Appalling new eBay bidding "glitch", more seconds added, & allows snipers to out bid a winning bid

[sam_in_barbate]

I have been buying & selling on eBay for over 15 years, & have watched whilst little by little eBay tweek elements which have worked perfectly, but this new little trick up the sleeve of eBay when bidding, takes the biscuit.

You find an item you want to bid on, you cancel everything in your day to make sure that you will be home, finger poised over the bidding button, & where I (for example) bid 4-5 seconds before the end of auction, this has been my chosen method for 15 years.

I first saw what I thought was a glitch a couple of weeks back, & where, over the course of 2 weeks, I had been outbid by other snipers, this AFTER I thought I had won the item, for, the seconds clock was timing down, 4 seconds before end of auction I place the winning bid, THEN the clock having almost hit 0 switches back & adds a new 5 or 6 seconds which count down again. I watched as my winning bid was then sniped & over the last 2 weeks lost all 3 items.

This has just happened a scant minute or two back on a fabulous item I had been watching for over a week. With 4 seconds to go I place what should have been the winning bid, then out of the blue more seconds were added to the clock, thank be to all the Gods, on this occasion I had added a far larger figure to my maximum bid, & did manage to win the item but at TWICE I repeat TWICE my original winning bid. Clearly, eBay are allowing watchers/winning bidders to think they have one clock which is slightly ahead of the actual end of auction, & allowing other bidders the chance to up the bid.

Yes, I am now regularly appalled by eBay's shenanigans, but this takes the biscuit, if there was an official body to whom I could report this I would..

[eburtonlab]

If the auction countdown does not seem to be synchronized with the actual end of the auction, check to make sure your computer's time and date settings are correct, that your time zone is set correctly, and that your computer's time is synchronized with an internet time server such as time.nist.gov or time.windows.com.

Differences between your computer's time and other computers' times can lead to all sorts of problems including the inability to get needed updates.

[lance19470]

Yes this has happened to me twice latley i have reported it to ebay who were tottally unhelpfull and suggested  i sent them a video of what happened ? they seem to have no intension of resolving it ,have been an ebayer for 22 years and that is how you get treated

[andrewlaidlaw1979]

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@lance19470 wrote:

Yes this has happened to me twice latley i have reported it to ebay who were tottally unhelpfull and suggested  i sent them a video of what happened ? they seem to have no intension of resolving it ,have been an ebayer for 22 years and that is how you get treated

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As mentioned previously are you sure it's not the time on the device that you are using that might be out by a couple of seconds?

[sam_in_barbate]

So there are a few of us experiencing htis, I thought I was going mad... not that that would be too difficult ")

[sam_in_barbate]

HI, thanks for the input, but all timing is correct. Touch wood, this seems to have ironed itself out for me, though will be bidding with extreme caution in the future ")

[luv_my_dog]

This is how eBay used to be in the early days, as a seller I preferred it because it meant earning more for the final value.
If you placed a bid in the last few seconds it gave 10 or 15 seconds more to let everyone else readjust their bids, if no one did then it ran the time out.
I hope they're testing to reintroduce this feature, but it's likely a bug.

[bennotbill]

Can't say I ever remember eBay adding on auction time in the early days. Around 2000 next to everyone was on dialup so manual sniping and doing anything in the last seconds were not really feasible. Just bidding alone was a pretty long drawn out process.

[more-ackers]

@blancoseuropa  No, the crux of the the thread, is that ebay are illegally stopping perfectly legal manual snipers, potentially winning items, by adding more time on the clock to maximise bidding war and profit.  Do you work for ebay.?

Well of course I do not work for eBay.

Now we have a situation where one bunch of people are saying the extra time loses them the auction because "snipers" use the extra time to "steal" the auction, and another set of people who say eBay are purposely stopping people from bidding at the last moment, (in your terms "manual sniping").

You can't both be right!

[gallovidian]

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@more-ackers wrote:

@blancoseuropa  No, the crux of the the thread, is that ebay are illegally stopping perfectly legal manual snipers, potentially winning items, by adding more time on the clock to maximise bidding war and profit.  Do you work for ebay.?

Well of course I do not work for eBay.

Now we have a situation where one bunch of people are saying the extra time loses them the auction because "snipers" use the extra time to "steal" the auction, and another set of people who say eBay are purposely stopping people from bidding at the last moment, (in your terms "manual sniping").

You can't both be right!

You have brought the question back into the realms of rationality. If eBay was producing either of these two distortions of the announced schedule, it would surely apply when bids are placed by the sniping website I sometimes use, physically close to eBay in California and connected with a permanent state of the art business connection. But it doesn't.

I asm not sure what kind of sniper people are expecting to bid after the official auction closing time.

