Clock change bug? - Duration 7d + 1 hour

[wellingnorth]

Previously I understood that when the clocks changed your auction would still run for the full duration, so if I started an auction at 1700 today then taking into account the clocks going back it would finish at 1600 on the 27th.

However today I listed a 7 day auction at 1700 and it shows the finish time as 1700 on the 27th and on my active listings page the time left for the auction shows as 7 days and 59 minutes.

Is anyone else seeing this and is it a bug or a new way of dealing with the clock change?

(There was another recurring bug where trying to select a start time after the clock change the time kept jumping arround but that does now seem to have been fixed - if you select 2000 on the 27th it first of all says 2000 BST but then after a few seconds the BST switches to say GMT)

[kat@ebay]

Hi @wellingnorth ,

I'm following up on yesterday's query from our weekly chat and the auction times for clock changes. After linking in with tech they have advised the system won't show the reduced hour until the day it comes info affect.

Thank you,

Kat

[wellingnorth]

Thanks for following up and for the reply!

I'm not 100% sure what that means in practice though. Just as an example a 7 day auction listed at 2000 on the 20th of October started off showing a finish time of 2000 on the 27th and a duration of 7 days and 1 hour. Will it at some point lose an hour of duration and finish instead at 1900 on the 27th?

[ett1954]

@wellingnorth   They have managed to foul it up - no surprises.  As I have always done  for the last 15+ years, I set my auctions to allow for the clocks going back on Sunday however they are now showing a finish time for the same hour I listed them except it is GMT.

i.e. an auction set to finish at 9 pm GMT on Sunday was listed to start at 10 p.m. BST last Sunday however it is now showing a finish time at 10 pm GMT on Sunday.

It seems that the programmers at eBay are incapable of carrying out a simple programme change.  Unless of course it is a deliberate procedure change, in which case there was no communication of the change.  I noticed this last Sunday when the auction were activated from my scheduler; luckily in time to change my Monday auction start times.

kat@ebay   would you please check with the 'team' responsible and let us know whether this is an error on their part or whether this is a procedural change we need to account for next spring when the clocks go forward an hour.

[wellingnorth]

---

kat@ebay wrote:

Hi @wellingnorth ,

After linking in with tech they have advised the system won't show the reduced hour until the day it comes info affect.

---

Morning kat@ebay just a quick update on this. We're now after the clock change on Sunday morning and nothing appears to have changed - the auctions still have the same end time and will have run for 7 days and 1 hour by the time they finish. I wonder if you could go back to the tech team please and confirm if this was / is a mistake and whether the same thing will happen next Spring when the clocks go forward?

[ett1954]

@wellingnorth  Don't expect a response on this as per my previous post (# 4) - total silence.  They simply don't know what is going to happen in spring 2025, which is indicative of the quality of programming on this site these days.  You wonder why there is so many 'glitches'.

Strangely, every platform and website I have been on today has coped with this change easily, my computer, central heating timer, TV, radio, phones, and even the clock in my car has dealt with this well known time chage seamlessly.  However eBay!!!

Hilariously, one of only two words not showing as a spelling error in the above message is 'glitches'.  Obviously a universal word in the language of eBay.

[wellingnorth]

---

kat@ebay wrote:

Hi @wellingnorth ,

I'm following up on yesterday's query from our weekly chat and the auction times for clock changes. After linking in with tech they have advised the system won't show the reduced hour until the day it comes info affect.

---

Morning kat@ebay just another follow up on this. So yesterdays auctions finished with no change to the end time having run for 7 days and 1 hour in total. In the US the clocks go back next weekend and the same thing seems to be happening over there.

Somebody pointed me to a website where it shows you the start and end times in UTC which I have learned is basically a fixed time zone like GMT etc so it's something that is outside of daylight saving time changes where we are effectively moving between time zones.  Anyway, what the site shows is that for auctions running across the time change the finish time in UTC is 1 hour later than the start time in UTC. I just thought this might be useful to you to push back against the tech team on this if they are not getting what we are talking about.

This is an auction that started yesterday on ebay.com that runs across the US daylight savings change
https://www.ebay.com/itm/126745634761

https://watchcount.com/live/126745634761/-/all?site=EBAY_GB
Start Time: Sunday, 27-Oct-24 20:33:36 UTC
Auction ends Sunday, 03-Nov-24 21:33:36 UTC

This is the UK auction that we discussed last week that has run across the UK daylight savings change
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/226414117977

https://watchcount.com/live/226414117977/-/all?site=EBAY_GB
Start Time: Wednesday, 23-Oct-24 13:25:08 UTC
Auction ends Wednesday, 30-Oct-24 14:25:08 UTC

[kat@ebay]

Hi @wellingnorth & @ett1954 ,

Apologies for the late reply. I was out of the office on Friday and Monday.

