auction ended early

charles2401 · Guest

Gixen reported a listing ended early but the lister said it ran the advertised duration, hence no bid from me. How is this possible. Item # is 290358177862
Regards
Charles

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 2687

Charles, unfortunately most of the time this message then means Gixen was late (when seller ends it early you usually see "ENDED EARLY BY SELLER"). I am sorry about that, but it happens.

p1gp3n · Guest

first, i want to thank gixen as it has been very reliable for me in the past.

i got this same error "auction ended early". i'm wondering if it has anything do with daylight saving time, since we just fell back an hour this last weekend?

p1gp3n · Guest

i'm also wondering if this error could result from another bidder using gixen or another sniper for the same item? thanks!

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 2687

None of this applies - snipes being late just happen. My latest statistics says 1 in 300 or so snipes on a single server.

m33rcat · Guest

Same happened here - I think the US changed the date it finishes Daylight Savings Time this year to 1st Nov. So for listings starting before 1st Nov and finishing afterwards the end time actually changed - looks like they finish 1 hour early - check the bidding history times. Not sure if this is an eBay or Gixen issue though...

Cheers,
Bill

Cupid · Joined: 09 Aug 2007 Posts: 1222 Location: Bristol, UK

Bill (m33rcat),

Usually when the time changes eBay does not alter the duration of the listings, though obviously that means that the time of day that it ends in the zone that has changed is different by the amount of the change. As a result of this usually Gixen is not affected (though I know it was some years ago).

Can you give more details of any failures that you have had so that it can be investigated further to definitively determine what the reason was.
_________________
Mark

m33rcat · Guest

Hi,

I was bidding on item # 280416994552. The status is AUCTION ENDED EARLY and my high bid was $82. I was wrong about the time in my last post - the start time was in PDT and the end time was in PST (why?!) so it looked as if the listing finished an hour early when in fact it did not (see below). However it did not end early so is this likely a case of a failed snipe?

o***i( 7 ) US $76.00 Nov-06-09 09:30:06 PST
u***e( 109) US $75.00 Nov-06-09 09:29:22 PST
r***g( 668) US $66.76 Nov-06-09 09:26:35 PST
r***g( 668) US $56.76 Nov-06-09 09:25:21 PST
h***h( 415) US $41.05 Nov-05-09 09:29:38 PST
h***h( 415) US $25.00 Nov-04-09 21:55:37 PST
l***8( 313) US $22.88 Nov-04-09 21:09:42 PST
h***h( 415) US $19.99 Nov-04-09 10:06:40 PST
Starting Price US $19.99 Oct-30-09 10:30:19 PDT

Cheers,
Bill

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 2687

Bill "AUCTION ENDED EARLY" can also mean the snipe was late. Incidence of this is 1 in every 300 cases or so.

I will see that I add some code to distinguish this case from when auction really ends early.

cs-wood · Guest

I also missed even though my bid was considerably higher than the purchaser's with the note 'Auction Ended Early'. Does this happen often because if so, I would probably have bought this particular item using ebay only?

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 2687

Cupid · Joined: 09 Aug 2007 Posts: 1222 Location: Bristol, UK

Is there any correlation between the offset and the incidence of the bid being late?

Might this be a case for increasing the default offset, perhaps to 8 seconds?

I have that as my default anyway, and have not experienced a late bid ... I do have quite a few snipes per day, with an incidence of 1 in 300 I would have expected to have a few by now.

If the default were increased, I would perhaps increase my offset even further.
_________________
Mark

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 2687

Mark, I don't think that would help in most cases - it looks like when this final bid request hangs (and it's still rare), it takes a while, sometimes a full minute to get response... My guess is that it's ebay's servers taking longer to respond, but I have yet to investigate this.

Cupid · Joined: 09 Aug 2007 Posts: 1222 Location: Bristol, UK

OK,

Yes thinking about it further, when I get a lack of response from eBay from my home computer it is usually quite a significant one, generally what I'm doing is not time significant though, so its more frustrating than annoying.

