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Outage to affect eBay 2Q
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June 14, 1999: 12:32 p.m. ET
Virtual auction house says site crash to cost $3M to $5M in revenue
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Online auction house eBay Inc. said it expects to lose between $3 million and $5 million in second-quarter revenue due to a near 22-hour outage of its site last week.
The outage, which lasted from 10:50 p.m. ET Thursday until 8:25 p.m. Friday, halted all auctions on eBay's site.
eBay (EBAY) said it will extend all auctions by 48 hours and will refund all fees for all active auctions between June 9 and June 11.
The company said it expects the site outage, along with the refunds and extensions, to lower its second-quarter revenue by $3 million to $5 million.
Analysts polled by First Call expect eBay to log second-quarter earnings of 5 cents a share, compared with 2 cents a share a year ago.
eBay shares tumbled 18-15/16 to 146-15/16 in midday trade.
In a note to its customers Friday, eBay President and Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman said the company had implemented a new outage policy in the event the site is down for more than two hours.
Under that scenario, eBay will extend by 24 hours all auctions that would have ended during or one hour after the outage. The company also will automatically refund all fees for those auctions.
"We know we must provide continuous service for our community, and that we have let our community down," Whitman said. "We will not rest until we make sure that this problem will not occur again and that we make things right for our users."
eBay attributed the outage to a problem with Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW) software used to list items for sale and update bids.
"We will continue to devote the best technical and service resources of Sun Microsystems to ensure the level of service the eBay community demands," said Ed Zander, Sun Microsystems president and chief operating officer.
eBay said it didn't lose any customer data during the outage. 
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