@wellingnorth  thank you for the recent examples. I will log it with the tech team to have it reviewed and I will let you know when I have an update.

Thank you,

Kat

[wellingnorth]

---

kat@ebay wrote:

@wellingnorth  thank you for the recent examples. I will log it with the tech team to have it reviewed and I will let you know when I have an update.

---

Thanks Kat, that's great

[kat@ebay]

Hi @wellingnorth ,

Other sample listings have been checked now and are showing correctly with times. If you have another example where is it not correct please let me know and I can have it looked into further.

Thank you,

Kat

[wellingnorth]

Hi kat@ebay 
Thanks for following this up! I’m a bit unsure what the response from the technical team means there really, are they saying that they couldn't see any other listings where this had happened or that it is now fixed? As it seems to take a while for them to respond it seems like it might be worth setting out the whole thing with some questions to make sure they’re on the same page and if not what further information they require, apologies as a lot of this is repetition and possibly redundant.

So first of all with the listings that we showed in the first place are they able to see that these particular auctions ran for 7 days and 1 hour, rather than 7 x 24 hours only as specified in your listing policy?

US auction running across the time change on the 03/11 https://www.ebay.com/itm/126745634761
UK auction running across the time change on the 27/10 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/226414117977

In the case of the UK auction it started at 1425 BST on 23/10 and according to your policy it should have run for 7 x 24 hours to finish a week later still at 1425 BST 30/10 ( in GMT that would be 1325). Instead it finished at 1425 GMT. If we look at the UTC start and end time we can see that the auction gains an hour:
UTC Start Time: Wednesday, 23-Oct-24 13:25:08
UTC end time Wednesday, 30-Oct-24 14:25:08.

If the auction is running for 7 x 24 hours the UTC start and end hour should be the same as we are still in the same time zone (it’s effectively the same as GMT)

Are your developers able to see that this is what has happened with this particular auction? I can assure you that this was definitely happening with multiple auctions I was watching on ebay.co.uk that ran from the 20th finishing after the time change on the 27th - auctions starting at 9pm BST on the 20th finished at 9PM GMT on the 27th rather than 8PM GMT as per your policy. When auctions started, for the first hour they were showing a remaining time of 7d0h rather than 6d23h which would usually appear as soon as the auction started. Users on ebay.com forums have confirmed this happening also.

So the question again is are the developers able to see that this has actually happened with these completed auctions?

Or is it that they want more examples? As the UK clocks have changed now there are no active auctions that have run across the time change, but there are still some in the USA. If you search for anything you like on ebay.com, choose auctions only and sort by ending soonest you can pick something listed in the US by looking for US Dollar amounts. For example here is a search for ceramic cat:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=ceramic+cat&_sacat=0&_dmd=1&LH_Auction=1&_sop=1&_pgn=...

I’ve picked one that still has a couple of days to run so that you can see it and hopefully they may see it in time
https://www.ebay.com/itm/176656860004
If I take the item number and put it in that watchcount website
https://watchcount.com/live/176656860004/-/all

It shows the same issue where the end UTC time is 1 hour later than the start UTC time
Start Time: 31-Oct-24 21:59:52 UTC
End Time 07-Nov-24 22:59:52 UTC

If they want another example I’ve just scrolled down further in that same search and picked another US listing
https://www.ebay.com/itm/365209164883
https://watchcount.com/live/365209164883/-/all
Start Time: 02-Nov-24 03:39:04 UTC
Auction ends 09-Nov-24 04:39:04 UTC

Alternatively your developers could just run searches for completed auctions themselves, I haven’t included any more here as the watchcount website isn’t working for completed auctions at the moment and showing the UTC start and end times seems important here to demonstrate what’s happening. The key point is that the auctions should start before the daylight savings change and finish after it. The developers should be able to see the UTC start and end times themselves without using the watchcount.com.

Obviously this is all a bit academic now but it would be useful to know if this will happen again when the clocks go forward in Spring.

[wellingnorth]

Morning kat@ebay 

As those auctions are close to ending here's another current example, obviously after Sunday it will be difficult to find current auctions showing the issue unless you can locate 10 day ones which I'm not sure how to search for specifically.

