Determining a winner issue
Dear ebay.
I just recently bid on an auction and watched as my last offer remained right down to the very last second down to zero with no change in the offer (My offer). Next comes the pop-up telling the bidders that they have to determine the winner of the auction. To my surprise someone else won the auction by one dollar. Someone who never showed up on the auction screen even at zero seconds!!!
Please explain this new bidding technique?? I'd like to understand why this is not showing properly. Before you could watch the bidding and any last second offering with immediate notice of a winner. Now it must be determined.
This is unfair and should be corrected.
Mike
6 comments
woodland_gnome
·1 year agoI'm glad they are trying this out again. Too often the "final" screen of the countdown displays a premature result, and as you can see below I advise anyone watching the countdown to wait a few seconds and refresh before relying on the apparent "final" results. A while back they tried forcing that waiting period, but there might have been issues with it (e.g. never actually refreshing to show the final final results) or people just complained that they didn't want to wait.
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.
mudshark61369
·1 year agomtgraves7984
·1 year agoI won an auction this week with one bid. It ended at 5:28:01PM, PDT and my bid went in at 5:27:49PM, PDT. ðŸ
Admittedly... time stood still during the "determining the winner" period, @sherlock221b. I feel ya...
12345jamesstamps
·1 year agoI bid at the last 4 seconds and won I think like 15+ today from the same seller.
Fastest computer will win of course placing bids at the last second...slow computer(s) may not see those last second bid(s) and lose.
gator08041971
·1 year ago@sherlock221b
To my surprise someone else won the auction by one dollar. Someone who never showed up on the auction screen even at zero seconds!!! Please explain this new bidding technique??
Nothing to explain. This "technique" has existed for as long as eBay has been here.
In fact, I use this method still, and have for almost 2 decades. You have two ways to handle bidding:
Doing the first is sort of a set it and leave it method. That way you don't have to be there when it ends.
The second is a way to try to keep the price from getting closer to your maximum and can sometimes work in that fashion. But its not a guarantee.
Bottom line, there are bidders willing to spend more than you on an item.
I lost one the other day. I bid in the last 5 seconds with my maximum, and someone out bid me at the end. I shrug and move on. That's what you should do.
doc-holmes
·1 year agoThey must have put in a bid a second or so before the close. Either it took a few seconds for it to show up on your screen, or your computer's clock may be off slightly as well. It's normal.
Also, this isn't eBay. This is a community of buyers and sellers like yourself.