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Ebay

eBay sees short-changed seller backlash after European site blackout

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By John McCarthy, Opinion Editor

August 13, 2014 | 2 min read

Online auction house eBay has been hit with calls for compensation from sellers after European users were unable to access the site to log bids after its tenth blackout so far this year.

eBay is one of the world's busiest retail sites

Sellers in particular were angered by the site's lack of accessibility as buyers were unable to bid upon items that were soon to close, a common tactic on the site. This caused many cases of under-valued sales on the retail site.

An eBay statement said: “Some users experienced problems accessing eBay in Europe from 08.55am BST until approximately 12.40pm.

“Our technical experts immediately investigated potential causes including third party internet service provider access issues. All eBay sites are working normally and we are sorry for the inconvenience.”

Downdetector.com, which gathers site availability information from sources such as Twitter, called the outage the biggest of the year, “both in terms of duration of the problems and the number of users that are impacted”.

This comes after Ofcom reported the site as the busiest retailer on the mobile platform - even ahead of Amazon.

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