Warning - Buy it Now listings not running for a full month

[ett1954]

Just listed a Buy it Now and it is showing ending on 3rd March. 

I had around 100 listings auto-renew today half are finishing on the 3rd March whilst the remainder are finishing on the 4th March.  These were sequential listings in order that buyers can easily find what they want; now they are spread over two days.

Marco@ebay can you ask your CEO to use some of his "magical innovations" to put them back into sequence please.  It also would help if he could get the children, sorry programmers, to stop playing on a live site.

[marco@ebay]

Hi all,

Thanks for the examples you've provided me with, I will review all of them to try duplicate the issue and then I will escalate the cases that are not working properly if any. I will keep you posted over here anyway.

Have a lovely evening,

Marco

[rainbowtrax]

Just ended a few this morning and done Sell Similar and they're all still one day short. Every day that this goes on is just adding more and more affected listings to the list.

[marco@ebay]

Hi ett1954 & rainbowtrax,

After reviewing the examples provided, no faults were found. As per our policies, "If you list your item on the 29th, 30th or 31st of a month, the duration will be adjusted if the following month is shorter, but will revert to the original day for longer months. For example, if you list an item on the 31st of May, it will relist on the 30th of June, and then again on the 31st of August and so on." So, they will be adjusting themselves accordingly based on different scenarios. However, just to make sure, I've passed this on for further review to our IT team to make sure we are not missing anything here, but please note that they might come back with the same answer. As soon as I find out more, I will update you here.

Thank you,

Marco

[leadhills_scot]

That's rubbish, never happened before and it is only impacting new listings not items rolling over.

I will not be listing new items this month until this is sorted out.

[4_bathrooms]

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marco@ebay wrote:

Hi ett1954 & rainbowtrax,

After reviewing the examples provided, no faults were found. As per our policies, "If you list your item on the 29th, 30th or 31st of a month, the duration will be adjusted if the following month is shorter, but will revert to the original day for longer months. For example, if you list an item on the 31st of May, it will relist on the 30th of June, and then again on the 31st of August and so on."

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Hi marco@ebay 

I don't think you fully understand. As per the above if you list an item on 31st May the relist date would be 30th June; this is because there isn't a "31st June". The above only applies to items listed on the last day of the month where the following calendar month has more or less days than the current calendar month.

An item listed on 1st May should have a relist date of 1st June and an item that was listed on 29th February should have a relist date of 31st March. It seems that as this year is a leap year - with an extra day in February - the extra day hasn't been accounted for. Oh well, it only happens once every 4 years...

[ett1954]

marco@ebay with respect if you had checked the examples both I and @rainbowtrax  had given you you would have realised that the items numbers we supplied were not listed on the 29th, 30th, or 31st; I am very much aware of this which is why I do not list on those days of the month.  In my case these new listings wew made on the 4th March and the 7th March respectively.  They are now showing ending on the 3rd April and 6th April respectively - a total of 30 days yet we are in a 31 day month.  In the instance of the 4th March example I provided you with an existing listing that automatically renewed within a minute of the new listing and displays an ending on the 4th April - a total of 31 days.

[rainbowtrax]

marco@ebay , no, sorry, you're still not getting it. These are not items that were listed on the 29th, 30th and 31st of a month. This is all items that were listed on 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th of March. As such, they are listed for a month, NOT 30 days.

As such, items listed on 1st March should renew on 1st April.

Items listed on 2nd March should renew on 2nd April.

Items listed on 3rd March should renew on 3rd April.

Items listed on 4th March should renew on 4th April.

Items listed on 5th March should renew on 5th April.

Items listed on 6th March should renew on 6th April.

Items listed on 7th March should renew on 7th April.

Items listed on 8th March should renew on 8th April.

But ALL of those dates are currently incorrect. Every item listed in March is listed for a day less than it should be. Please look at my screenshot above. It shows items listed on 1st March which will renew on 31st March. That is WRONG. They should renew on 1st April - the same date in the following month.

What has happened is that every BIN listing started in March is currently wrong.

As such, items listed on 1st March are renewing on 31st March.

Items listed on 2nd March are renewing on 1st April.

Items listed on 3rd March are renewing on 2nd April.

Items listed on 4th March are renewing on 3rd April.

Items listed on 5th March are renewing on 4th April.

Items listed on 6th March are renewing on 5th April.

Items listed on 7th March are renewing on 6th April.

Items listed on 8th March are renewing on 7th April.

