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)

[ett1954]

"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" - a good call.  Also their forums will also be an alert as before.

I am really dreading the next leap year ........ if I am still here.  Do you reckon four years will be enough to sort the issues from last year?

[goodibags]

If the Ebay calendar doesn't know about leap years has anyone checked to see if it's Y2K compliant?

[ett1954]

I am sure eBay know about leap years and time changes; it's just their developers / programmers don't know how to deal with them.

[wellingnorth]

Just a quick note to confirm that this does seem to be happening again. The clocks in the US go forward on 9th March and this is a ten day US auction that finishes after the time change
https://www.ebay.com/itm/297066011899

If we look at watchcount (https://watchcount.com/live/297066011899/-/all?site=EBAY_US&sortBy=price) we can see the listing start and end time in UTC:

Start: Thu, 27-Feb-25 23:37:10 UTC (14 minutes ago)
Auction ends Sun, 09-Mar-25 22:37:10 UTC (9 days left)

Note that it starts at 23:37 and finishes at 22:37. To recap from above as UTC time is constant the auction is running for 6 days 23 hours rather than the full 7 days as per the ebay policy
https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/selling/listings/creating-managing-listings/selecting-listing-duration?i...

In UTC time the start and end hours should always be the same regardless of any daylight savings change. If you were to translate the above into the UK context the auction would be starting at 23:37 GMT (UTC + 0) and finishing at 23:37 BST (UTC + 1) contrary to the example in the policy page which says '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@ebayare you able to pass this on to your technical team please, hopefully this time there might be time for them to look at the issue before the clocks go forward in the UK  (or I suppose alternatively get the policy team to change the listing duration policy?)

[ett1954]

"hopefully this time there might be time for them to look at the issue before the clocks go forward in the UK  (or I suppose alternatively get the policy team to change the listing duration policy?)" - I suspect neither will happen and with no effective communication we will be left in the dark again.

I did tag the eBay community members requesting an update several weeks ago regarding this matter on another post - not even an acknowledgement.

[kat@ebay]

Thanks @wellingnorth ,

I'll share the information with tech. 

Thank you,

Kat

[wellingnorth]

---

kat@ebay wrote:

Thanks @wellingnorth ,

I'll share the information with tech. 

---

Thanks for this kat@ebay 

Here's a bit more information illustrating what's happening in case it helps with tech. Now that we're within 7 days of the clocks changing in the US most newly listed auctions will be affected. If you do a search for any regularly listed item, US auctions only and sort by newly listed and you'll see that even if they have just been listed they show 6d22h remaining rather than 6d23h as they normally would.

I've attached some screenshots of when I've done this just now with this search:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=dress&_sacat=0&_from=R40&LH_Auction=1&_sop=10

Note these two listings are the two most recently started auctions and have both have started within half an hour of me doing the search but the US one says 6d22h remaining, the UK one listed slightly earlier says 6d23h remaining.

The information on watchcount confirms this, they both have more or less the same UTC start time around 11:25 but the US listing finishes an hour earlier at 10:25 UTC

US ITEM
316445099948 - https://www.ebay.com/itm/316445099948
Start: Wed, 05-Mar-25 11:25:43 UTC (10 minutes ago)
Auction ends Wed, 12-Mar-25 10:25:43 UTC (6 days left)

(https://www.watchcount.com/live/316445099948/-/all?site=EBAY_US)

UK ITEM
306158524501 - https://www.ebay.com/itm/306158524501
Start: Wed, 05-Mar-25 11:25:39 UTC (11 minutes ago)
Auction ends Wed, 12-Mar-25 11:25:39 UTC (6 days left)

(https://www.watchcount.com/live/306158524501/-/all?site=EBAY_GB)

[wellingnorth]

---

kat@ebay wrote:

Thanks @wellingnorth ,

I'll share the information with tech. 

Thank you,

Kat

---

Apologies I don't think I tagged you in properly on that last message #27 kat@ebay hopefully that example helps tech see the problem. Not sure what tech's response time is like but I think it's probably up until Sunday when it will be most straightforward for them to see what is going wrong as after that they'll only be able to look at already created listings rather than seeing what happens with new listings as they go online.

