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winning an auction
Auction yesterday was to end at 6:00pm. A second bidder showed up and bid after the ending 27 secs. later. I was the winning bidder at 6:00 pm, but ebay says the late bidder won. This is not right!
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woodland_gnome
·2 years agoNo, it is your interpretation of the endtime that is "not right!" Do not assume a precision that isn't indicated. 6:00 is not the same thing as 6:00:00.000. eBay truncates (rounds down) its time displays to the lower second, minute, or even hour depending on the page you are looking at and in some cases how much time remains. 6:00 could be anywhere from 6:00:00.000 to 6:00:59.999. That might be OK on search results and the like, but for years now they also truncate to the minute on the main Listing Page for the auction, and more recently started doing it on the Bid History Page for the actual endtime (but the bid times are still to the second, confusing things further).
Go back to the Bid History (where you found the bid time) and look down at the Starting Price line and you will see that the starting time displayed there was less than or equal to x days (the "Duration" also displayed at the top) earlier to the second. The auction ends x days to the second after the start time (I'm not sure whether that is at the end of that clock second or if it is at the anniversary of the fraction of a second it started to the fraction of a second that eBay keeps a record of on the timestamp to break ties that came in during the same second; I know it is not at the beginning of the second because bids are accepted that bear the same second display as the Start Time) unless something happens to cause it to end earlier (e.g. seller ends early with or without a winner, buyer uses Buy It Now option, etc.).
For an active auction with a bid you can calculate the endtime to the second from the starting time and duration displayed on the Bid History Page IF there has been a bid (there is no direct display of the endtime of an active auction on that page, only for completed auctions and as previously noted that is truncated to the minute and doesn't display the seconds).