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[andrewlaidlaw1979]

@gallovidian 

I suspect that it's due to such people not being able to accept that the time on their phone/tablet or computer might just be out of sync by a few seconds this resulting in this happening combined with being out bid by the auto bid by someone else's earlier max bid

[nigel_paul_wright7557]

There used to be an auction site that only worked that way !

If someone bid the timer was reset and counted down again.

[prutt1]

"If every bid simply extended the auction finish time a little more, it would ensure that everybody that wanted to bid had time to, and would do away with last-second sniping altogether, as there could never be a last second, until everyone had actually stopped bidding."

That's an auction house, like Sotherby's, model. That's not the ebay model I've been using for 22 years. If you want to change it, fine, but I'll be off. A competitor will spring up to replace it. Hubris will whisper no way in ebay's ear, but past experience shows the truth of it. Don't tinker too much with what works and definitely don't do away with the business model that has been the goose that layed your golden egg. 

[prutt1]

Shouldn't have to do anything really, should we? It's either a glitch, in which case fix it, or it's policy, in which case it's a terrible idea.

[sam_in_barbate]

Hear, hear, & well said, 😉

If past auctions had had "flexible" endings, then just how many of us would have remained? I built an astonishing business, & have a house full of fabulous precious items thanks to knowing to the second when an action ended. I am a sniper, I am almost physicaly incapable of placing a bid any other way than seconds before the end, I could never have been bothered if eBay has been dangling the chance of an extended auction time to a listing.

Talking of Golden Eggs, do think there is any chance that the eBay suits will wake up & realise they have ruined, skuppered, cut the heart out of the search engine, that there are thousands of us who can no longer find, or get shown items we would be bidding on or buying?

[andrewlaidlaw1979]

@sam_in_barbate 

Out of the years I've been with eBay auctions have never had additional time added on to them.

Although I've seen plenty of posts from sour faced people claiming how they lost out due to them not putting in their maximum bid but messed about in putting in the next highest amount that they would like to pay only to loose out to someone who actually put in their maximum bid or someone putting in a bid in the last few seconds.

Which makes me think that it's either the device someone is using is out of sync by a few seconds or they have an issue with their internet provider but choose to go by the whole eBay blame game rather than thinking of what the actual issue is and what prossible causes are in making their device slow or not showing the correct day/time 

[prutt1]

No - we are complaining that the end time is not the end time. It should be that when the clock runs out the auction is over, the item is won. That's ebay's business model. Just like when the hammer comes down at Sotherby's, the item is sold and belongs to the winner. If Sotherby's decided to sell it to a higher bidder after the auction ended they would be in trouble. On ebay the auction is over when the clocks runs down. You can't reset it because you want more time to get more bids it. 

This looks like a glitch. Maybe some bad programming that was intended to tackle sniping. I say that because the extra added time does not register in the bids history and the original end time is not changed. The bids that come in after the auction ends have time stamps that are earlier that they actually were. They are stamped before the end despite coming in after it.  On the two occasions it happened to me, there was a pause after the auction ended before people noticed it was still running and started bidding again. I was slow and confused by the flashing pages constantly refreshing themselves, not knowing what was going on.

Also, my computer's time was synced to ebay's and the world clock minutes before the end of the auction.

You can see it in action yourself without even bidding. Find something ending soon. Click on bid to open the bidding window. Don't enter a bid. Watch as it goes down to "0" and then do the dance people have described. It even did it on an item that had no bidders.

[prutt1]

Yep, exactly this has happened to me. Bid history showed my bid way earlier than I placed it. I'm hoping it's glitch and will be fixed. If it's policy, I'm gone. Another ebay will pop up eventually to take up the disgruntled, like me. 

[prutt1]

Done all that. This isn't it. Still happens.

[prutt1]

"I asm not sure what kind of sniper people are expecting to bid after the official auction closing time."

When it's happened to me there's been a pause before the bidding starts again. Seems like people think it's over and are flummoxed by what's going on with the flashing pages. Then it hits them that maybe I got the timing wrong and it's not over.

It's not like it's a strategy.

[fotherbale]

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I have had the same thing with an erratic timer near the auction end.  On a fairly rare item, and sitting at about half what it should have made.  It was something that would normally have attracted some late bids (as indeed my own bid would have been).  Not only did the timer suddenly jump about, but the bid confirmation window disappeared without submitting the bid, and there were no other last second bids either - the item sold for half what it should have done.   Sellers are losing out big time as well as thwarted bidders feeling cheated (and as a result, ebay themselves are losing out on fees). 

@nigel_paul_wright7557 wrote:

"There used to be an auction site that only worked that way !

If someone bid the timer was reset and counted down again."

You are probably thinking of Yahoo Auctions which I seem to recall added an extra minute if there was a late bid. 

Yahoo Auctions fizzled out, and when Yahoo eventually abandoned their own system, they offered eBay instead.  

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