BAD Timing synchronization issue between eBay global sites ???

[inotarobot]

Hi all,

I know this may sound like sour grapes but I have just has a really sickening experience with eBay.

To explain:- quite rare item no bidders 7 hrs before 10 day auction finishes & I just noticed it, so placed the only bid. Went to bed for 6 hrs, then awoke and was sitting to bid for the last 5 minutes of auction.

1 min to finish, I entered a higher value than my initial bid and I got a screen after this second bid that I placed, under 2 seconds before the end of the auction on my computer screen, stating that said I was highest bidder, then a second later got the final screen, Auction Over and eBay told me I had Won. Got that in the green banner at top of auction.

I clicked on photos to re look at them & to my utter horror I got a screen now telling me I was NOT winner.

I looked at the bid history & saw I was outbid, BUT what stunned me was the bid the other person put in was exactly same time as mine but A FULL 6 seconds before the end of the auction,

I have Never had an issue like this. How can I dispute it ????

From now on, once I get the screen from eBay saying I have won, I WILL TAKE SCREEN Shot before doing anything else. Suggest all here do same when you win.

My eBay countdown clock showed less than 2 seconds to go & yet it appears there was actually 6 seconds to end of auction. a Difference of 4 seconds.

Guess other than asking seller to cancel auction and ask ebay to check timing, prior to the seller relisting item.

So very interested if any of you have had the similar experiences ?


Also for any next time, I will open the auction via the seller's county eBay site, and bid there rather than my home country site, as there maybe some delays in the different county sites at times. Maybe each has its own timing clocks that can get out of sync, if there is a global network glitch ?

I was bidding on ebay.com.au and this seller was in Belgium so think that listing was on ebay.be ?

So that's me in Australia and seller in Europe.

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Following text is me Putting the event in point form for my own piece of mind

1. I am located in east Coast Australia and my ebay site is eBay.com.au

2. I have a searches that look both locally and Internationally.

3. So about 7 hrs back just before heading to sleep I saw an item that was just what I wanted. No bids and good starting price.

4. So I placed a bid, plus sent seller a message inquiring about shipping. Got nice courteous reply.

5. set alarm to wake 15 mins before auction finishes. YES I do it myself as I do not like Snipe tools. OK if your in hospital or with other half at some special function, then maybe using a snipe tool is ok.. maybe..

6. Anyways I am awake at 4.20am and prepare to bid a second time. Its about 5 mins before auction finishes. At this point not being fully awake, I started to notice there appeared to be differences in the time remaining indicators.

7. 1 mins to go so I enter a value I want to bid as my second bid. watch the counter and about 20sec before I hit button, get the screen ack then to submit. I hover finger over the accept and hit it with counter showing 2 secs to finish.

8. I get the your highest bidder, followed by auction over your the winning bidder screen. I am of course thrilled.

9. Ok so I go to look at listing so as to copy photos to my HD, only to now be told by eBay I did not win.

Looked at bid history and one person put the number 3 bid on at exactly the same time as

me and bidder 2 21-Aug-16 04:43:12 AEST and yet

Time Ended: 21-Aug-16 04:43:18 AEST Duration: 10 days

So that left 6 seconds to end of Auction NOT the 2 seconds my screen told me as I placed my final bid.

 

[Freestyle]

Don't think you can dispute it TBH ... eBay is its own little world, and I doubt they'd reverse the outcome for you. Was it a particularly rare item or was it just the good price that was the hook? In my experience if you're the existing high bidder, and someone bids the same amount as you, you would prevail, but maybe being local they were ahead by fractions of a second on their equal bid.

Those late night finishes and last second bids have caught me out a couple of times too. When I desperately want something (down to one item in the wish list now) I'll put in a crazy bid at the outset, and just hope that the underbidders don't cost me too much. If I am going to add to my bid it would be no later than the last 5 minutes as on various overseas auctions I've had experience of bid timeouts (counting down the clock and the bid page goes stale), internet drop outs, and random time jumps that ended the auction quicker than the remaining time.

