Clock Change Bug Again - Auction Durations + 1 hour

[wellingnorth]

Morning kat@ebay as the clocks are going back on Sunday I came back here to revisit our previous discussion about the bug with the duration of auctions that run across the clock change, unfortunately it has been archived. I’m not sure whether you are able to access it internally so you can see the previous history of the issue and your conversations with tech, but this was the active link:

https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Technical-Issues/Clock-change-bug-Duration-7d-1-hour/

Anyway, to summarize the whole issue again, the ebay policy is that auctions always run for solid blocks of  24 hours, so if you start an auction at 7pm and the auction finishes after the clocks go back it will end at 6pm or vice versa if the clocks go forward

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/selling/listings/creating-managing-listings/selecting-listing-duration?i...

“Listings that run during a daylight saving time-change will still receive the full amount of the listing duration. For example, if you have a 1-day listing that starts at 1pm on Saturday, and the daylight saving time spring transition occurs that Saturday evening, the listing will end at 2pm on Sunday”

For the last two or three clock changes it has not worked like this. Instead auctions have finished at the same local time as they have started, ie an auction starting at 7PM BST will finish after the clock change at 7PM GMT and vice versa if the clocks have gone forward. In the former case the auction will have run for 7 days and 1 hour, in the latter case for 6 days and 23 hours. 

You raised this with tech and they variously said that they were unable to see that it was happening, that it would resolve itself as the auctions ran and finally that it was fixed. Unfortunately that does not seem to be the case. I’m hoping you be able to have this looked into again please, and apologies for the amount of text here, I just wanted to make sure you were armed with is as much information when following this up!

To illustrate what’s happening I set up two dummy auctions yesterday, one running for 5 days, so finishing while we are still in BST, and one running for 7 days, so finishing after the clocks have gone back 

This is the 5 day auction, started at 10:00 BST

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/397172272352

In the screenshot note that after the auction has been running for 5 minutes it says time remaining ‘4d23h’ - this is what you normally see as soon as an auction has started - the time remaining in hours is rounded down. 

If we look at watchount.com we can see the auction starts and finishes at the same UTC time, 09:00 (UTC Is a global time standard effectively the same as GMT)

https://www.watchcount.com/live/397172272352/-/all?site=EBAY_GB

Start: 19-Oct-25 09:00:01 UTC 

Ends  24-Oct-25 09:00:01 UTC

This is the 7 day auction, started at 09:00 BST and finishing after clocks have gone back

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/397170609622

This time in the screenshot taken after 5 minutes it says time remaining ‘7d0h’, because the duration has been rounded down from ‘7d1h’. You can see it says finishes 26/10 at 09:00, but does not specify BST or GMT (which will be in effect at the time). However when we look at watchcount.com we can see that this must be GMT, as the auction finishes at 09:00 UTC which equals 09:00 GMT.

https://www.watchcount.com/live/397170609622/-/all?site=EBAY_GB

Start: Sun, 19-Oct-25 08:00:01 UTC 

Ends Sun, 26-Oct-25 09:00:01 UTC

The critical thing to note here is that the 5 day auction starts at 09:00 UTC and ends at 09:00 UTC, so runs for 5 x 24 hours exactly, whereas the 7 day auction starts at 08:00 UTC and ends at 09:00 UTC so runs for 7 x 24 hours plus one extra hour.

If you could pass this on to tech to have them check it out that would be great, it would be really great to get this sorted out this year. Or alternatively is there someone else you could pass it on to, perhaps whoever is in charge of setting the policy who could then take up with tech why the current implementation is not matching the policy?

[wellingnorth]

I'm not sure if I tagged you in properly there kat@ebay but just a quick note to confirm that the auction that started at 09:00 BST before the clocks went back did finish at 09:00 GMT after the clocks went back rather than 08:00 GMT as it should have done as per ebay policy outlined here:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/selling/listings/creating-managing-listings/selecting-listing-duration?i...

 Here are two screenshots, one showing the auction having finished at 09:00 and another one with 20 minutes remaining showing the current time on google 08:39 GMT

[kat@ebay]

Hi @wellingnorth ,

Thank you for the post and including the screenshot examples for the extra hour. I'll share these as feedback for that policy with our tech team.

Thank you,

Kat

[wellingnorth]

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kat@ebay wrote:

Hi @wellingnorth ,

Thank you for the post and including the screenshot examples for the extra hour. I'll share these as feedback for that policy with our tech team.

Thank you,

Kat

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Happy New Year kat@ebay I just wondered if you had had any response from your tech team about this issue?

[wellingnorth]

kat@ebay not sure if I tagged you in correctly above, with the clocks changing again in March I wondered if you ever heard anything back from the technical team about this?

[kat@ebay]

Hi @wellingnorth ,

Thank you for reaching out. Not sure what happened with the first tag.

Tech usually advise it should work as outlined in the policy but let me check in with them for the upcoming change. I'll let you know once I've heard back.

Thank you,

Kat

[wellingnorth]

Thanks Kat, that's what they've advised each time, but the implementation has not matched the policy for the last few clock changes. 

I'm not sure if you can access archived threads but this was where we discussed the issue in October 2024

https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Technical-Issues/Clock-change-bug-Duration-7d-1-hour/m-p/7699823#M28...

[kat@ebay]

Thanks @wellingnorth ,

I can access those archives no problem. I appreciate that is what is advised each time but I will refer to tech again to review.

