eBay experienced major accessibility issues on Sunday and throughout Monday. At one point on Sunday, the Systems Status board where users go to check on tech issues displayed the following message: "upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers. reset reason: connection failure, transport failure reason: delayed connect error: 111"
On Sunday evening,
a seller tweeted that they had had thirty 7-day auctions end moments before the site went down, which meant losing out on last-minute and automated bidding. "I cannot even begin to estimate how much that timely outage cost me because all of my auctions are now showing completed. Are you willing to waive fees or something?"
On Monday, the Systems Status board displayed a message acknowledging "intermittent technical issues since Sunday on parts of the eBay platform" and promising to protect sellers impacted by the "issues." But reports of problems continued into Monday evening. The Technical Issues board was inaccessible, displaying the following message: "Your request is currently being processed..." The discussion boards were also inaccessible, displaying the following message: "504 Gateway Time-out."
Some cited unconfirmed reports of a DDOS attack by bad actors, while one blamed eBay's livestreaming for stressing the platform ("Over 25 years never seen anything like this........too many live shows," someone wrote on Down Detector).
eBay provided
Retail Dive with a statement, but the publication noted in an article on Monday: "The e-commerce giant didn't address questions about what aspects of business on the site were having problems or whether they were due to a cyberattack."
Readers have been reporting issues to EcommerceBytes by email and via
Ecommerce EKG since Sunday. One reader sent us a screenshot on Monday afternoon showing a message that stated in part, "Access Denied: You don't have permission to access "http://www.ebay.com/" on this server." She wrote, "Just tried to login to print a shipping label and here is the message I continue to receive. Do you have any idea what's going on? Have they been hacked? Scary!"
A LinkedIn post by
Cyber Tech Intelligence pointed to a "communication gap" on the part of eBay. "Official status pages have not fully reflected the severity of the outage, creating confusion among users and businesses relying on the platform," adding that even large-scale platforms remain vulnerable to coordinated cyber threats and that transparent and timely communication were just as critical as technical mitigation.
"eBay for the past 24 hours have been either completely or partially inaccessible globally a hacktivist pro-IRGC group is claiming responsibility for a DDoS attack causing this service disruption.
"In some regions you cannot at all reach eBay's website, in other regions like mine you can't reach their checkout page.
"It's extremely strange how impactful this attack has been yet little to no reporting is being done about it."
Intermittent Technical Issues and Seller Protections
We're aware that some customers have been experiencing intermittent technical issues since Sunday on parts of the eBay platform. We appreciate your patience as we work to resolve this.
eBay will protect your seller performance, including removal of:
- Negative or Neutral Feedback related to the intermittent technical issues
- Defects resulting from impacted orders (cancellations and claims closed without seller resolution)
We will also protect your valid tracking upload rate metrics and on time shipping metrics from any impact.
If you had an auction end after April 26, 12:01 pm PT, which you feel was impacted, you have the option to cancel the order and we will protect your seller performance and refund associated selling and ad fees.
We know how important a reliable marketplace is and we appreciate your patience as we address this. Future updates from us will continue to be posted here.
One of the things eBay can't make up to sellers, however, is the loss in sales resulting from buyers who were unable to shop or checkout.
eBay Outage: Tech Issues? DDoS Attack?
by: Rexford