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Bidding after close.
I recently bid on an item 4 seconds before the close, and was the high bidder. About 20 seconds another bidder made a higher bid that was accepted. For future reference, how is this allowed?
7 comments
poppy12653
OP2 years agoI know what the time read on the bidding clock when I bid. But, without proof, I've learned what Trump did not. Without such proof keep your mouth shut. I will know how to react in future situations. Hopefully candidates will as well.
woodland_gnome
·2 years agoBut what you see "on the bidding clock" is NOT accurate or reliable. How to react in the future is to accept that and adjust your behavior: Use a snipe service or put your bid in earlier the 4 seconds showing on the clock. You are lucky it got in on time this time because this time it was fast (which might be due to your device time settings) if it was slow your bid would have been rejected because it would have been received and timestamped too late.
The countdown you see is not a real-time feed of bids coming into eBay's servers and the eBay clock counting down. Rather, it is a script that runs on your computer and calls for updates on the auction status about every 3 seconds. It uses the time remaining from those updates to start your own computer's clock counting down from the time the page loads or the last successful update, and displays the "current price" and your status as of the last successful update.
Meanwhile, on eBay's end, a bid coming in is timestamped before eBay does anything else with it. If it gets the timestamp before the end of the last second of the auction, it is a timely bid. Then the bid must be processed to see that it is a valid bid for that item (meets the currently calculated minimum bid amount, not subject to a seller block or over the Buyer Activity Limit or from an account with a bidding suspension, timestamped before the end of the auction) before it is handed over to the server that is calculating the status of the auction. This is usually all done in a fraction of a second, but sometimes can take a couple of seconds. Only after the status server calculates the new "current bid" and leader is that information available to be sent in response to an update request from your computer (and it takes some fraction of a second for your request to get to eBay's servers and another for it to get back, get loaded into RAM, and get displayed on your screen, and the script runs the clock down from when the new "time remaining" loads in RAM, which usually results in your countdown being slow because of the time lag).
So, between the 3 second (at best, not all updates are succesful) gaps and the time to process a new bid, there is always at least a 1-4 second window at the end where the results of a new bid will NOT display on your countdown screen before YOUR clock reaches 0 and the script calls for a full refresh of the Item Page. At that time the results of the late bid usually come up (you are not seeing the actual bid, you are seeing the calculated "winning price" or "current bid"), but I always (and everyone should) give it a few seconds and then manually refresh just to be sure before relying on the result as final (again, on a busy night it might take a few seconds to finish processing a bid).
If you bid your TRUE maximum, it doesn't make any difference whether you saw the bid before your countdown ran out--if you had been able to react to it before the auction ended you wouldn't have reacted anyway, since you would not let yourself bid more than the MOST you would be willing to pay. If you did not bid your TRUE maximum and were unable to react, now you know why it is important to bid your true maximum REGARDLESS of what anyone else appears or doesn't appear to be bidding. Highest bid received (but not cancelled/retracted) before the auction ends win, but the price is set by the high bid of the SECOND highest bidder (again, as of what is received but not cancelled/retracted before the end) so it is not necessary to take into account what others have bid, what you guess they have bid, or what you guess they MIGHT bid (except to assume it's about the same as you so add a few cents to the round number you think is your TRUE maximum as a tie-breaker) and expecting to react to other bids as they come in is a recipe for losing at less than you are willing to pay.
woodland_gnome
·2 years agoThe other bid was received before the end of the last second of the auction. A bid that gets a timestamp before the end of the last second is timely, and if there is no other reason for eBay to reject it (doesn't meet the minimum bid amount at the time, buyer subject to a block or limit by the seller or eBay) it is valid and can win or at least raise the price. This is very accurate and precise.
The DISPLAYS of time that eBay uses, on the other hand, are terrible, and there are a couple of display issues that can lead someone relying on the display to believe the bid was late, when it was not. Go to the Bid History Page on the full website (the one on mobile app is worse than useless) and compare the timestamp on the bid with the timestamp on the "Starting Price" at the bottom (plus the "Duration" of x days) and you will see it was timely. The stated endtime at the top of the history is truncated to the lower minute and does not show the seconds (one of the display issues).
If you are watching the countdown do not rely on the apparently final result when the clock gets to 0; wait a few seconds and refresh the screen. I'm guessing the "20 seconds" you are citing is the time it took you to click to another page (e.g. to Checkout to Pay Now) and when THAT page loaded it had the updated information.
poppy12653
OP2 years agoBelow is the email I received from Ebay. I bid with 4 seconds left and received an Email that I was the winning bidder. Looks like someone got an additional 26 seconds to bid. Or the countdown clock is incorrect. Explain.
Bid History
woodland_gnome
·2 years agoAs you can see the auction did not end at 3:07:00 (do not assume it is to the second unless seconds are displayed) but rather at 3:07:39. If it had ended at 3:07:00 your bid would have been rejected since it was received and timestamped 7 seconds after that.
lady_madonna
Mentor2 years ago@poppy12653
If you look at the bidding history, you bid with 32 seconds left (you bid at 3:07:07 and ending time was 3:07:39). You were the current winning (leading) bidder at that point.
Then the bidder with (441) bid after you at 3:07:33, which was 6 seconds before auction ended.
Always remember that the highest bid wins, not the latest.
lady_madonna
Mentor2 years ago@poppy12653
It is not possible for someone to place a bid after the auction has ended.
Go back to the listing page, click on the number of bids to be taken to the bidding history page.
Look at the starting time of the auction, including seconds....that time will also be the ending time.
Or you can post the item # here and we can look at the bidding history for you.