If you look at the policy page here: Listing durations and timings | eBay it states, "When you list an item as Good 'Til Cancelled, it will relist every month on the same day until it's sold. For example, if you list your item on the 1st of May, it will relist on the 1st of June." (my highlighting). This month (March) it isn't happening. It has gone wrong. Please see my screenshot which shows the point at which it went wrong. 29th Feb it was working correctly. As soon as 1st Mar started, it went wrong and has been wrong for over a week now. Every new listing we create is still wrong. 

Please can someone from the relevant team read these posts so that they understand the issue. Currently, come 31st March, everything listed on 1st March is going to renew a day before it should causing a massive listing fee bill on that date because the monthly shop inclusive listings don't restart until 1st April, the same date that 1st March listings SHOULD renew.

[ett1954]

marco@ebay  Try this one.  A new listing started a few minutes ago.

Item number:  204685428927

Duration:

Good 'Til Cancelled

Start time:

Mar 08, 2024 05:13:58 PM GMT

End Time:

7 Apr 2024 at 6.13pm BST

Please explain

Your IT team, if the US boards are correct, have known about this issue in the US since 10th February!

[rainbowtrax]

Or this one of mine: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/305439929474. Look at the screenshot and compare it to the listing above it which was listed on 7th Feb and has auto-renewed correctly on 7th Mar and will auto-renew correctly again on 7th Apr. That is correct - listing for one exact calendar month each time. A listing date of 8th March should renew on 8th April, NOT 7th April. The duration for all new listings is a day too short. It sounds like the US have had this issue for weeks longer than the UK. In the UK, it only started on 1st March.

[vinylscot]

marco@ebay Marco, either you haven't understood the situation, or you're just trying to convince us there is no problem, when there very definitely is.

I have a total of 1338 items on fixed price "Buy It Now". Every single one listed before March of this year ends on the same calendar date of the month that it began. Every one of the 58 listed in March ends one day earlier than the calendar date in April. (see pic for confirmation)

I appreciate there will be occasional anomalies to allow for 31-day months, etc. If you remember, that is why the duration was changed from 30 days, to a full calendar month - to avoid scenarios where sellers would be charged twice in the same calendar month, if their listings began on the 1st and 31st.

There is very definitely (AND COMPLETELY OBVIOUSLY) a fairly major problem here. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, as an experienced member of eBay staff, I have no doubt that you do realise this. Please do what you can to resolve this and stop patronising us by pretending there is no problem.

[ett1954]

@rainbowtrax  "It sounds like the US have had this issue for weeks longer than the UK. In the UK, it only started on 1st March."

One interesting but potentially significant point:  United States Daylight Saving Time (DST) starts on 10th March; clocks go forward 1 hour.  First reports of 30 day listings in the US reported happening on 10th February when listings started to show a renewal of 9th March.

UK British Summer Time starts on 31st March (clocks go forward 1 hour), first reports of 30 day listings on 1st March showing a renewal date of 31st March.

This, in my mind, is too much of a coincidence and I suspect when eBay's IT department made whatever amendment to the programme they do for a time change they made it on the assumption February was a 28 day month - i.e. 29th February was classed as a day in March in both cases.  marco@ebay  you may want to pass on this theory to the IT department.

It may be that at the end of March everything will go back to normal except that all March listings will have lost one day of listing time - and of course those new listings generated on 1st March will drop from the March shop allowance and may, as a result, incur fees.

If this is correct I suspect eBay may well do nothing, bide their time, and everything will appear as though it has been fixed ......... well for another 4 years anyway.

@wastingtime101   I don't know whether you are still following this thread but it would be interesting to know whether any further progress had been made on rectifying this issue at your end, or whether eBay have provided any further updates.

[pjcdn2005]

Hi, I'm not  @wastingtime101  but I can confirm that the problem has not been fixed on the Canadian or the US site.  I'm in Canada but list on both the .ca and the .com site. The ebay reps there haven't said anything about why it happened, just that someone is looking into it.

It's interesting that it is happening on all 3 sites. I wonder how many other ebay sites it is affecting.

[rainbowtrax]

@ett1954 I think you are absolutely spot on with that. The biggest battle now is getting anyone within ebay to actually understand what you've worked out for them and realise how this one day error will impact our listing fees. Like you, I doubt that will happen but we can but try.

On our other account, @rainbowjam  we have nigh on 1,500 listings which SHOULD renew on 1st April but are currently going to renew on 31st March due to this almighty error. There is no way I'm giving ebay nearly 90 quid in additional listing fees this month that I do not owe them. Unless they either fix it or give us an extra 1,500 listing allowance for this month on that account then I'm going to have to end all those listings before they renew on 31st and then spend a day with only half our usual number of listings before I can put them back on on 1st April. Wasting 90 quid for the sake of one day is a no-brainer.

