Compensating for the upcoming Daylight Saving Time change on 11/3

[a_c_green]

Somebody check my math, please, because I'm going bonkers trying to do this in my head:

I have 7-day auctions that will begin on this coming Sunday night, October 27th, to end a week later on November 3rd. We turn the clocks back at 2:00 a.m. on the morning of the 3rd. ("Spring forward; Fall back")

Sooo... if I want an auction to end at 10:00 p.m. Chicago time on the 3rd, I need to start it at 11:00 p.m. this Sunday, right? Start it an hour later than its intended ending time, right? I know it's going to run for 7x24 hours regardless.

[lacemaker3]

Here's the policy about this on eBay UK:

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

Listing times

Listings end in whole-day increments from the listing's start time, so if you submit your listing at 1:14pm on Sunday and select a 3-day listing, it will end at exactly 1:14 pm on Wednesday.

Listings that run during a daylight saving time-change will still receive the full amount of the listing duration. For example, if you have a 1-day listing that starts at 1pm on Saturday, and the daylight saving time spring transition occurs that Saturday evening, the listing will end at 2pm on Sunday.

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That listing you posted was started at 13:25:08 UTC, and will end at 14:25:08 UTC. You can see both the start and end times to the second here:

https://watchcount.com/live/226414117977/-/all?site=EBAY_GB

[wellingnorth]

You can see both the start and end times to the second here:

https://watchcount.com/live/226414117977/-/all?site=EBAY_GB

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Thanks for the reply and for the link to the site, that's useful! But is it not the case that as both start and end times above are UTC that should mean that the time change can be disregarded, ie  should it not be starting at 1325 UTC and ending 7 days later at 1325 UTC? Finishing at 1425 makes it 7 days + 1 hour.

That auction definitely started at 1425 BST on the 23rd and the listing page is now showing its finish time as 1425 GMT on the 30th.

[lacemaker3]

OK, I'm just going to stop trying to deal with UTC at this point. 🤔

[wellingnorth]

I'm pretty sure UTC means you can forget about the hour change as it's consistent.

Here's an ebay.com listing which looks the same to me, 7 days + 1 hour, maybe have a look and see what finish time you see

7 day listing, to me shows started Oct-27 13:33, currently shows duration as 7d0h
https://www.ebay.com/itm/126745634761

Start Time: Sunday, 27-Oct-24 20:33:36 UTC (6 minutes ago)
Auction ends Sunday, 03-Nov-24 21:33:36 UTC (7 days from now)

[itsjustasprain]

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@wellingnorth wrote:

I'm pretty sure UTC means you can forget about the hour change as it's consistent.

Here's an ebay.com listing which looks the same to me, 7 days + 1 hour, maybe have a look and see what finish time you see

7 day listing, to me shows started Oct-27 13:33, currently shows duration as 7d0h
https://www.ebay.com/itm/126745634761

Start Time: Sunday, 27-Oct-24 20:33:36 UTC (6 minutes ago)
Auction ends Sunday, 03-Nov-24 21:33:36 UTC (7 days from now)

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My head is spinning...

The UK clocks have already been turned back one hour for fall. The US clocks have NOT been turned back yet - that will be next Sunday morning.

It seems like the California-based site is looking forward to a date beyond the US  time change but for whatever reason is not applying the one-hour rollback that will have occurred by then. So it is showing the end time as one hour later than it should  - implying that the auction will end at 7 days + 1 hour when it actually will not.

As I understand this (IF I understand this) - an auction that starts at 8 pm before the hour rollback will end after 7x24 hours at 7 pm AFTER the rollback.

The listing in the link above looks like it is showing the time incorrectly because it is currently showing me this:

• Time left: 7 days 0 hour 21 mins
• Duration: 7 days

So if the above can be believed then it is a 7-day auction that will be ending MORE than 7 days from now.

I do not think Ebay is really counting down from some starting point that is more than 7x24 hours in length. I think there may be an error in either accounting for or NOT accounting for the hour change when it is calculating what Time Left value to display.

[wellingnorth]

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@itsjustasprain wrote:

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@wellingnorth wrote:

I'm pretty sure UTC means you can forget about the hour change as it's consistent.

Here's an ebay.com listing which looks the same to me, 7 days + 1 hour, maybe have a look and see what finish time you see

7 day listing, to me shows started Oct-27 13:33, currently shows duration as 7d0h
https://www.ebay.com/itm/126745634761

Start Time: Sunday, 27-Oct-24 20:33:36 UTC (6 minutes ago)
Auction ends Sunday, 03-Nov-24 21:33:36 UTC (7 days from now)

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My head is spinning...

Yes indeed mine too a bit! So it's the same on ebay.co.uk that it's always worked that a 7 day auction always runs exactly 7 x 24 hours and when the clocks go back an auction starting at 8pm finishes at 7pm the following week because 8pm is effectively now 7pm. The UK listing duration policy still says this is how it works, but it has definitely not worked like this for auctions over the time change this week! I asked on the community chat this week and the ebay staff member confirmed that the policy had not changed and said they would check with the tech team and then later updated to say that the times would not change until day. I wasn't sure how that was going to work as it would have meant the auction end times jumping forward an hour today and in the end nothing happened - auctions started last week at 8pm British Summer Time finished this week at 8PM Greenwich Mean Time and did actually run for 7 days plus 1 hour.

I guess this could have happened if a developer changed how auction end dates were calculated - like before the end time would have been the start time in UTC plus  7 days x 24 hours x 60 minutes, etc and afterwards it might be more like take the current clock time and end the auction at the same time 7 calendar days later.

