eBay To Protect Sellers Following Massive Technical Issue Over Memorial Day Weekend

During the Memorial Day weekend, countless sellers vented their frustrations on the eBay community forum and across social media platforms, fuming over a bizarre surge in their stock level counts and receiving no help from customer service.

Check Out These Resources

• Do you need a business bank account for your online business? Take a look at our review of the five best bank accounts for sellers, some of which are free with no minimum balance or deposits. ^[sponsored]
• Boost your social media engagement with Publer. Learn how you can save time writing engaging content faster with AI. ^[sponsored]
• Could your online business use capital for growth? Here is a primer on revenue-based loans, and how they work.

This issue seemed to also affect sellers with Out-Of-Stock (OOS) listings, which are listings that have zero inventory but are maintained as “active” inventory by sellers because it is an item they can resupply.

As could be imagined, sellers panicked when they realized sales of items they didn’t have in stock. And despite attempts by sellers to contact customer service to find out why this was happening, the issue persisted.

Many sellers grew frustrated with this situation as it meant they had to potentially go through hundreds of thousands of listings to correct inventory levels.

Today, the marketplace acknowledged the problem in a message to sellers:

“On May 26, 2023 an update was made to listings with international shipping options. As part of this recent change, we inadvertently increased the quantity on some listings.

“We understand that this may have caused sellers to cancel orders or issue refunds but we’re working to correct these quantity errors. Here’s what you need to know about the recent update:

• We’ve updated any listing to show the correct quantity available and quantity sold.
• For listings where sellers manually revised the quantity, we won’t make any changes.
• For sellers who had to cancel orders, received negative feedback, or had stockout strikes during our update, we’ll ensure that their seller rating isn’t affected.”

Still Need To Verify eBay Fix

Unfortunately, eBay didn’t specify how they plan to resolve this problem. Does eBay know how many items were added, and is it the same number for all sellers and listings? Will eBay consider sales, seller adjustments, and replenishments that have happened during this time?

Sellers who were impacted by this massive technical issue will need to verify their stock levels even after eBay addresses the issue.

In light of the difficulties encountered by sellers while trying to resolve the issue, eBay should consider providing some form of compensation to those affected.