eBay

whitewaterford · ‎03-01-2024

I've noticed that beginning sometime in February 2024 that generated rollover/renewal dates no longer align with the day of the month? When eBay announced the Good Until Cancelled changeover a few years ago I thought it was smart of them to instead of having each rollover be 30 days, but instead to have the item expire on the same day of the next month. Plus for those sellers who keep a close eye on their free listings limit, they didn't need to worry about the same item being counted as a listing twice in the same month.

Apparently sometime in February, this all changed and items are rolling over at 30 days +/- an hour for DST. I'm not questioning eBay's right to do this, but wonder whether sellers were notified or not. Having been a programmer for years, I would never have made a change like this without at least mentioning it in an announcement or at least in the release notes for the software update if for no other reason than to CYA.

Did I miss an announcement? Did they think nobody would notice? For what it's worth, I like to list like things on the same day each month and that this throws a wrinkle in things.

Examples (something changed between Feb 3 and Feb 11):

valueaddedresource · ‎03-01-2024

@whitewaterford it's been reported since February 10th, possibly a programming issue introduced when making changes to account for leap day and/or daylight savings.

Community staff are responding about it here:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Report-eBay-Technical-Issues/Listing-quot-End-Date-quot-off-by-1-Day/m...

nobody*s_perfect · ‎03-01-2024

Looks like somebody forgot to program-in Leap Year for the February-to-March rollover. Let's hope they get it fixed before March 31, otherwise some Sellers are in for a bunch of fees.

hartungcards · ‎03-01-2024

As of right now, anything that gets newly-listed today will renew on March 31. Thanks ever so much, eBay.

whitewaterford · ‎03-01-2024

@valueaddedresource Thanks for the link to the existing report...I must have missed it as I don't check the boards every day and I wasn't sure what to search for when I did.

Personally I think the change was intentional rather than a programming error to account for a leap day. I've worked in IT and dealt with date calculations and time zone calculations for years. If written properly to begin with, you shouldn't even have to think about how many days are in a month if you want something to stay on the xth day of the month. Similarly you don't need to know how many days are in a month to add 30 days (which apparently is what they are doing now).

Programming languages these days have built in functions for date calculations ... nobody should be writing their own routines for this.

hartungcards · ‎03-01-2024

Apparently good help is hard to find in Silicon Valley.

nobody*s_perfect · ‎03-01-2024

@whitewaterford wrote: .... I think the change was intentional rather than a programming error to account for a leap day. ... you shouldn't even have to think about how many days are in a month if you want something to stay on the xth day of the month. Similarly you don't need to know how many days are in a month to add 30 days (which apparently is what they are doing now). ... nobody should be writing their own routines for this.

But WHY would they revert from the "same day every month" to the old "every 30 days" renewal interval?

I agree that this is probably not directly related to leap day, since there was no problem like this in 2020.

valueaddedresource · ‎03-01-2024

@nobody*s_perfect wrote:
@whitewaterford wrote: .... I think the change was intentional rather than a programming error to account for a leap day. ... you shouldn't even have to think about how many days are in a month if you want something to stay on the xth day of the month. Similarly you don't need to know how many days are in a month to add 30 days (which apparently is what they are doing now). ... nobody should be writing their own routines for this.

But WHY would they revert from the "same day every month" to the old "every 30 days" renewal interval?

I agree that this is probably not directly related to leap day, since there was no problem like this in 2020.

@nobody*s_perfect - @lacemaker3 provided more detail in that other thread but basically, it may not be "directly related" but it's more like eBay was making updates on/around the time this started to change how they handle DST and that whatever change was made then may not have been properly coded to account for there being 29 days in Feb this year.

Excerpt from Lacemaker's post:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Report-eBay-Technical-Issues/Listing-quot-End-Date-quot-off-by-1-Day/m...

So what has changed, is that the program algorithm that calculates the ending/renewing/relisting time has changed, so that the end/renew/relist will occur at the same hour of the day. The new algorithm apparently was put into place on February 10, so that listings that end after the DST time change on Mar 10, will end at the same time of day, instead of ending earlier(or later) by one hour.

It also appears that the new algorithm is not taking into account that this is a leap year, so February has 29 days instead of 28. So there is an unrelated leap-year miscalculation in the new algorithm, which was just put into place February 10. The new algorithm is not correctly compensating for the leap day, Feb. 29.

nobody*s_perfect · ‎03-01-2024

I don't recall any past issues related to the exact hour of DST. Traditionally the board is flooded with questions about why an auction ended an hour earlier or later than it began, and we explain that they get the chosen days' duration times 24 hours.

valueaddedresource · ‎03-01-2024

@nobody*s_perfect wrote:
I don't recall any past issues related to the exact hour of DST. Traditionally the board is flooded with questions about why an auction ended an hour earlier or later than it began, and we explain that they get the chosen days' duration times 24 hours.

@nobody*s_perfect there weren't past issues with it because it's a new change that just happened on Feb 10 and many people may not have even noticed a change in the hour...yet...but we'll probably hear more about it when the time change actually happens.

I'm not going to copy and paste that entire other post here, but I do suggest clicking on that link and reading through it to understand at least one plausible explanation for what is happening here.

hartungcards · ‎03-01-2024

What's happening here is anything that gets listed today is going to burn up 2 insertions this month unless you end today's new listings on March 31. Why this is happening is basically irrelevant. Start saving your 35cents per insertion now so you can pay up on the 31st. This will no doubt come as a big surprise to many at the end of the month.

katwalker23 · ‎03-07-2024

This is still happening with new listings, all renew a day before they should. I've been hopeful that eBay would address this issue, but they haven't done so.