UPDATE eBay UK Problems Strike BT and Sky Broadband Customers

Customers of BT and Sky Broadband, specifically those that have been buying and selling products via the popular eBay UK website, appear to be complaining about problems when using and accessing the auction service.

The problem, which appears to be somewhat sporadic and first started on Friday, results in customers being unable to access their messages via the eBay website. Auction / order listings also appear to be timing out (failing to load properly) when requested.

Ordinarily such problems might be attributed to the website’s own server, but in this case eBay has pointed the finger of blame at ISPs (eBay said, “this is a ongoing issue with eBay members that use either BT or Sky“). However so far neither BT nor Sky has made any mention of the problem on their Service Status page and similarly eBay hasn’t officially updated their status page with details of the fault.

Never the less the impact is easy to see via Down Detector and one customer appears to have been told that the issue relates to a fault between BT and eBay, which seems to be affecting an Authentication Security Server (ASS); no further details have been given.

However we’ve also seen customers of Virgin Media, EE Mobile and PlusNet reporting similar issues, which perhaps points the finger back towards eBay again.

Katie Sargent said:

“Not just BT, am with plusnet and cannot get into eBay. Think it might be to do with the deadline for adding barcodes being today and too many people on the system!”

Robert Mitchell said:

“Not down to BT, I have tried office and home (BT and Virgin), both the same since last Friday. eBay try to pass it off as Internet provider, told me to try clearing cache, same old ****. Advised, it would be passed onto technical team. They have not got any ideas either. Pass the buck first and 2nd…… useless!”

Stacey Kyle said:

“I’m virgin media and having same issues also experiencing on ee with mobile app.”

Marie Thomas said:

“What a joke, told me it’s BT but all other websites work fine. Hurry up eBay sort it out had long enough!”

The issue appears to be sporadic, with some on the aforementioned ISPs claiming to have suffered no problems, although the fault seems to affect members of eBay more than general unregistered visitors. We are attempting to contact BT in order to clarify their side of the story.

In the meantime some eBay members have suggested that the problem only appears to impact the UK website and navigating to eBay.com (USA) or eBay.ie (Ireland) instead of eBay.co.uk will still allow people to access their listings and messages.

UPDATE 1st March 2016 (6:47am):

We were told to expect a response from eBay yesterday, but one never came. However a BT spokesperson did respond to confirm that it is not a problem at their end: “BT understands that some customers experienced issues accessing the eBay website over the weekend. We can confirm this was not a BT network issue but believe the problems experienced by customers are now being resolved by eBay,” said the BT spokesperson to ISPreview.co.uk.

Otherwise we’re seeing reports that the issue has now been resolved.