posted on September 17, 2000 01:26:13 PM
I found this post on the DNF by a seller I know. Another long time seller said they had the same thing happen to them recently.
my son-in-law found a posting on an end of auction eBay glitch that was on newsgroup comp.risks Date: Sun, 27
Aug 2000 07:36:00 -0400& sent me a copy. I contacted the person because I had something similar happen on one of my
auctions. Since the end of auction notices are sent so late from eBay, we have all gotten use to sending out invoices to
bidders using my eBay selling pages. Both of us sent out invoices for our opening bid of $5.00 which is what was showing at
the end of the auction. My auction definitely read Bidding is closed for this item. Auction has ended. The other seller's
auction he wrote, About two days later, I had still not received any "end of auction" email, but the page still showed this
bidder as the winning bidder at $5.00. I contacted him by email and prepared to mail him the item. Shortly thereafter,
however, I received an "end of auction" email showing a different bidder, "xxxxxxxxxx," as the winning bidder at $12.50,
and, at that time, the item page was updated correspondingly. In the case of mine, the high bidder was the same bidder but
the amount changed to $10.45 overnight. This is a dangerous glitch as with the different instant on line payment plans it is
possible we could send the item to the wrong person. I would hate to get a narc due to this glitch. This week I experienced
another strange thing on an auction. I put my bid in Esnipe. I received an outbid email from ebay. Several hours later I received a winning bidder email. Upon receiving
this second email, I looked at bid history expecting to see a bid retraction in the very last seconds. There was no bid
retraction.
posted on September 17, 2000 01:35:07 PM
YIKES!!! That is scary. Do you think looking at the bid history would show the extra bids? Geez, I hope this is fixed soon, waiting for the EOA notice from eBay doesn't seem like such a good option. Have you contacted eBay about this yet? Sorry this happened to you, hope it works out.
posted on September 17, 2000 02:15:56 PM
Hi Reddeer: I had this happen to me. I contacted bidders who were not the high bidders. I thought I was having a patch of good luck with these "winners" responding so quickly. One guy wanted to drive 50 miles, pay cash and pick up his "win". I then began to hear from the real winners and believe me it turned into one huge mess. (Not to mention that all of the final bids were much higher than what I found on My eBay page.)
I have since discovered that not all of the information on My eBay page is "dynamic" as it is on the actual auction page. The auction pages reflect changes as they occur dynamically, and as far as I can tell are the only dynamic pages on eBay.
I do not rely on the information on My eBay page. I use it as a starting point and check each ended auction individually on the actual auction page. Or as an alternative sometimes if you check the last eBay update time and it is at least one cycle after an auction ends, there is a possibility that the information on the My eBay pages may be accurate.
There is also the fact that eBay has been screwing around with My Ebay for some time now, and it looks like it will continue with the addition of such really important features as Personal Search.
(BTW: The auctions that got screwed up and drove me nuts were for boxes of old stock large size black seamed nylon stockings...)
I think "narc" is simply a spelling error of "neg".
posted on September 17, 2000 03:15:11 PM
Hello Smw ..... Maybe my take on this was incorrect, but I didn't see the seller as getting this info off of their MY eBay.
It sounded like it was from off the auction pages themselves.
I'll see if the seller who posted the info can come over here & field the questions & perhaps help clarify what exactly happened.
posted on September 17, 2000 03:21:21 PM
Smw ..... This was a followup post from another seller that had the same thing happen.
I thought that mine was just a fluke, and attributed it to the snipe which hit down to the micro-second (no time
remaining). I looked at this auction right after it ended, and like yours, it said "auction has ended". It did not reflect the actual
winning bidder until the next day, along with the raised proxy bid of the "runner up". Now I wonder if I should wait 12 - 24
hours from now on before contacting "winning bidders", just to make sure that they ARE the winning bidders? I have over
20 auctions ending tonight, and most of these will have "winners". I hesitate to send emails out right away now. Hopefully
this will not become a common thing to happen, as I can just imagine the unhappy bidders. Also, the winning "sniper" on my
auction had no idea she had won, since she thought her bid did not get placed in time. Imagine her surprise when I
contacted her. Of course, I was a little surprised myself when I found out I had initially contacted the wrong bidder.
posted on September 17, 2000 03:35:28 PM
This is NOT a good glitch at all!...I never use the EOA messages from eBay...I go directly to the auction page, which until now I thought was THE correct info....
posted on September 17, 2000 03:59:47 PM
Rancher ...... No, no posts by any eBay reps as to what's going on.
Like you, I never check the EOA email to see who the high bidder is, and most times have my email out to the high bidder within the hour, sometimes within minutes.
posted on September 17, 2000 04:07:06 PM
Thanx Reddeer...Typical eBay response!..NONE!...Maybe a few more posts at DNF might wake 'em up..I'll do my part..Will have to be real careful when tonight's auctions end, will hold off until tomorrow morning for my EOAs...
posted on September 17, 2000 04:11:29 PM
Reddeer: I am sorry I misunderstood and subjected you to my seamed stockings story.
If it is the case that an auction page is not current with the most recent bid information, at any given time, then it would seem that the pages are no longer updated dynamically. However I am not sure how an auction page could *not* be updated as a bid is made if the bid is accepted.
I always understood that the fundamental of how eBay got to be eBay is/was the ability to place a bid in real time and have the auction updated in real time. I hate to bring up this old chestnut but do you think cached pages were being viewed?
This stuff is beyond me. I don't have a clue as to why this would happen, or how it could happen. Susan
posted on September 17, 2000 04:42:14 PMI looked at this auction right after it ended, and like yours, it said "auction has ended". It did not reflect the actual winning bidder until the next day, along with the raised proxy bid of the "runner up"
I would think that comment would rule out the cached pages scenerio?
posted on September 17, 2000 05:00:08 PM
Haven't had this particular thing happen, but have had auctions not show up at all on My Ebay. I send EOA from My Ebay and once missed a bidder completely. He finally emailed me.
I have had my bid amount show up in Canadian $. That was exciting for a moment!!!!
posted on September 17, 2000 05:18:35 PM
This has happened to me twice!
I always go right to the auction page and can see that it very clearly indicates "Bidding Is Closed For This Item." I then use the email address right there for the high bidder and contact them using the high bid amount on the auction.
The first time this happened, I received a note about a week after the auction from the *real* high bidder as she wondered why she hadn't heard from me. !! Well ... I had not only received payment already for the book, but I had shipped it! (To the person I notified from the auction page.) I went back to the auction page now and sure enough ... there was a different high bidder in place - the woman who was now contacting me! The ending amount was the same, however. I was completely confused. When asking about this, it was simply explained to me that my computer must have been using a cached copy of the auction page or that I obviously made a mistake. (This was not information from eBay, but from friends and other eBayers.) I felt so badly about this, I purchased another book of the same title and mailed it to the real high bidder for free. It was an out-of-print collectible book and I certainly lost money on this deal.
I have been much more careful after that. I go to the auction page, make sure it says "Bidding Is Closed" and then I hit the reload button. Even so, not too long ago, I combined two auctions into one order for a high bidder and she wrote back the next day that she only won one of the books. When going back to the auction page and hitting reload again, sure enough ... a different high bidder! Thankfully, this woman was honest and didn't just send the money I asked her to. I was able to straighten this one out before another mess occurred.
Folks, this is truly a problem. I am so glad to read this thread today because I thought I was doing something wrong. I obviously am not. We have been on eBay for over four years now and this problem has never happened before - but has twice for us in the last six months. And we don't do a large number of auctions.
What do we do? Wait at least 24 hours after the auction closes and reload the page? Will that be sufficient?
posted on September 17, 2000 05:41:19 PM
Yowsa!!! This is not good at all. As stated above, I too rarely rely on eBay EOA notices, as they are long in arriving. I follow through My eBay or, if item is of particular interest, will watch the item close, continually hitting the reload button. (fun to watch the snipes! ). Till now, I assumed this was the safest way to determine the winning bidder, as I also like to send congrats, & notification of seller contact letters to them asap. Looks like I too will have to wait at least 24 hours, just to be safe. Thanks for bringing this to our attention!
posted on September 17, 2000 06:33:02 PM
What possibly (?) could have happened is that, JUST AT THE PRECISE MOMENT and auction was CLOSING, there was an OUTAGE, and Ebay automatically extended the auction for a day, thereby allowing more bidders in...The chances of EOA AND OUTAGE happening at the same instant are far and few in bteween, but I would say, not IMPOSSIBLE...