Whatever it was, hope the chance comes around for you again and you can prevail next time!

 

[KC9UDX]

This has happened to me numerous times in the other direction, using the ebay.com site from the USA.

What I mean is that the web page will do the "Sorry you lost" business, and I'll get a notification on my phone and an email stating that I lost the auction. Hours later I get an invoice because I was the high bidder, which I really thought I was, given the circumstances in the final moments of the auction.

This became very problematic for me the first time it happened, because I was watching two identical items in two separate auctions. I planned to buy the second one if I lost the first. I "lost" the first, and bid on, and won the second, moments before finding out I actually won the first.

Mind you, I was paying more than I thought fair market value was, because it was an item that I wanted and couldn't get any other way. That is to say, I knew if I had to sell one, I couldn't recover my cost. This is a bad thing to do, but I deemed it necessary at the time.

I ended up keeping both items. One is in a box somewhere.

I learnt my lesson after that time, and since then, whenever an auction finishes, win or lose, I always go to a separate device and load up the auction and see what the final bid was to determine if I actually won.

Unfortunately none of this helps you, and all I can say is give yourself a bigger buffer at the end of the auction. I've been forced to do that lately due to a slower network connection.

 

[inotarobot]

Don't think you can dispute it TBH ... eBay is its own little world, and I doubt they'd reverse the outcome for you. Was it a particularly rare item or was it just the good price that was the hook? In my experience if you're the existing high bidder, and someone bids the same amount as you, you would prevail, but maybe being local they were ahead by fractions of a second on their equal bid.

Those late night finishes and last second bids have caught me out a couple of times too. When I desperately want something (down to one item in the wish list now) I'll put in a crazy bid at the outset, and just hope that the underbidders don't cost me too much. If I am going to add to my bid it would be no later than the last 5 minutes as on various overseas auctions I've had experience of bid timeouts (counting down the clock and the bid page goes stale), internet drop outs, and random time jumps that ended the auction quicker than the remaining time.

Whatever it was, hope the chance comes around for you again and you can prevail next time!

Thanks for the input.

Fortunately it was not super rare, but it had an box of 'original factory extras' I have not seen elsewhere/

And yes the price was good and item looked in excellent condition compared to other ones on eBay

It was an HP 7015B X/Y plotter I wanted for my TR-20 Analog computer. And they will come up again, hopefully in as good condition

And yes I should have put a higher second bid than $58.56, being beaten by a bid of $60.06 .. pipped by $1.50 BUT I am saving to go to Europe for 2 weeks in September so was NOT wishing to bid to high. And where is was in Europe I could have picked it up and brought it home without postal costs.

 

[inotarobot]

Getting two when you really only wanted one is certainly a pain.

Especially if the costs of each were in the $100's or $1000's .

Normally, if I absolutly must have an item, then I will Bid very high and hope the other bidders do not push the price up close to my over priced bid

 

[inotarobot]

I spoke to eBay customer support.

They see that I had actually won this item, then the system updated and gave the other bidder the final win,

But this was due to a 6 second timing difference + the other bidder using 'ONE Click' bid got to see my final bid and was able to put an increase of the $1.50 to then win it.

The fact that when you use the "One Click Bid" it shows the current price

and allows the system to step price up by a set margin as I was making my bid; had the ebay server systems in Australia and Europe been Atomic clock time synced

then the other buyer would have seen my initial bid of $47.50 and he would had a bid of $49.00 placed at same time. Then my higher bid would have maybe won it.

However the only way he/the ebay system could have seen value of my second bid of $58.56 and upted it by the $1.50, YET be time stamped at the exactly same time as my bid, was for the other bidders ebay to have a delay.

I have requested an escalation of this issue with eBay customer support.

I ask all here to ring /message ebay customer support and ask for why the is NO atomic clock or like synchronization between global sites.

The way it currently is is NOT a level playing field for all bidders. !

Notice all the questionable bidding occured at 4:43:12 in time; and auction finished at 4:43:18 ,6 seconds after I had ebay tell me auction had finished