Daylight Savings Time Change - Listing Duration | Selling

Daylight Savings Time Change - Listing Duration

I thought that auction listings that carry over a time change received the full 7 days X 24 hours duration. That was not my experience this past week.

I listed several auctions on March 2nd starting at one minute intervals around 12:15PM (ET). I would have expected that they end at around 1:15PM March 9th since we moved clocks ahead an hour. But they ended at around 12:15PM.

Did something change in the listing process this week?

nyr134

2442 View listings

Posted 6 months ago·Last reply 5 months ago

6 comments

lacemaker3

·5 months ago

4, 3, 2, 1 ... Earth below us, drifting, falling ... Floating weightless, calling, calling ...690 View listings

@nyr134 wrote:
I thought that auction listings that carry over a time change received the full 7 days X 24 hours duration. That was not my experience this past week.

I listed several auctions on March 2nd starting at one minute intervals around 12:15PM (ET). I would have expected that they end at around 1:15PM March 9th since we moved clocks ahead an hour. But they ended at around 12:15PM.

Did something change in the listing process this week?

@nyr134

Actually, I think this change was first noticed in the Fall of 2024, so this has been happening for a couple of years now.

I found the thread from when this was first noticed and discussed. It was reported first from eBay UK, because the UK changed time about a week earlier than the USA did. Then the following weekend, it happened on eBay USA as well.

Here's a good starting point for the discussion.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Compensating-for-the-upcoming-Daylight-Saving-Time-change-on-11/m-p/34749111#M2477545

This was the first post from @wellingnorth in the UK, reporting that listings had gained an hour duration with the time change. (Please ignore my posts near the beginning of that discussion, I had some math trouble calculating time differences between UTC (which doesn't change) and local times (which did change). So I bowed out and let him and @wastingtime101 handle it.)

It happened again (in reverse) in Spring 2025, and @kyle@ebay responded here that it was not an intended change. Unfortunately, shortly afterwards, somebody reported the thread as being too old, and it was shut down, even though the issue was still ongoing and had not been resolved.

To the best of my knowledge, listings have gained or lost an hour when the time changes since then. Even though the eBay page about this has not been updated (so it is still incorrect).

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/selecting-listing-duration?id=4652#section4

@kyle@ebay, could you ask the team involved to correct the misinformation on the policy page?

wellingnorth

·5 months ago

306 View listings

Thanks for tagging me, so has this happened again on ebay.com with the US daylight savings change last week?

I've been following up on ebay.co.uk seller forums on this thread with clear examples from last October:

https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Technical-Issues/Clock-Change-Bug-Again-Auction-Durations-1-hour/m-p/8003906#M36270

I think the issue is easier to demonstrate on ebay.co.uk as we only have one time zone.

@kat@ebay followed up again with tech last week, I assume it's the same tech team across all sites, but, as you suggest, with it working like this for a good while now it would seem more straightforward to change the policy to match the functionality rather than vice versa!

a_c_green

·5 months ago

4168 View listings

@wellingnorth wrote:
@kat@ebay followed up again with tech last week, I assume it's the same tech team across all sites, but, as you suggest, with it working like this for a good while now it would seem more straightforward to change the policy to match the functionality rather than vice versa!

I would agree with that. As a seller, I was always getting tripped up over that; I'm more concerned with having my auctions end when I want than caring about exactly which hour they start, but I would always forget about an upcoming time change until after I'd already started my auctions for the coming week at the "wrong" time. I can definitely envision a bidder forgetting the time change as well, and logging in to bid and discovering that the auction already ended.

(After my auctions of last Sunday night ended, I was contacted by a buyer who said that he'd missed one of mine that had already ended without a bid. I relisted it as a BuyItNow for him at the original auction's opening price, and he bought it the next day.)

kyle@ebay

Admin5 months ago

Community Advisor0 View listings

@lacemaker3 wrote:

@nyr134 wrote:

I thought that auction listings that carry over a time change received the full 7 days X 24 hours duration. That was not my experience this past week.

I listed several auctions on March 2nd starting at one minute intervals around 12:15PM (ET). I would have expected that they end at around 1:15PM March 9th since we moved clocks ahead an hour. But they ended at around 12:15PM.

Did something change in the listing process this week?

@nyr134

Actually, I think this change was first noticed in the Fall of 2024, so this has been happening for a couple of years now.

I found the thread from when this was first noticed and discussed. It was reported first from eBay UK, because the UK changed time about a week earlier than the USA did. Then the following weekend, it happened on eBay USA as well.

Here's a good starting point for the discussion.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Compensating-for-the-upcoming-Daylight-Saving-Time-change-on-11/m-p/34749111#M2477545

This was the first post from @wellingnorth in the UK, reporting that listings had gained an hour duration with the time change. (Please ignore my posts near the beginning of that discussion, I had some math trouble calculating time differences between UTC (which doesn't change) and local times (which did change). So I bowed out and let him and @wastingtime101 handle it.)

It happened again (in reverse) in Spring 2025, and @kyle@ebay responded here that it was not an intended change. Unfortunately, shortly afterwards, somebody reported the thread as being too old, and it was shut down, even though the issue was still ongoing and had not been resolved.

To the best of my knowledge, listings have gained or lost an hour when the time changes since then. Even though the eBay page about this has not been updated (so it is still incorrect).

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/selecting-listing-duration?id=4652#section4

@kyle@ebay, could you ask the team involved to correct the misinformation on the policy page?

Hey @lacemaker3 I'll be glad to pass this along to the appropriate team for review!

inhawaii

·5 months ago

Ebay's most handsome seller.4909 View listings

It's not daylight "savings" time.

It's daylight "saving" time.

Sorry, just another pet peeve of mine.

a_c_green

·5 months ago

4168 View listings

@nyr134 wrote:
I listed several auctions on March 2nd starting at one minute intervals around 12:15PM (ET). I would have expected that they end at around 1:15PM March 9th since we moved clocks ahead an hour. But they ended at around 12:15PM.

Did something change in the listing process this week?

Yes. In the past it was as you described: 7 x 24 hours for a full-week listing. Sometime within the past year (I have to admit that I didn't notice when this change was made), it appears that they now keep the same nominal time through the change, so that in the Spring here we actually were an hour short on our one-week auctions, but the auctions did at least start and end at the same wall-clock time.

Here is the Bid History page for an auction of mine that ended last Sunday night. It begins at 7:30 Pacific Standard Time and ends at 7:30 Pacific Daylight Time: