eBay black magic

[10032012]

Was on ebay today and found 3 things that really annoy me:-

1. I lost an auction as after confirming my bid the ebay site hang... (came with internal error message from ebay so wasn't my connection)

2. Starting bid 99p ... 3 bidders ... how is that possible?

3. Lost another auction as someone overbid me... they won it for my highest bid. How is that possible? Means that I won it, no? Although they have (I assume) placed a high maximum bid it shouldn't have been won at my bid.

Seems ebay is broken the bid incrementing system seems completely not working entirely. Anyone else experienced this? Or just a bad day for me!

 

[terryuk]

You should complain but I doubt they'll listen

 

[10032012]

I need to add to the initial list...

Got a ebay payment reminder an hour after I got a paypal receipt for payment!

 

[Esk247]

There is something going on, we've been getting emails from customers saying they keep getting an error page when trying to buy stuff.

 

[10032012]

There is something going on, we've been getting emails from customers saying they keep getting an error page when trying to buy stuff.

Interesting. Is this the end of eBay?

It has struggled against the likes of Amazon and its higher fees etc. have put off so many sellers... It used to be the case of your can buy anything on ebay, these days there are relatively few items for sale on there which is why you can never select 'UK only'.

 

[Beachcomber]

My theory is this. eBay has a severe case of the 'George Lucas effect'

The insatiable need to squeeze every last penny out of the cash cow supersedes the need to maintain the integrity of the product.

 

[RevaxMedia]

I hope it isn't on the decline; I love eBay. I've used it a bit recently and not found any problems. Maybe it's an area thing? Does sound like an annoying problem, though.

Long live eBay.

 

[FreelanceSoftwareDeveloper]

1. I assume you were trying to bid in the final seconds. That's the risk you take. Thinking about this a bit more, with all the auction sniper tools, I wonder if it has become possible to bid 10 seconds before the end (instead of 2-5 or whatever they do) then carry out a DDOS attack on the item for 10 seconds to prevent other bids??

2. Did the said item have a reserve price?

3. I assume your bid wasn't accepted, this situation usually means someone else has placed the same max bid as you before you did. Again, if near the end of the auction someone may have just pipped you with the same bid. So it said you must bid 10.00, you did then it says you were outbid, someone else bid 10.00 in that period between the page loading and your bid.

 

[Paul180]

A classic for me is after waiting until the last 20 seconds before I place my final and hopefully winning bid, my session expires and I have to re-login to place a bid. This has happened on a few occasions even tho my sessions weren't very long at all!

Doh!

 

[10032012]

1. I assume you were trying to bid in the final seconds. That's the risk you take. Thinking about this a bit more, with all the auction sniper tools, I wonder if it has become possible to bid 10 seconds before the end (instead of 2-5 or whatever they do) then carry out a DDOS attack on the item for 10 seconds to prevent other bids??

2. Did the said item have a reserve price?

3. I assume your bid wasn't accepted, this situation usually means someone else has placed the same max bid as you before you did. Again, if near the end of the auction someone may have just pipped you with the same bid. So it said you must bid 10.00, you did then it says you were outbid, someone else bid 10.00 in that period between the page loading and your bid.

Very intelligent response

1. Could be a DDOS I guess in theory but it would surely apply to the entire website not just one item? It wasn't a case of a page timeout or common error message. I should have took the details down. Was an internal error code... perhaps to do with database. It was with the little dialog thing which I assume uses ajax rather than a page load via the traditional method. Also noticed the countdown timer doesn't look to be completely accurate some seconds seem slower and sometimes it skips... I have quite a modern computer and at the time only was on ebay website in a few tabs..

2. No reserve price. Its simple reason (I would assume) the 99p bid is cached from the first bid, but the latter two extra bids are showing from a fresher query. A lot of the search result prices are old and incorrect. This said there is no reason why ebay should be returning older amounts on the current bid. If the starting bid was 99p how can the third person also bid 99p? A few refresh on item page didn't fix this.

3. Very logical... but my bid also shows in the bidding history for that amount. I don't doubt that this person made a higher bid than I did but we both cannot have the same bid as the increments apply.

Appears it could be a snipping tool exploit? For example if that person bid the same amount a split second after me and ebay honoured the most recent bid... what should have happened was the later bid rejected... I can only imagine it is their infrastructure of a 5 or so second delay between updating the bids.

 

[10032012]

A classic for me is after waiting until the last 20 seconds before I place my final and hopefully winning bid, my session expires and I have to re-login to place a bid. This has happened on a few occasions even tho my sessions weren't very long at all!

Doh!

Has happened to me sooo many times. If I am bidding on an item - I usually log out and back in to be safe.. and bid on another item as a test (low bid, few days left, will be outbid).

Just looked on ebay:-

We'll place bids on your behalf using the automatic bid increment amount, which is based on the current high bid. We'll bid only as much as necessary to make sure that you remain the high bidder, or to meet the reserve price, up to your maximum amount.

and

If you and another bidder placed the same bid amount, the earlier bid takes priority.

On my final bid made 30 secs before auction close, it said I was the highest bidder... yet the page then refreshed once auction finished saying I didn't win... although the bid was the same. Actually, appears someone bid the same amount as me a day ago also using automatic bid (apparently)... but ebay didn't reject my bid asking for an increment higher than the current bid placed by the other person much earlier as you would expect. Turnaround time to find out if you bid has been rejected is say 3 seconds at worst... and say 3 seconds to register your bid... had plenty of time to be told my bid wasn't high enough.

Can one of those tools fool ebay and bid in the past in order to win? I am not sure how they work. Does anyone know if you can get a tool that bids one day ago in the final second of an auction?

 

[loubycee]

all about the money I'm afraid, too big a company to care maybe