Bid timer stops on confirm screen..

[fireintheskymeteorites]

Hello,

I have been having the bid timer stop just a couple of seconds after I bring up the confirm screen.

It happens on both Firefox and Edge.

Thanks in advance.

[eburtonlab]

If you are using a desktop browser, you may be able to scroll down the page a bit before opening up the bid entry window -- that way you can see the timer displayed on the item page, which seems to work better than the one on the bid entry pop-up, which lately seems to stutter and pause a bit.

[greg5000]

Yes, this is 100% confirmed to be happening, as I experienced it yesterday trying to bid on an item. 

I watched the Place Bid countdown clock for numerous auctions last night and the clock stopped for all of them.  It will count down longer before it stops if there is more time left in the auction.  When there is only 1-2 minutes left, the clock stops after 5-6 seconds of opening the Place Bid window.

[greg5000]

The clock is actually stopping (vs.  stuttering and pausing a bit), which is a major issue.

Many buyers (including myself), like to bid near the end of an auction, and many bid in the last minute all the way up to the end.  This is what a true auction is, and what ensures that Sellers get the best offers for their items (and potential Buyers actually win auctions, vs. sitting there confused and upset that the countdown clock is broken).

eBay will hopefully fix this quickly.

[plummark1709]

There are more bids in the last 10 seconds than the previous 50!

So auctions are usually won in the last few seconds, and an accurate 'bid now' clock is essential.

"The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is used to manage a herd of network computers so that all display the correct time.  Carefully coordinated, reliable and accurate time is vital for traffic control in the air, under the sea, in space, on the ground, buying and selling things...". (from https://doc.ntp.org).

I think we can conclude that this is not an NTP failure, or else planes and bank transactions would fail!

So I presume it is an eBay programming glitch, which as usual they never acknowledge and are always slow to fix, dependent on the number of people it affects.

Yawn...