[kat@ebay]

Thanks for the details @wellingnorth ,  I  have included these in the report with tech for review. I don't have a timescale but as soon as I have an update I will let you know.

Thank you,

Kat

[wellingnorth]

---

kat@ebay wrote:

Thanks for the details @wellingnorth ,  I  have included these in the report with tech for review. I don't have a timescale but as soon as I have an update I will let you know.

---

Thank you kat@ebay that's much appreciated

[wellingnorth]

Hi kat@ebay I wondered whether you might be able to chase tech about this please as it will start affecting UK auctions from next Thursday.

Obviously the US examples above are no longer live, but perhaps if they could just look at the code that is determining how the auction finish date is determined as that is where I think things have probably been changed. I suspect that is no longer taking the start time and adding 7 x 24 hours to it as it is outlined in the policy and is instead making the ending hour of the auction match the starting hour of the auction x days later in whatever current time zone applies in the region of the auction - so an auction starting in GMT and ending after the change to BST will start at 7pm GMT will end at 7PM BST, and an auction starting in BST  and ending after the change to GMT will start at 7pm BST will end at 7PM GMT.

[kat@ebay]

Hi @wellingnorth ,

After linking in with tech the latest update is they have logged it as a bug and is with our product team. There is no timescale with it. As soon as I have a further update I will let you know.

Thank you,

Kat

[wellingnorth]

Thanks Kat, that sounds like progress!

[wellingnorth]

---

kat@ebay wrote:

Hi @wellingnorth ,

After linking in with tech the latest update is they have logged it as a bug and is with our product team. There is no timescale with it. As soon as I have a further update I will let you know.

---

Morning kat@ebay 
As we're ten days away from the clocks going forward I put together a 10 day test auction and the same thing is happening that we saw in the US.

So the auction is here, started at 9am today and you can see the finish time is 30/03, 09:00
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/396338778871

It doesn't explicitly say BST, but I think we can safely assume it is - you can see on the screenshot taken at 0901 that it says 6d22 hours left where it should say 6d23 hours

If you look at watchcount here

https://watchcount.com/live/396338778871/-/all?site=EBAY_GB

you can see the UTC start time is 09:00 (0900 GMT) and the end time is 08:00 (09:00 BST) where the end time should be 09:00 UTC / 10:00 BST.

Start: Thu, 20-Mar-25 09:00:01 UTC (2 minutes ago)
Auction ends Sun, 30-Mar-25 08:00:01 UTC (9 days left)

[ett1954]

dave@ebay , kat@ebay 

Can we just make this simple.  I have 10 day auctions to commence tomorrow; the finish time is important.  Do I start my auctions at the same hour I need them to end after the clock change or do I make an adjustment by starting them an hour early?

A simple question to ask the so-called 'team'.  No work needed; just a confirmation as to which it is.  I originally forewarned of this event around 6 weeks ago on a different thread and received no response.  Why is it that every other website and electrical device can manage this bi-annual transition effortlessly whilst in eBay it creates chaos, confusion and uncertainty?

[kat@ebay]

Hi @wellingnorth ,

I have added this UK example to the ticket with tech.  As I mentioned previously it is with the product team for investigation. I don't have any further update at the moment. As soon as I do I will let you know.

Thank you,

Kat

[kat@ebay]

Hi @ett1954 ,

It is advised to list them as normal as based on policy  as it should update automatically due to the daylight savings.  As you can see from wellingnorths examples we have referred it onto tech as its showing 1 hour less.  Its currently with the product team under review. Once I get a further update on it I will post back on the thread.

Thank you,

Kat

[ett1954]

kat@ebay ; thanks for the reply, much appreciated.  An hour earlier it is then.  The tech team obviously feel confident they have control of the situation.

[wellingnorth]

Morning kat@ebay 

I wasn't sure if tech needed any more evidence of this but just to confirm the test auction finished at 9am BST today and the ebay item finished page clearly shows start time 9:00 GMT and finish time 9:00 BST (screenshot below)

[ett1954]

Good job I totally ignored the advice given above when scheduling mine.

The inability to deal with regular clock changes tells you all you need to know about the tech ability on this platform.