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..

[imak1pg3]

Same thing has happened to me. I bidded at 5 seconds and then eBay confirmed I won at my price, and then added ANOTHER 15 seconds, allowing other gazumpers and snippers 15 seconds more to bid!

Of course, I lost the auction, thinking I had won. They are cheating bidders and sellers of more £££/$$$

One way of combating this is to bid slightly over the last price at 5s, then if it is too low, put in your reasonable bid at 5s in the 2nd round (and you will have 10s to do this)!

Hope this helps,

Ian

[tresoweshillbilly]

thanks .the work around someones posted on this thread is good ! i thought id tried it and didnt work, but it did tonight ? /although i note tonight  both timers are back in sync on place bid and bid end times.

 dont enter amount in 1st  bid window /(place blank  bid) then put amount in next window / review/  confirm at end.

.initial bid window is still clearing amount entered as another bid comes in .

[archie.b.77]

It's not really a workaround... it's "sniping".

Entering your max.bid at the last minute by clicking "Bid" from the Review Box is weel kent!

That has never changed as far as I am aware and is identical to the process on other auction sites... Tradera springs to mind readily.

[chitto2]

There's definitely something going on there.

I just won an item and it clearly showed the bidding as ended with my winning bid, but then when I went to pay for it, the final payment had risen by several pounds.

I looked back at the bidding history on the original item and it showed a fresh bidder came in after my winning bid and pushed my bid up higher towards my maximum bid.

Why did that happen that I was showing as the winning bidder when the auction had ended on a lower winning bid than I was charged?

[eburtonlab]

Why did that happen that I was showing as the winning bidder when the auction had ended on a lower winning bid than I was charged?

It is entirely possible for eBay to receive a valid bid a the end of the auction without enough time remaining to update bid history pages viewed by all the other bidders around the world. The countdown on your computer and the bids you see on your computer as the timer counts down are not necessarily the same as the bids received by eBay's servers which are the official bids that matter. Those bids may only be visible to you after the auction has ended.

That is why it is essential for bidders to bid their maximum amounts without regard to what other bidders may or may not do. No one is guaranteed to have enough time to react to another's bid.

[bromley2008]

Well, I've been bidding on Ebay for at least 15 years and this never ever used to happen.

In that time though, it was and still is common practice for people and friends to put in fake bid to drive the price up to pre bid maximums.
That is why alot of people like myself bid very late to drop this sort of thing.
It's not snipping it's what an auction is and that's bidding until the auction ends, not bidding days earlier and waiting until its over to see if you won.

Ebay could stop this but won't because its better business when the prices go ever higher due to pre maximum bidding and the cheating people bidding on their own Auctions.


Sent from Outlook for Android<>

[sam_in_barbate]

Hi,

Just been hit with a new & infuriating glitch when bidding.

Placed bid on 10 seconds, & the count down seconds facility did nothing, no matter how many times I tried to confirm I was unable to do so, at first I thought it was a one off, then it happened again 30 minutes later.  I have just lost 2 items, both would have earned me around £150 (at least) in profits, & I have stayed home all day to bid on a handful of items. This is all the more infuriating because I have only just started listing again. What in Gods name is happening to ebay?

[fotherbale]

I wonder how many other people were suffering similarly and were unable to bid on those listings - might be that if they had bid too, the items would have made considerably more than they did, and perhaps you might not be looking at as much as £150 profit.  Only winner are the people who (in your estimation) got a bargain, but in both cases the seller probably lost out by quite some margin.

Resyncing your device clock (as suggested elsewhere) does seem to help a bit, but not all of the time, and as bromley2008 has said, this sort of thing never used to happen, and there must always have been some people whose device clock was out of sync with the ebay clock, probably more so 15-20 years ago than now.

[bromley2008]

Sorry to hear that. But Ebay aren't interested. They have been aware of now for years and pretend it's a clock timing thing, It isn't.
They want it called an auction, but one that you have to place bids maximums way before the end. This leads to sellers setting up fake bids to massively increase the price.

