eBay Photo Upload Error Disrupts Seller Workflows
eBay sellers are reporting a technical issue with picture uploads is preventing them from completing new listings, disrupting workflows and raising familiar concerns about lack of communication from the platform.
The report began piling up in eBay' community forum and across social media as sellers began trying to create new listings this morning.
sewbusybiz
Trying to list new items this morning, and images are not uploading. Keeps showing image failed to upload. Tried from computer files, and also uploading from my website.
Listing on eBay has never been such a chore. Changes always bring problems.
Same here:( When you work full time through the week, not being able to fully list on a Sunday morning is a major disappointment.
I want to know why we have to come here to find this out and why there wouldn't be a popup saying there is a photo upload error that is being worked on or any kind of official announcement.
Absolute incompetence, this has been going on minimum of 4 hours and the homepage has zero mention.
That last comment gets at a longstanding source of frustration for sellers - not only are technical issues on the platform common, but eBay does little to communicate to let sellers know the company is aware of problems or a timeframe for resolution.
As usual, the eBay system status page shows no disruptions while the company's own forums and third party sites like DownDetector are flooded with complaints.
eBay also used to have a dedicated Technical Issues post in the community forum which allowed buyers and sellers to track ongoing problems and provided alert codes for specific issues that could be referenced when contacting support - but they got rid of it last year.
Liz Morton
Recurring image errors are just one of many examples of the ongoing problems affecting sellers on eBay.
Back in 2019, eBay and then CEO Devin Wenig faced activist investor pressure from Elliott Management calling for changes at the company, with constant site glitches and technical misexecution called out explicitly as one of the major problems at the company.
7 years later, it's shocking just how much of Elliott's "Enhancing eBay" plan still rings true today - particularly critiques around glitches constantly plaguing the platform and lack of leadership prioritizing operational and technical excellence.
Wenig infamously said at eBay Open 2018 that technical glitches are unacceptable and really pissed him off.
eBay has since removed the video they had posted on YouTube of the event, but the interviewer asked:
There've been a lot of site glitches recently on eBay. What are you guys doing to get rid of them?
And Wenig answered:
Here's the simple answer - unacceptable, unacceptable. And we're making a lot of changes. When you make changes there are times that things happen but that's not an excuse and it's not ok with me and this summer in particular there have been a number of issues that directly impacted sellers like people not being able to see their view counts and a few other things and it's just not ok.
I'm extremely proud of a lot of things we've done, I'm not proud of that and in fact I hold my team accountable and it's not important, it's an internal matter but, we made changes to people and teams because shipping product that isn't ready is not ok. It's not ok with me and it's not ok with my team.
So the short answer is it's not like we don't get it. We are making a lot of changes and I want to make those changes, we need to make those changes, but making changes and then having to back up and fix things is not cool and I totally get it. Most of the issues from this summer have now been remedied but I was pissed off.
Mazen Rawashdeh was Chief Infrastructure and Architecture Officer at the time, but somehow managed to escape the wrath of a "pissed off" Wenig and was promoted to Chief Technology Officer, a title he still retains today despite the fact the site continues to experience near daily business impacting "glitches."
eBay has not yet acknowledged this most recent image error or provided a timeline for a fix and has not responded to request for comment as of publication.
Stay tuned for updates and let us know in the comments below if you are experiencing this issue!
