First Chance: Gixen failed miserably

[jmcafee]

My bid with Gixen on an item was $227, placed over 2 hours prior to the end of auction. Yet the winning bid was $173 (item 270587840654). I used the default bid 6 seconds prior to end of auction.

Gixen displays the following,

"This snipe may have been entered too late into Gixen and may not be executed."

I am baffled.

[mario]

jmcaffee, I see a number of edits prior to auction end, the last one only 23 seconds before auction end (plus more after auction already ended). What were you doing exactly? Refreshing your browser maybe? Using autosnipe or regular web interface?

If you had an edit before that, this refresh may have repeated that edit of your snipe too close to auction end, and cause the snipe the fail.

[jmcafee]

Mario,

Thank you for the reply.

The last edit was hours prior to end of auction.

Yes, I probably refreshed the browser (FF 3.6) prior to completion to see the current bid price, but NO edit. There was no explicit action to edit (i.e. didn't click on the Edit button). Just refresh -- again, last true 'Edit' hours earlier.

The browser refresh after the auction completion was in disbelief that my bid $50 in excess of the winning price was never submitted.

I submit that if a browser refresh invokes another 'Edit' call, the code is flawed.

If the claim is your server was somehow confused by a perceived edit 23 seconds prior to completion, why should this be an issue if you normally wait until 6 seconds to submit the bid?

I remained baffled by the episode and subsequent explanation.

[Cupid]

It isn't a good idea to use the browser refresh after an Edit... because that tells the browser to redo the last action, in your case that was an Edit.

In any case, updating Gixen does not provide you with updated price information, that is only retreived every few hours, not in real time, ubless you perform some action like adding or editing... thats true in your case, but not a good way to obtain such updates, you should use eBay itself or the Desktop Manager if you would like real time updates.

Gixen has to log in under your account quite a while before the snipe is executed so it isna't all done at 6 seconds before your snipe, work is going on before then, edits after the software has already logged in are likely to cause issues, when it tries to synchronise your wishes with the work that it is already doing.

If you just want an update on the Gixen status, use the Add button without entering any details in the input boxes.
_________________
Mark

[Gixen]

[nochkin]

[Cupid]

Yes, I think you did nochkin, and I wouldn't disagree.

I think perhaps Mario implemented something that ignored multiple edits of the same item over a short period, but does not cater for multiple edits over a long period.
_________________
Mark

[mario]

In fact, I believed I fixed this completely. I am unable to replicate the problem, and get "Error: data re-posted. Please do not refresh your screen after edit by clicking on "Refresh"".

This is what users should get when they do something like this.

jmcafee, you were using a regular interface, not Gixen in French/English/Spanish?

My main problem remains that I am unable to replicate the problem. If you could remember what steps exactly you did, that would greatly help me.

[jmcafee]

[mario]

jmcafee, can you please do the following: using the same browser you used before, schedule a snipe. Then click on "Edit" and change the amount. Then click on "Refresh" and let me know if you get the message "Error: data re-posted".

[jmcafee]

[jmcafee]

Mario,

Sorry I didn't follow your script exactly.

Edit: 22:32 or 22:33
Refresh: 22:36

Server message: "Error: data re-posted. Please do not refresh your screen after edit by clicking on "Refresh"." The bid data is not displayed. I have never previously seen this screen.

[mario]

This is all expected - the first message "item already exists" probably happened when you hit refresh after adding an item (not after editing it). So I am still unsure how it happened that refresh after edit actually worked previously.

[jmcafee]

Mario,

I completely understand the difficulties a programmer faces when trying to reconstruct a series of events that precipitated an unexpected action. Regardless if we could not precisely recreate the exact sequence of events that led to the failure of the submission of my bid, I hope you diligently heed any further reports of similar experiences from me or other users.

I'm giving gixen.com another shot at getting it right. I'll report on the success/failure in a couple of days. I'll be sure to refrain from any browser refresh!

Regards,
Jim

[mario]

Thank you Jim - and I will certainly do, I get this problem very seriously, this is why I made changes to the refresh in the first place.