Thank you,

Kat

[wellingnorth]

kat@ebay 

Sorry to post about this again, just to confirm it seems like the issue occurred again in the US where the clocks went forward a couple of weeks ago. If you look at this auction bidding page you can see that it finished at the same clock hour in PDT as it started in PST ((their equivalent of BST / GMT) 

https://www.ebay.com/bfl/viewbids/336459165522?item=336459165522
STARTED 1 Mar 2026 at 7:30:15pm PST
ENDED 8 Mar 2026 at 7:30:10pm PDT

Here the clocks go forward on the 29th and I have set up a ten day auction here that finishes after the change.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/397734617341

The auction started 15 minutes ago at 09:15 GMT.
According to the policy it should run for the full duration of 7 x 24 hours and finish at 10:15 BST on the 29th.

Looking at it right now, 15 minutes after it has started it says that it has 9d22h remaining rather than 9d23h as it should. This indicates that it will actually finish at 09:15 BST rather than 10:15 BST as it should:

This is confirmed by the watchount page here which shows that the auction starts at 09:15:01 UTC and finishes at 08:15 UTC (08:15 UTC is 09:15 BST)
https://www.watchcount.com/live/397734617341/-/all?site=EBAY_GB

Again I really have no preference which way this works and I guess many other sellers may not either but it seems like the functionality should match the policy shouldn't it? To reiterate the policy is here:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/selling/listings/creating-managing-listings/selecting-listing-duration?i...

It says "Listings that run during a daylight saving time-change will still receive the full amount of the listing duration. For example, if you have a 1-day listing that starts at 1pm on Saturday, and the daylight saving time spring transition occurs that Saturday evening, the listing will end at 2pm on Sunday."

[kat@ebay]

Hi @wellingnorth ,

Thank you for your reply.

After referring it to the tech team they have advised it it is set up to work as per the policy. I appreciate they have confirmed this previously but they have advised its been checked and it is set up correctly. 

Thank you,

Kat

[wellingnorth]

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kat@ebay wrote:

Hi @wellingnorth ,

After referring it to the tech team they have advised it it is set up to work as per the policy. I appreciate they have confirmed this previously but they have advised its been checked and it is set up correctly. 

Thanks for following this up Kat, you're right, that is what tech have said before. It's hard to know how to move forward with this as there seems to be a difference of understanding somewhere, either with what the policy is or what the examples are showing.

Maybe the best approach is to focus on the live example. Are we in agreement that according to the policy my auction above which started at 0915 GMT on Sunday 22nd should finish at 1015 BST on the 29th (after the clocks have gone forward) and not at 0915 BST?

[kat@ebay]

Hi @wellingnorth ,

That is correct as with the time-change the listing should still receive the full amount of the listing duration.

Thank you,

Kat

[wellingnorth]

Thanks 

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kat@ebay wrote:

Hi @wellingnorth ,

That is correct as with the time-change the listing should still receive the full amount of the listing duration.

Thanks kat@ebay I'm glad I'm haven't massively got the wrong end of the stick! So my screenshots above are suggesting that this is not in fact going to happen and that the auction will finish at 0915 BST. I think that tech are not accepting these screenshots as evidence  - ie the start / end time shown on watchcount.com and the fact that the auction showed finishing in 9 days + 22 hours as soon as it had started. 

What I suggest is that I set my alarm clock for sunday morning and check the auction between 0915 and 1015 BST. If the auction has finished we'll know that the auction has not run according to the policy and I'll post screenshots here again before 1015 showing the finished auction with timestamps. If it hasn't finished and in fact runs until 1015 BST I will post back here to confirm and to apologise for wasting your time!

[wellingnorth]

Just quickly to confirm that (posting this at 09:25 BST on Sunday) the auction at https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/397734617341 has finished as predicted at 09:15 BST rather than 10:15 BST as it was supposed to and so has run 1 hour short of the full listing duration. I'm posting three screenshots below, showing start time 09:15 GMT and end time 09:15 BST, hopefully that is enough for tech to have another look this? 

kat@ebay 

[ett1954]

@wellingnorth  - I concur with your findings; yet again non-conformance with the stipulated policy.

I think it is fair to say that it is due to one of the following:

1. The tech team do not understand the eBay policy   ..... or

2. The tech team do not have the ability to code the timings to cope with the twice yearly clock changes.

I don't know if you have noticed that when creating a listing for scheduling the time setting uses the 24 hour clock; e.g. 15.00 = 3p.m.  However if you then go into the schedule listing to revise the timing it is showing the timing as 3.00.  There is no standardisation on the site to the 24 hour clock.  I have noticed on other US sites an aversion to use the 24 hour clock system - maybe it is because they don't have 24 digits to count off.  🤔

[kat@ebay]

Hi @wellingnorth ,

Thank you for the details. I'll share this example with tech and let you know of any updates.

Thank you,

Kat

[ett1954]

kat@ebay  It is a bit late for updates now.  On this occasion it didn't impact me as I had predicted that policy wouldn't be followed, as had been the case on the previous 4 or 5 clock changes, so I simply worked on retaining the  time I wanted auctions to start on the scheduling.

It doesn't matter which system is used as long as we know beforehand when scheduling.  As the tech team doesn't appear to understand the issue perhaps it would be simpler to just change the wording on the policy.  The hour we loose on the spring change we get back anyway on the autumn time change.

In the meantime thanks for your efforts over the last couple of years in pursuing this; it must be frustrating for you also.

[wellingnorth]

Hi kat@ebay 

I just wondered if you had heard anything back from tech about this issue?

Thank you

[kat@ebay]

Hi @wellingnorth ,

I have managed to get them to log it as a bug which is good progress. I don't have a timeline for updates but once I receive them I'll let you know.

Thank you,

Kat

[wellingnorth]

Thank you Kat, that sounds like progress!!