Revise "Ready" Message on Sniper Status Report

If you'll kindly furnish the item number I'll be happy to look at the auction in question.

Thanks, Steve.
The auction number is: 2182145233.
Best,
Randy

Ah, just as I thought. First thing I looked for was the date and time of the auction:

"Jul-20-03 19:30:00 PDT"

Snipers have been cautioned repeatedly in this Forum about the lead time for bids in auctions ending on Sunday, particularly Sunday evening, and most particularly on the even hour, half-hour, or quarter-hour (XX:00:00, XX:30:00, XX:15:00, and XX:45:00). I don't know what lead time you set for your snipe, Randy, but it wasn't enough. Your bid was submitted by AS, all right, but it was never accepted -- registered -- by eBay because there are simply too many auctions ending at those times for eBay's servers to handle. A minimum 15-second lead time is recommended for any such auction, and 20 seconds or more for such an auction ending on a Sunday night. Any less lead time and you run a substantial risk of having your bid received by eBay after the auction ends. The eBay clock waits for no man, not even a bidder.

Forewarned is forearmed (or eight-armed if you're an octopus). Better luck next time!

Yep, the cause in this case is likely that we sent the snipe but never received any reply at eBay at all. 7:30pm on a sunday night is about as busy as they ever get.

And those snipes that end on the hour and half hour are worse than even that because so many more are ending exactly then.

There is no message beyond "did not win" because we have nothing to base it on. We received no reply at all to your snipe we sent. We cant tell if it's a problem with eBay, the internet, our ISP, and so on. It really could be anywhere.

In this case given that I know our ISP and the internet was ok last night and the fact that this seems to happen with great frequency with snipes on the hour/half hour and sunday night peak eBay item I'm pretty sure that's what it is. I dont think we'd want to program into our system though that any snipe that ends on a sunday night that we dont get a reply for is eBays fault.

Thanks, Steve and Sara, for providing a thorough explanation. I supposed it had something to do with the Sunday night rush. I'd hoped that there was some alternative to the "Did Not Win" message with no information, but I completely understand why that's not possible. I am extremely lucky that the item this happened with was of the least possible importance to me. As I said, this is the first such uninformative message I've had, and as far as I recall, in a couple of hundred snipes, it's only the second that failed to register at all with ebay. That's a pretty good record.
Thanks again.

Your chin-up attitude does you credit, Achatit. Your overall positive experience with AS is no accident; in all the time I've been using AS -- since 2001 -- it's failed to place a snipe for me twice. Two times. I hope and expect that you will continue to have similar results.

I've given some thought on how to overcome the "even hour overload syndrome" eBay suffers from and have concluded that the only way to eliminate it, short of adding a number of extra servers, is for eBay to stop allowing sellers to select their own auction opening times. And the only way eBay's going to do that is if and when sellers figure out that it's eating into their profits...which it is...and start raising Cain. Maybe if enough people mentioned it in the eBay chat rooms?

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Is it that wide open, Steve? Do sellers have a complete choice of times, or are they offered several choices?

I'm not sure, Chatter. It's been a long time since I sold anything on eBay and that option simply didn't exist back then. It's pretty apparent that whatever the option(s) are, a lot of sellers are taking advantage. I mean, anything that can jam up eBay's array of servers every quarter-hour can't be just a transient phenomenon. What surprises me is that eBay is evidently indifferent to the fact that their bid processing capability is getting overwhelmed on a pretty routine basis.

I'll do some digging tomorrow and see what I can find.

I think I finally found somewhere I can contribute in this forum
We can, as sellers, pick and chose what time we would like to start our auction which in turn lets us pick our finish time.
Personally, I dont give two hoots whether my auctions finish on the hour or half hour, I'd say most sellers just pick those times because it doesnt occur to them to put 19.05 instead of 19.00.
I have a little query though, being an Aussie, does the extended lead time (yes, I have had that beaten into my head enough times) on Sunday nite apply to me if I am bidding on Aussie Items?? I mean, timezones mean its not USA rush hour just the Aussie one?? OMG I think I have bamboozled myself with that lot of words - excuse my mush brain I am still sleep deprived with a newborn

Hi, Bartelby! Congrats on the newborn -- ten fingers and ten toes, I presume?

Thanks for the seller's input. I agree that the selection of even hours, etc. is most likely a matter of thoughtlessness on the part of sellers. Whatever the cause, it does create havoc when closing times roll around. Would you agree that selecting such a time for one's auction to end could potentially result in lost revenue?