Sent from Outlook for Android<>

[juliet8820]

Do you actually read and understand what people put?

Irrespective of whether a 'bitter' person (quote) wins or is outbid the clock should not reset in the last few seconds of an auction ending.

I have been on ebay for over 17 years: it is something that I too have noticed, and yes, the only way round it is to increase your higher maxium bid: a win win for eBay.  I am sure that both long time users and new users of eBay are completely aware of how the eBay bidding process works, since it is hardly a difficult concept to grasp. 

I very much doubt that they need to be advised by an adviser, who would be advised to write in a such a way that actually makes sense, and whose advice, in the manner in which it is conveyed, comes across as nonsensical.

I would bet my right arm that it is the intended consequence.

[juliet8820]

You are absolutely right - I have noticed it too and like you, have been on eBay for over 17 years.

Laidlow or whatever his name is: if he wants to be taken seriously as an 'advisor' of or on eBay, then he needs to learn to actually read and understand what people are saying, and, then respond in a coherent manner without insulting long term users.

[sam_in_barbate]

Hi,

had this happened twice on UK auctions I would have put it down to a glitch, but one auction was in Germany & I lost a truly fabulous item which sold at 40 euros below my maximum bid, that item would have earned me at least £100, probably more.  Regards the other UK item, I actually wrote to the seller immediately after the auction, which ended at £28, telling her what had happened. I have regularly bid on the exact same item, & never have I seen it sell at less than £50, & she was devastated, she was all for immediately cancelling the sale, but I warned her that she had to get in touch with eBay, show them my message, & have them tell her that yes, she could cancel the sale, for if her buyer leaved her a negative feedback she will only be able to have it removed if eBay have told her she can cancel.

What an unmitigated shambles eBay is becoming, have they no iodea????

Mind you, to go off track, I have just sold 2 items in 2 days, I almost fainted with shock LOL, I look back on the days when I was selling on average 4 items a day & feel I am living in an alternative universe "(

[sam_in_barbate]

Hi,

I had exactly the same thing happen to me a month or so back.

If memory serves, I won the item at around 50 euros, (my highest bid had been 80 odd), but I ended up paying almost 9 euros more. Like yourself, I then looked at the bidding history, & it clearly showed the other bid coming in 5 seconds after mine when by all accounts the auction was over. On this occassion I had put in a maximum bid well over the norm, for I had a feeling something ontowards would happen... & thank the Gods that I did, 9 euros is not going to break the bank, but I would have been spitting mad had I then found I lost it to a "winning" bidder who had placed a higher than 80 euros bid..

[sam_in_barbate]

I have to say that I have seen very few examples of shill bidding, it is not rampant here on eBay, yes it happens, but I have bought over 30,000 items on ebay over a 17 years period, & have only ever seen a handful of auctions where there was dodgy bidding...

[sam_in_barbate]

Hi,

Apologies for late reply, I am just getting over an illness so my activity here is somewhat hit & miss LOL.

When I strated this thread, I thought it was a fluke glitch that would get ironed out by eBay, but now, 3 months after starting this thread it appears to be getting worse. To think, 17 years  bidding on items in eBay, then this appears out of nowhere & we learn we can no longer trust an auction to run smoothly.

Yesterday I lost 2 terrific rare items, for I was unable to confirm, both auctions clock froze at 8 seconds, I was besides myself, especially being that I have only just started to bid again on eBay, & this nonsence makes you wonder if it is worth continuing........

[bromley2008]

Do you actually understand what you have just written???

Sent from Outlook for Android<>

[*exclusive-collectibles*]

Really strange 😞

[juliet8820]

Well you obviously don't - so tell me which bit you are struggling with.  I'll be glad to help out.

[bromley2008]

Hi,

Sorry, That reply wasn't meant for you.

Regards

[juliet8820]

Oh good -/_("<")_\-

Regards

Julie