[wastingtime101]

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@ett1954 wrote:

@wastingtime101   I don't know whether you are still following this thread but it would be interesting to know whether any further progress had been made on rectifying this issue at your end, or whether eBay have provided any further updates.

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I am still following @ett1954 . I signed up for email updates on this discussion so I could keep track and have that easy clickback to share updates when I have them.

So far the problem is confirmed by sellers on US, UK and CA sites. I have not yet confirmed AU - plan to ask someone in Australia this week. AU savings time goes into effect April 7th, so if they experience the same issue, based on what we've seen with other countries, they should have started seeing the problems with listings created March 7th.

On one of the .com discussion threads I linked to in my first post here, there is a poster lacemaker3 that put up a theory about eBay programming a change regarding savings time that's triggering not only the + 1 hr difference, but also the - 1 day difference on renewals.

While Devon from our Community team has not provided any specific info, I can tell you from past issues we've faced that he does understand what's happening, he has reported it to the right teams, and it is being addressed behind the scenes. That team is not giving him updates he can share publicly yet, so I expect we will either get an update when it's fixed, or we will notice the fix before we get the update. Because eBay has not come back to say this is an intended change, I do believe it's an error - an unintended consequence from a coding update - that eBay is working to correct. I suspect when eBay fixes the issue for .com it will be a global fix for all eBay sites. That's speculation, an educated guess, so don't count on me being 100% correct.

Having said all that - this is as much of an update I can provide right now:

Our (.com) issue began with new listings created Feb 10th having an erroneous renewal date of March 9th. Within the next day I will be able to provide an update and let you know if listings created that day will show their next renewal on April 9th, or if another day will be subracted to cause an April 8th renewal. I suspect it will stick on the 9th; time will tell.

That info is important because it can dictate seller listing habits (e.g., on what dates we should / should not list new items) until the issue is resolved.

On the .com side I suggested to eBay they should credit sellers if insertion fees are charged on the 31st based on any listings created March 1st that are renewing erroneously in the same month (March 31st) instead of April 1st as they should. No idea if eBay will apply that type of resolution.

One thing I said over on .com is once this is fixed, it will almost certainly be a "go forward" fix as is usually the case with eBay. In other words, even if they fix this on March 15th - those listings created on March 1st on .com will still renew on March 31st. Existing listings won't be altered, but newly created listings would be fixed. My hope is they'll fix this before the end of the month, so sellers will not have to worry about this past March.

A concern I have is the issue will appear to be fixed after the time change goes into effect Sunday, but the issue will not really be fixed behind the scenes - so we'll see the same problem in the Fall unless eBay corrects the code. If I have time today I'm going to schedule a couple listings to go live before and after the time change to see if listings created after the time change continue to show a -1 day renewal. If renewal dates are back to normal after the time change it will confirm my suspicions and I'll share the info with Devon and ask him to follow up with the team to make sure this does not repeat in the Fall.

I hope eBay is actually going to correct this and not tell us to just live with it twice a year and deal with surprise fees.

Thanks for popping in from Canada @pjcdn2005 . 🙂

[moldosgifts]

I re list/sell similar every 3 months . I do this on the last day the listing has a timer that says how long it has been active. The timer on all the ones ive been doing latley say 2mnth and 28 days so im getting shorted 2 days. This will effect my monthly number down the line meaning more fees to ebay than should be.

[wastingtime101]

Update from the .com site:

Items listed February 10th

Erroneously renewed March 9th

Next renewal is showing April 10th

[wastingtime101]

Additional update: now that the time change has gone into effect in the US, listings created today have the correct renewal date as expected. Created March 10th, renewing April 10th.

This does not tell us if the issue is fixed on the backend. I expect it's not yet fixed. We will not know unless eBay provides an update, or unless we see the issue recur at the next time change (or leap year).

Will let you guys know if/when we get an update from Devon on our Community team.

[papso22]

I think that confirms that the ebay programmers don't understand leap years!

[ett1954]

@wastingtime101   Thanks for the update.  I will be able to confirm whether it is fixed over here in a couple of hours from now as I have several new listings scheduled to start.  I suspect however we will be stuck with the problem in the UK until the end of the month as I believe the scenario I predicted in post # 31 is coming into play.

[wastingtime101]

Agreed. I don't think you'll see a correct renewal date until the time change in the UK, or until eBay fixes the problem - whichever comes first.

Problem is not fixed in the US as listings created March 1st are still scheduled to renew March 31st so we have that double-insertion in March to deal with.