Sellers say they first began noticing problems with eBay's search system on Saturday morning. At 11:17 a.m. Pacific time, the company posted a note on its announcement board stating "we are experiencing some issues with a delay in search being displayed." A subsequent note from eBay stated that the search system was having difficulty "due to errors in some of our backend systems."

By late afternoon on Saturday, searches for "iPod" on eBay's U.S. site resulted in zero results, and an error message saying, "We were unable to run the search you entered. Please try again in a few minutes." An eBay spokesman said that the company would have full search functionality restored by Sunday. "The unanticipated technical issue resulted from a surge in live listings as sellers ramp up for the holiday season," said eBay vice president John Pluhowski.