eBay

rjp366 · ‎04-16-2023

I understand different people are in different time zones.

Please explain this to me:

i am on MY EBAY, looking at my own listing overview, it says ITEM ENDS in 3 HOURS 20 MINUTES

(Yes i did refresh the page a few times)

I go TO that specific listing, it is counting down, 16 minutes REMAINING !

So, not only is the time stated OFF by 3 hours for the time zone, it is also off by a few minutes as well.

Side note - it should NEVER be off 3 hours for time zone. if it says the time, state which zone. if it says TIME REMAINING that should be accurate for everyone no matter where you are!

So you are saying, "ok who cares?!"

it was a $400 item selling for $45 with (12) people WATCHING. I am surprised and disappointed that nobody bid more. I wonder if they look at THEIR watchlist overview and it was off 3 hours so they never bothered to click on the specific Item.

dbfolks166mt · ‎04-16-2023

You have several options to avoid this problem. You can list your item as an auction with a reserve price (the lowest price you’re willing to sell for). You can have an auction where your opening bid is the lowest price you’re willing to sell for. Or, you can list your item as a BIN with a price that is acceptable to you.

Setting a reserve price is a bad idea for a couple of reasons. First if the item does not sell you will pay the FVF's on the reserve price you set. Secondly reserve prices are a turnoff for a lot of buyers. When I was buying on eBay I ignored reserve price items.

Better to set the starting auction price at the lowest price you are willing to accept.

Although I have a few items list as auctions, I prefer the BIN method. It gets rid of the non-paying bidders and reduces the number of scammers.

a_c_green · ‎04-16-2023

@inhawaii wrote:
@a_c_green
@eburtonlab

You mean it's not ebay's fault? 😉

Well, yes and no. I think it's a bad idea for the auction countdown coding to be showing the user a Time Remaining estimate that's apparently being calculated relative to the user's own machine clock setting, instead of from a network standard (or at least from eBay's own clock determining how much time is remaining for bids to be received). On the other hand, if you're planning to snipe a bid in the last few seconds, you owe it to yourself to be sure that your computer is telling you the right time remaining (for all kinds of things, really, not just for auctions here).

@inhawaii wrote:
Well I'm hoping that after the OP contacts ebay that they will credit him the amount of money he may have lost had those watchers had more time to bid on the item.

There was no error in what was being to shown to bidders as a time remaining; it was only the seller's own machine that was showing him an erroneous countdown. He was not running the auction himself; it was running on the eBay site, so the true time remaining would have been based on eBay's own system time.

eburtonlab · ‎04-16-2023

You mean it's not ebay's fault?

eBay did recently change the coding for the bid countdown display; such clock such issues may not have been a problem for end users when the old code was being used. When the coding was changed, there was a noticeable rise in complaints about bid countdown issues -- auctions appearing to end early, or countdowns that stopped and restarted, or auction end times being off by a number of hours -- that all seem to be traced to clock synchronization issues. Prior to the coding changes I do not recall the same volume of complaints, though there may have been some. Most likely the new code depends on the user's clock setting where the old coding relied on eBay's time throughout.

Well i'm hoping that after the OP contacts ebay that they will credit him the amount of money he may have lost had those watchers had more time to bid on the item.

The OP has since posted that other bidders were actually able to submit successful bids after the OP noticed the problem and the auction reached a satisfactory end, indicating that the issue was with the OP's countdown display rather than a problem with the auction itself.

monica-sells · ‎04-16-2023

@eburtonlab

The OP stated this:

"...When i go to the individual item page it is long since over. bidding ended..."

This is what is concerning. OP claimed they were shown a bidding is over page for $45.00 when, in fact, the auction was still live. There can be no confusing the auction over page with the live page.....

any explanation or just maybe a little 'embellishment' (albeit unintentional)

eburtonlab · ‎04-16-2023

This is what is concerning. OP claimed they were shown a bidding is over page for $45.00 when, in fact, the auction was still live.

When a device clock is set three times zones behind, and then the time is set two hours and fifty eight minutes ahead, this can lead to very odd timing problems.

a_c_green · ‎04-16-2023

@eburtonlab wrote:
When the coding was changed, there was a noticeable rise in complaints about bid countdown issues -- auctions appearing to end early, or countdowns that stopped and restarted, or auction end times being off by a number of hours -- that all seem to be traced to clock synchronization issues. Prior to the coding changes I do not recall the same volume of complaints, though there may have been some.

There were some: me, for example. They have finally fixed a longstanding bug or oversight in which the ending time as displayed in the user's watchlist or on his My eBay page was in Pacific time (though not labeled as PST), but was displayed in the user's own timezone on the listing page itself. Thus I, in the Central zone, might see 16:00 on my watchlist (as Pacific time) but 18:00 in the listing (as Central time). They have now fixed the watchlist and similar pages to display times in the user's timezone rather than simply PST.

There was a second bug involving rescheduling listings, where changing the date that a listing should start would accidentally change the starting time as well, by the amount of offset hours between the Pacific zone and the seller's own zone. The code was failing to take into account the difference in zones when setting the new start time to go with the new start date. That has also been fixed.

monica-sells · ‎04-16-2023

agreed, but to see a generated page based on your computers clock?

that is all server side...i tried recreating this for the last hour and got a bunch of results, but never did I see an auction completed page.....

I did see this though when trying to access an auction listing that had 60 minutes to go...LOL

rjp366 · ‎04-16-2023

I don't think it ever said "sold for $45". just that i knew the highest bid that i had seen was $45.

But It did say "Bidding has ended". Then hours later it did say "Sold for $150"

i agree i think this is really weird. Why would Ebay depend on each user's machine to get the time right?

Eburton was absolutely correct - my computer was set for Pacific while i am in Eastern. But my time on the margin toolbar of the desktop was correct! wow! learned something new today! Thanks!