Also I dont tend to group snipes, so in order for one of mine to fail both Gixen servers would have to hit an eBay roadblock at exactly the same time... I'm guessing the likelihood of that is going to be around 1 in 90000, so I probably do have to wait a while before it affects me in terms of actually missing out... It is possible that I have just not noticed the 1 in 300 case if the other server did the job for me.
_________________
Mark

Guest · Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2009 4:29 pm Post subject:

This has happened to me twice in 3 snipes I placed in the past few days. Its very frustrating as I always had no problem with Gixen. If it happens again i'm going to switch to a more reliable alternative even if it means paying for it.

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 2687

Three times is too many. How many auctions did you snipe? Please let me know what your username is and I will investigate that.

Rowan · Guest

This just happened to me, I placed 2 snipes, one failed, with the message "ENDED (AUCTION END TIME CHANGED)" which seems a little different to everyone else's messages.

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 2687

Guest · Posted: Wed Dec 09, 2009 12:45 am Post subject:

my username is goa101. Three snipes were placed over three days and non were running simultaneously.

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 2687

Guest · Posted: Wed Dec 09, 2009 10:25 am Post subject:

goa101 - ok will keep at it - thanks for investigating

Rowan · Guest

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 2687

Guest · Posted: Wed Dec 09, 2009 9:50 pm Post subject:

Cupid · Joined: 09 Aug 2007 Posts: 1222 Location: Bristol, UK

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 2687

Correct, a while ago I decided to store the original end time, just for situations like this one.

1submarine · Guest

For item number 230407389668, I received the auction ended early. It ran the whole time and my bid was much more than the winning bid. This is the first time that Gixen hasn't worked. I saw your posts that 1 in 300 don't go through from 2006, what is the current success rate?
I understand that when grouped together the Mirror doesn't also go. For items that are a few days apart, should I not group to get the reliability of the Mirror since I do subscribe? Thanks

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 2687

1submarine · Guest

Mario,
Thank you for the prompt answer.

1submarine · Guest

Mario,
BTW can you tell when the bid actually tried to go in? (Since it appears that there was a problem submitting the bid on time) Just trying to see if I need to adjust the default offset if eBay is having glitches.
In short if 6 seconds prior to end doesn't go through then should I increase to 8 or 10? If the bid was 30 sec or so too late then I figure that inputting too early would offset the snipe service and just write it off as a fluke.
For all the readers I am still very happy with GIXEN and it has helped me win several auctions without having to be up in the middle of the night or while at work. It also helps by not having someone come back and put in $1 bids to up the auction till they finally beat you out. Highly recommend you sign up if you don't use it already.

Cupid · Joined: 09 Aug 2007 Posts: 1222 Location: Bristol, UK

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 2687

1submarine · Guest

Mario and Cupid,
Thank you for the explanations and quick replies. Sorry about asking the question that was already answered above. Didn't think about the offset till after reading Mario's response and did not go back and reread all threads.
Well everything happens for a reason and although I didn't win any of the three auctions last night. One for above, but someone listed a similar item with buy it now so I saved $100. On the other two items Gixen placed the bids, but below the reserve price. Seller came back with a second chance and lowered the price to my high bid on one of them. So it all worked out in the end to my benefit.

Also one suggestion for future upgrades. You might want to have a grouping option that only bids on subsequent items if you win the first. That would help when you are thinking about bidding on several items from someone with abnormally high shipping but worth it if combined for several items. Just a thought to keep you tech guys busy and improving GIXEN Very Happy

Cupid · Joined: 09 Aug 2007 Posts: 1222 Location: Bristol, UK

I wasn't expecting you to have read back through the thread, I just wanted to highlight to you that Mario had already addressed the question.

On the suggestion it os already possible to do that, on Gixen it is known as Contingency Group Bidding, see this thread for more details:

http://www.gixen.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=628
_________________
Mark