I keep getting this message when searching for Free Beer, even though I am searching in shops and not galleries.

Is this happening while you're already in the shop, or from the shop search page?

The shop search page. It appears the shop I was trying to buy from is now a gallery though, so maybe the user changed it, and the site was just lagging?

That's possible, though another user experienced the same thing recently (got the error and then later I noticed it was a gallery.. and then later it was a shop again). Could be a coincidence, of course. Do you still have the name of the shop? We could always check with the user to confirm if they changed it to a gallery.

http://subeta.net/ushop.php?shopid=306151

It turns out that the owner did in fact change it over to a gallery at that time. So it seems like shop search cache must not have updated before you tried to buy from it.

Annoying, but understandable. Thanks

Ok going to lock this up as resolved!