like two separate companies.

Blame the Boards of these two "separate" companies. They have proven time and time again that they choose hacks to run these multi-billion dollar companies and they never hold top management accountable.

by: GotToGetOut

JQ, I agree with you. I had sales of $3809 last November (couldn't find 2013 but then it was about $6000 during the key holiday selling period). This month my sales are 2X October and are at $2328 in November but still down about 40% from last year. Previous months have been even worse. 95% of us (except toolguy) can't be wrong.

by: Chicago48

If we don't have Ebay what do we have?  Ecrater? No way.  That site is the worst for sales.  AMZ?  It's getting so restrictive and kicking out long-time sellers.  It's almost as if we have to create our own websites and then promote them ourselves.
I was doing quite well on EB in September-October, and then November things started to slow down.  I guess it's because of the outtages?

by: maxmad

I personally do not see two separate companies Paypal and ebay are still one entity, one goes down so does the other,

As discussed by many, separated only in theory, to make a handful of people more rich.

Quite a disgrace, hopefully one day they will be exposed for the public to see.