eBay crashes, PayPal reverse payments

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To the people visiting this post from Q&A, please note this story is from 2008 – and not related to the Great Crash of Nov 2009.

eBay appear to be having a few problems tonight with many site functions returning “Sorry, that’s not working right now” messages.

Whilst this is frustrating for sellers trying to send invoices what’s even worse is that buyers PayPal payments are being reversed. Sellers are reporting payments appearing in their PayPal account followed immediately by a reversal. At the same time the item the buyer thought they had purchased appears back on eBay as a live listing and not as a sold ended item.

If you normally rely on PayPal payment emails for shipping make sure you double check before dispatching goods tomorrow that the item has actually been sold and paid for.

If you’re a buyer double check that you have successfully bought and paid for the item that you think you’ve won.

(P.S. eBay… The “” has a link to the ““, it’s not got a single post on it yet…..)

21 Responses

  1. Had 12 payments and counting reversed tonight.

    Last few days before X-Mas aswell.

    The usual perfect timing…

  2. Another punch in the head by the corperate bully? 👿

    When will they give us the system that they promise, one that works?
    They should spend some of their profits on getting ebay to work properly or give us some of our FEES back.

  3. Totally ridicules…I am so sick of all these so called glitches …does eBay/Paypal still have an IT dept or anyone in charge there? 😡

  4. I listed 150+ items on eBay OZ Friday; only to have almost 100 of them cancelled because they had been set to start listing (by eBay not Me) in about 7 months time ??? said to be an eBay server glitch
    Complete madness

  5. 😆 you couldn’t make it up if you tried.

    I tried and failed to ammend VAT to 15% last night, only managed 1, gave up and went to bed.

  6. I bought two items, different transactions. Instead of payment receipt page I landed on an Apache 503 error page. Paypal and payment had been made on both items then subsequently reversed. Now show as refunded to credit card but that’s impossible as for security I use a prepaid 3v card which does not allow refunds. So where is my £70? No reply as yet from Paypal and no recognition of the problem from ebay!

  7. #11 Coutchy, I’d get onto your card issuer about that one: I don’t know how those things work exactly, but even if it’s “no refunds”, is it possible the transaction can be cancelled by PP/whoever takes the money? Better to chase it up ASAP with someone who’ll be competent in sorting it out (i.e. not eBay).

  8. #6, You’ve made my day. Shouldn’t laugh, but… 😆 😆

    From what I can gather about last night’s mess is that it only affected PayPal – eBay transactions. During the time people were reporting this I made a purchase myself using PayPal from a web site and had two sales via my web site using PayPal, both from people that couldn’t buy via eBay. eBay’s loss my gain, but i wonder how many sales people might have had and never known about that were caused by these errors.

    Still no explanation on this from eBay, typical, just brush it under the carpet and pretend it didn’t happen i suppose.

  9. I have a buyer ring me today to offer a credit card payment as her bank has written to her to say that they are no longer paying money requests from paypal and are reversing the requests…..

    That to me is far more worrying……..

  10. Roseleen, it’s hard to take seriously without some more details. What bank? Just her account, or everyone’s? In any case, I would say she’s very likely to have either misunderstood what her bank meant, or misrepresented it to you.

  11. my payment was also reversed on 30th but how do i get my money back as my bank account is now £23 down and my paypal account is also showing £0.00 funds?????????

  12. same with me andy, they owe me £33 and i still have not got it, it says paypal have reversed it…. am sure it takes a few days for it to appear back into our accounts…. i hope it gets paid quickly

  13. Andy & Masta, I think you have a different issue from this glitch, because the reversals Chris is writing about were instant. You need to contact your buyers and chase up payment, or deal with any issues they’ve raised.

  14. Sue Bailey, i was a buyer so my payment was sent to the seller, usually takes a few days to recieve my reversal payment. I got it today, took 5 days!! but still got it. thanks for your help

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