******************** Shosh http://www.oldandsold.com/cgi-bin/auction.cgi?justdisp&Rifkah
The possibility of what you describe sounds plausible, but, to the best of your knowledge, has eBay ever extended an auction past it's closing before under any circumstances? I've checked their FAQ, and a few other areas, but haven't been able to locate an instance where they(Ebay) would consider extending an auction. We've all complained about lost sales due to down time, & the like. I've emailed them in particular with regard to the possibility of extending auctions in 15 minute increments if bids occur within 5 minutes of closing (snipe bonanza! ). Of course...no reply.
posted on September 17, 2000 07:29:08 PM
eBay will indeed extend auctions if they've had a hard outage, but I don't think was the case in the above mentioned SNAFU'S.
Here's the link to their auction extension/hard outage policy.
posted on September 17, 2000 07:44:55 PM
The other night I was on 2 different servers on my computer looking at an ebay sellers auctions & reading email.I noticed all the nice things the seller had and very high bids.My computer locked up and I went back on different server,to finish looking at the sellers things and NOT 1 bid came up,I mean it was like she didnt have any bids showing and before on other server she had, almost everything she had up was bidded on.NOW THATS WEIRD!!
posted on September 17, 2000 07:47:07 PM
I bet the "Bidding is closed for this item" is a timer-based message that kicks in regardless, unless there's an extension (and I don't know whether extensions can "reopen" a presumably closed auction). And I'd bet those final, phantom bids showing up 24 hours are floating, for some undetermined interval, between the point at which they pass through the still-live auction bid gateway and are actually posted to the auction itself. They're legitimate because they were clocked in in time to make the auction deadline, but they don't show right away because they don't complete the circuit in a timely fashion.
This truly biteth. The info about My eBay not being wholly reliable is a downer, too, though I'm glad I know it.
posted on September 17, 2000 07:52:26 PM
Well... I had an auction close within the last hour. I looked at the page and there were 2 bids in the last minute. One at 40 seconds, and another at 15 seconds of the close.
I will wait until tomorrow and look again. Maybe there was another bid in the last 10 seconds?? I hope so. I don't like the person who got in the final bid. I will report the findings.
This is very serious. All of the other eBay crap and nonsense aside, being able to rely on the final bid information on a closed auction page is imperative.
interdemensional bids, time-warped , trapped in cyber space, placed, but waiting to be posted. Legit, but without a home till the next cycle. I like it. Hey...stranger things have happened.
posted on September 17, 2000 08:00:47 PM
Just a note to all sellers. Ebay has been dropping off items from my ebay sellers list. This has happened a few times in the past couple of months. The problem is I send out my end of auction notices from this list. When 3 people didn't get contacted I freaked knowing I went down "my ebay sellers list". Ebay apologized this week when I noticed an item missing before the auctions ended this week that wasn't on my list but I knew I listed it through auction watch. They reset my list and added it but our buyers can look at us as not being detail oriented when we don't send out our end of auction letters. Ebay's list Should be Accurate to protect their sellers but when we get negative feedback by going by their list will they take it off??? no. It's a shame we have to have so much extra paper work just to protect us from Ebay program errors.
posted on September 17, 2000 08:11:49 PM
pareau: if these bids are sitting in a buffer or gateway someplace why is that when I place a bid in the last 20 seconds and reload the page I see my bid on the page, and continue to see it every time I reload until it I get auction is ended.
I don't understand how a page can be real time updated after I place a bid and others not see the same page that I am seeing.
I have an idea for an experiment that may or may not make sense. Anyone snipe an auction in the last hour or so? Wanna post the number so folks from different parts of the world and with different ISP's and connections can look at the closed page and report what they find?
posted on September 17, 2000 08:40:42 PM
There are weird things going on with seller's lists. Earlier this evening when I checked "Current and recent auctions by" with the seller's name the title of one auction in the list said "ArchivedItemsHost is currently unavailable" with no spaces in the first part of the sentence. What is stranger is that it showed the item ending on Sept. 17 when in reality it had ended already on Sept. 14. I clicked on the auction # and it did bring up the old auction. I printed out the seller's list page just to prove to myself that I did see this and that the item #'s do match. Shortly afterwards that seller's list returned to normal.
