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Outage Policy

eBay’s highest priority is its members’ trading success. However, the eBay site occasionally experiences outages during which bidders cannot place bids or effectively locate items via our Title Search function. When outages occur that are at least one hour in duration, eBay offers this Outage Policy to compensate for member inconvenience.

See examples for specifics types of outages and our response to each.

Some Examples

Title search outage of one or more hours

In the event of a title search outage of one or more hours, eBay automatically credits all associated fees for affected listings. The following listings will be eligible for credit:

  • Any listing scheduled to end during the outage

  • Any listing scheduled to end in the hour after the end of the outage

Unlike our policy for hard outages of two hours or more, listings will not be extended.

Hard outage of more than one but less than two hours

In the event of a hard outage of more than one but less than two hours, eBay automatically credits all associated fees for affected listings. The following listings will be eligible for credit:

  • Any listing scheduled to end during the outage

  • Any listing scheduled to end in the hour after the end of the outage

Additionally, credit will be issued for the 10-cent Promotional Fee on any 10-day listing that is running during the outage (regardless of the time it's scheduled to end). This includes either of the following features:

  • Item pages

  • Bidding

Unlike our policy for hard outages of two hours or more, listings will not be extended.

Hard outage of two hours or more

In the event of a hard outage of two hours or more, eBay automatically extends listings for 24 hours. eBay also automatically credits all associated fees for affected listings. The following listings will be eligible for extension and credit:

  • Any listing scheduled to end during the outage

  • Any listing scheduled to end in the hour after the end of the outage

Additionally, credit will be issued for the 10-cent Promotional Fee on any 10-day listing that is running during the outage (regardless of the time it's scheduled to end). This includes either one or all of the following features:

  • Item pages

  • Bidding

Additional Information

What does eBay consider to be a title search outage?

A title search outage occurs when items are not accessible by using Title Search as a result of unscheduled system downtime.

What does eBay consider to be a hard outage?

A hard outage occurs when no one can bid or buy (specifically View Item pages are inaccessible and/or bidding functionality is not available) as a result of unscheduled system downtime. At our discretion, eBay may consider two outages that occur very closely to one another to be one hard outage when extending listings.

Listings that end prior to an outage will not be extended.

During an outage

Updates will be posted on the Announcements Board during an outage. Please check there for details about the outage and possible listing extensions.

When listings are extended

Following a hard outage of two or more hours, eBay will extend the end times for all eligible listings by 24 hours. This prevents bidding on these listings while the end times are being reset. After the listing end times have been reset, eBay updates search and listing indexes. Until these index updates are completed, these listings will be unavailable via search or listings. This re-indexing can take a few hours.

To end your listing

eBay offers the Outage Policy as a courtesy. However, you may be satisfied with the bidding activity before the extended listing end time. If you are, you may be able to end your listing by visiting our Ending My Listing page.

If you choose, you may cancel your listing after visiting our Cancelling Bids Placed in Your Listing page.

Why does eBay have this policy?

There are many events, from natural disasters to power outages, that can disrupt bidding and finding on eBay. When a lengthy outage occurs and the cause was under eBay’s direct control, eBay does not believe sellers should incur their eBay fees for those listings that were most affected.

Contact us

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