This time I am searching for ceramic dogs, same as before, auctions only, ending soonest

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=ceramic+dog&_sacat=0&_sop=1&rt=nc&LH_Auction=1&_pgn=2

Here is an item id 256699657103

https://www.ebay.com/itm/256699657103

This link shows us the start and finish time in UTC

https://watchcount.com/live/256699657103/-/all

Start Time: Saturday, 02-Nov-24 19:44:14 UTC
Auction ends Saturday, 09-Nov-24 20:44:14 UTC

The end time is 1 hour later than the start time, the auction is running for 7 days and 1 hour. If the same thing happens in spring auctions will run for 6 days 23 hours.

By contrast if we go a few pages forward and find an auction that started after the daylight savings change
https://www.ebay.com/itm/276714720955
You'll see that the UTC start and end hour is the same

https://watchcount.com/live/276714720955/-/all
Start Time: Sunday, 03-Nov-24 17:55:11 UTC
Auction ends Sunday, 10-Nov-24 17:55:11 UTC

Just for good measure here are some more item ids from before the change, I'm literally just scrolling down the search page picking ids
235808882888
286140189689
286134930376
296783339582
135337264667
These all have an end time 1 UTC hour later than the start time.

[kat@ebay]

Thanks @wellingnorth ,

When tech had checked some previous examples it was showing the correct time which may have been after change had gone through. I will make them aware of these ones.

They have advised it should show correctly for the Spring clock change.

Thank you,

Kat

[wellingnorth]

Thank you kat@ebay to be clear it seems like this has happened with basically all auctions that have run across the daylight savings change and it's the UTC time that they should be looking at as the time displayed in the live listings will be that plus or minus a number of hours depending on the time zone.

So if they have confirmed that they can see the issue with all of the examples we have provided and have fixed the problem now and it won't happen in Spring that is great. Or otherwise if it works the same way in Spring it's not really an issue if the policy is updated to reflect it.

If it helps here is the ebay.com thread about it

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Compensating-for-the-upcoming-Daylight-Saving-Time-change-on-1...

There are examples in messages 26 and 27 and this quote: 'I called up eBay and the agent told me that their system lists all of my current auctions as being 7-day-and-1-hour auctions!'

[wellingnorth]

Hi kat@ebay I wondered if you had heard any more from the technical team about this bug, whether they can see that it happened, whether it will happen next time, etc?

[kat@ebay]

Hi @wellingnorth ,

They were not able to see the issue in the background when they viewed the examples. There can be occasions where times can display differently based on servers being in different locations.

They have advised it should show correctly for the Spring time change. 

Thank you,

Kat

[wellingnorth]

Just bumping this so the thread doesn't get archived, we can have a look and see if this is fixed when the clocks go forward (30th March in the UK and it looks like 9th March in the US)

[goodibags]

My initial hunch is that auctions will lose an hour, so a 7 day listing will become 6 days 23 hours.

But at the ongoing sitcom that is Ebay Towers literally anything could happen.

Perhaps you could open a book? 😉

[ett1954]

kat@ebay, dave@ebay, marco@ebay

It would be useful if one of you could check with the relevant team, before the clock change on this occasion, whether we have to manually set our auctions and any BINs we wish to slot into a specific time by scheduling an hour earlier or later to cope with the transition as we always had to do until the previous change last October; or whether the time will remain the same on our auctions and BINs as happened last time.

It would be appreciated if we could have an answer at least 10 days (but preferably 21 days) prior to the changeover date on March 30th.

[wellingnorth]

---

@ett1954 wrote:

It would be useful if one of you could check with the relevant team, before the clock change on this occasion, whether we have to manually set our auctions and any BINs we wish to slot into a specific time by scheduling an hour earlier or later to cope with the transition as we always had to do until the previous change last October; or whether the time will remain the same on our auctions and BINs as happened last time.

It would be appreciated if we could have an answer at least 10 days (but preferably 21 days) prior to the changeover date on March 30th.

---

From last time it felt like the developers were not really engaging with the issue when it was raised with them and I guess the same may happen this time without any concrete examples. If I'm counting correctly we should be able to see if the issue is fixed by looking at 10 day US auctions on ebay.com starting on February 27th. If it's not fixed then as goodibags says above I would expect to see those auctions again finishing at the same clock time as they started and running for 6 days 23 hours.

The policy page remains the same and states that auctions should run full multiples of 24 hours:

Listings end in whole-day increments from the listing's start time, so if you submit your listing at 1:14pm on Sunday and select a 3-day listing, it will end at exactly 1:14 pm on Wednesday.

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.

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