In answer to your question, I think it would depend on how much traffic there is on the server(s) that handle Aussie traffic for eBay, since Australia is a separate geographic zone for eBay. I note that auction times Down Under are measured in AEST, whatever that stands for. You could do a little experimentation without bidding by picking a few Australian auctions that end on the even hour or whatever and trying to access them in the final minute or 30 seconds to see whether you can even get into the auction site. I think there are several of us in the Forum who would be interested in your results.

Now go get some sleep.

The ebay.com.au privacy Policy at http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/community/png-priv.html says:

quote:

---

Security
Your Information is stored on eBay Inc.'s server located in the United States. We use industry standard efforts to safeguard the confidentiality of your personal information, such as firewalls and Secure Socket Layers. However, "perfect security" does not exist on the Internet. As stated elsewhere in this Privacy Policy, eBay Inc. is subject to similar privacy rules as eBay and eBay is a related body corporate of eBay Inc (which is located at 2145 Hamilton Ave., San Jose, CA 95125, USA).

---

On that basis the relevant time when eBay's servers are struggling is likely to be California time, rather than your time in Australia.

best wishes
Andrew

Yes my boy has all the necessary bits n pieces in all the right places so thats a relief

AEST = Australian Eastern Standard Time.

From what I have learnt though AS and my own misfortune I would definately agree that ending an auction on the stated trouble times would result in loss of revenue (my misfortune from trying to big on these items). I guess its shear arse (oops can my potty mouth use that here??) that none of my auctions ever ended then and I am waaaaayyy too tight to pay the extra 20cents to pre-program my auctions

When I have a few spare moments I shall have a look a a couple of local auctions and see what I find

Thanks. I know how busy you are -- have two of my own, grown now and one of 'em calling me "Shorty." I don't get no respect.

A possible reason for the auction end time is that if you use Turbo Lister (eBay's free tool) your options are:
1) Auction starts when you upload.
2) Delayed auction start time. This start time is only available in 15 minute increments. 12:00, 12:15, 12:30, etc.

That could explain why the heavy load on the hour and half hour.

Just my two cents worth.

Too true, I use Turbo Lister (Great great tool) but I always just upload them when I finish them so I never bother to use the delayed auction start.
Sorry you get no respect Steve , I can see that happening in the future, the "shorty" bit I mean. Hubbie is over 6' and I am a mere 5'4 and our boy seems to be taking after Dad at this stage.

Bartelby, you've stated one reason for sellers to resent snipers: snipes that don't register lower revenue, instead of raising the final bid. But eBay is losing fees on the lost revenue. The real question is: how many bids are stifled by bidding logjams. If the number is insignificant (translate: if the dollars are insignificant), why would anyone care enough to devote the resources to solve the technical problem?

It's been suggested that sellers are put off because, in Achatit's words, "snipes that don't register lower revenue, instead of raising the final bid." If the bids don't register how do the sellers know there was a sniper involved, and how do such non-bids lower revenue? A bid that's not registered by eBay is something that never happened, effectively.

Let me extend my earlier remarks a bit: I said that one of my sons calls me "Shorty." What I didn't say is that I am 6'4".

Steve, you're absolutely right. I was careful to say that Bartelby had "stated one reason for sellers to resent snipers," not that this was THE reason sellers resent snipers. In fact, for brevity's sake, I deleted a sentence suggesting that this had probably never occurred to sellers for precisely the reason you mention. I'm searching hopelessly for some economic incentive for eBay to resolve the logjam problem, and I guess this approach is useless because lost revenue from unregistered bids can never be calculated. Time to give up?

Weeelll...not quite. To many sellers any lost revenue is a matter of concern. I think that simply pointing out that an incalculable amount of income is being lost because of this completely avoidable phenomenon would be sufficient to persuade a number of sellers to start their auctions on the upload as Bartelby does. There's another reason: if you start them all at a time of your choosing, at 20 cents a pop no less, then all of your auctions will end at the same time so that even group bidders won't be able to keep up.

I must admit as a seller I never would of thought that I was losing revenue because my auction ended on a hour, half hour etc. AS has certainly opened my mind to this fact and in one of my Aussie forums where we have an ebay thread (which is where I first heard about AS ) I have mentioned numerous times to new and existing sellers to be wary of delaying auctions until these times.
Steve, its funny how you get a *mental picture* of someone in your head, mine didnt include 6'4. Your son must be a giant...I will ask the stereotypical question...does me play Basketball :P ?

YAY ME ...I have hit double figures!!!!!

Gee, small things huh

They'll be triple figures before you know it, Bartelby.

My younger son is 6'8" and weighs in at 305 pounds. As the saying goes, he sits wherever he wants. No, he never played basketball -- the growth spurt that resulted in such rarified height was not accompanied by a commensurate improvement in coordination. In other words, he was tall but he tripped over his own size 16 feet.