Anyway I just thought it was worth mentioning over here as there was a thread running about it and it might affect when people want to start their auctions

[wastingtime101]

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@wellingnorth wrote:

Here's an ebay.com listing which looks the same to me, 7 days + 1 hour, maybe have a look and see what finish time you see

7 day listing, to me shows started Oct-27 13:33, currently shows duration as 7d0h
https://www.ebay.com/itm/126745634761

Start Time: Sunday, 27-Oct-24 20:33:36 UTC (6 minutes ago)
Auction ends Sunday, 03-Nov-24 21:33:36 UTC (7 days from now)

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Hey @wellingnorth . That's interesting.

UTC is 7 hrs ahead of PDT and 8 hrs ahead of PST which means that listing both starts and ends at 1:33 Pacific. I checked a few other auctions started today and am seeing the same. This is a change from the old.

I wonder if eBay accounting for daylight savings has anything to do with an issue from earlier this year where eBay forgot to program for the Leap Day. DST was also called in to question at the time. Perhaps the programmers decided to adjust for both when they fixed that issue?

Before you start your auctions tonight @a_c_green , take a look at this latest update.

[wastingtime101]

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@itsjustasprain wrote:

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It seems like the California-based site is looking forward to a date beyond the US  time change but for whatever reason is not applying the one-hour rollback that will have occurred by then. So it is showing the end time as one hour later than it should  - implying that the auction will end at 7 days + 1 hour when it actually will not.

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Except when you view the listing itself, there is a 1:33 timestamp shown as the listing end. So I don't think there's an issue with Watchcount - they're pulling the start/end times from eBay.

[wellingnorth]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

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@wellingnorth wrote:

Here's an ebay.com listing which looks the same to me, 7 days + 1 hour, maybe have a look and see what finish time you see

7 day listing, to me shows started Oct-27 13:33, currently shows duration as 7d0h
https://www.ebay.com/itm/126745634761

Start Time: Sunday, 27-Oct-24 20:33:36 UTC (6 minutes ago)
Auction ends Sunday, 03-Nov-24 21:33:36 UTC (7 days from now)

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Hey @wellingnorth . That's interesting.

I wonder if eBay accounting for daylight savings has anything to do with an issue from earlier this year where eBay forgot to program for the Leap Day. DST was also called in to question at the time. Perhaps the programmers decided to adjust for both when they fixed that issue?

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There were some other issues that always used to happen around the clocks changing with scheduling in the listing tool that have now been fixed so I could imagine someone might have overhauled the way it all worked without necessarily thinking through the implications. Not that it's necessarily bad for auctions to finish at the same clock hour that they start, but it would be good to know that that's what they're going to do in advance!

[wastingtime101]

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@wellingnorth wrote:

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Not that it's necessarily bad for auctions to finish at the same clock hour that they start, but it would be good to know that that's what they're going to do in advance!

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Communicating changes like this to sellers never occurs to eBay. 🙄

[jimmosk]

I ran into exactly this problem with all of my current listings -- I started them assuming the end time would be one hour earlier than normal because of the extra hour stuck in during the clock change. That's what I did in previous years, successfully getting the auctions to end when I wanted. But this year they're giving an extra hour so the ending time is the same as the starting time, and didn't tell anyone, as far as I can see.
So this auction, for example, started last Wednesday at 8:06pm PDT (11:06 EDT) so that it would end this Wednesday at 7:06pm PST (10:06 EST). Nope! It's ending at 8:06pm PST (11:06 EST). I called up eBay and the agent told me that their system lists all of my current auctions as being 7-day-and-1-hour auctions!

(The eBay help page on Listing Durations and Timings still says that they will make your auctions last 7 days exactly, meaning the clock change will shift your ending time an hour off. Don't believe it!)

[dbfolks166mt]

I ran into exactly this problem with all of my current listings -- I started them assuming the end time would be one hour earlier than normal because of the extra hour stuck in during the clock change. That's what I did in previous years, successfully getting the auctions to end when I wanted. But this year they're giving an extra hour so the ending time is the same as the starting time, and didn't tell anyone, as far as I can see.
So this auction, for example, started last Wednesday at 8:06pm PDT (11:06 EDT) so that it would end this Wednesday at 7:06pm PST (10:06 EST). Nope! It's ending at 8:06pm PST (11:06 EST). I called up eBay and the agent told me that their system lists all of my current auctions as being 7-day-and-1-hour auctions!

(The eBay help page on Listing Durations and Timings still says that they will make your auctions last 7 days exactly, meaning the clock change will shift your ending time an hour off. Don't believe it!)

     All my active auctions ended on Sunday morning at 11:00 PST and I noted the same thing, that the time change had NO effect on the ending time of the auctions. However, it was something I really wasn't all that concerned about regardless of which way it went. 

[wellingnorth]

We tried to get this fixed over on ebay.co.uk last year, but the response from the developers was slow and  it was hard to tell whether they were really engaging with it  before the auctions in question had all finished.

I think the clocks are going forward again in the US a week on Sunday and I wondered whether someone over there could try starting a ten day auction and see whether it's fixed or if the same thing is happening again (I guess this time the auction durations might be 6 days 23 hours)

[reallynicestamps]

ZOMBIE THREAD FROM OCTOBER 2024

Not every state/province/ country uses Daylight Savings (here in Canada, Saskatchewan , a heavily rural province has not for decades).
And the closing time changes with every time zone in any case.

The USA has five time zones on the mainland plus different zones for Alaska and for Hawai'i.

[inhawaii]

What if some of still want to discuss the daylight saving time change that took place on 11-3-24?     😉