Bids Failing with new engine

Guest · Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2020 7:33 am Post subject: Bids Failing with new engine

Have had last 3 bids fail after authorizing new sniping engine. All 3 ended lower than my bid, and well withing bid increment

In an effort to fix it, I unlinked and re-linked authorization including legacy, but your settings does not let me authorize legacy

Please change settings to authorize legacy, I don't want to keep losing auctions on the new engine because it is failing

The old engine was fine no need to change things

Cupid · Joined: 09 Aug 2007 Posts: 7926 Location: Bristol, UK

Can you please provide the examples where it's failed, with the Gixen status given, so that Mario has a chance to fix what issues there are ?
_________________
Mark

Guest · Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2020 7:57 am Post subject:

In history, first one which failed with Bid Under Asking price, 2 entries in the history, max bid was 16.06 ended at 14.00, I am based in UK

303472331207 Revell SS-100 Gigant with Transporter and V2 Model Kit 1 72 (by bengalmikito) 2/7/20 12:02:53 PM UTC 0.00 14.00 GBP 0 ENDED 2/7/20 01:58:17 AM UTC 2/7/20 01:58:41 AM UTC

303472331207 Revell SS-100 Gigant with Transporter and V2 Model Kit 1 72 (by bengalmikito) 2/7/20 12:02:53 PM UTC 16.06 14.00 GBP 0 BID UNDER ASKING PRICE
Why did I lose this auction? 2/7/20 01:58:41 AM UTC 2/8/20 03:39:40 PM UTC

Guest · Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2020 7:59 am Post subject:

Second failure is different, nothing appears in my history, unkown error

Revell SS-100 Gigant with Transporter and V2 Model Kit 1 72 (by bengalmikito (93))
View Item Description S&H: 6.00 GBP (View Shipping Information)
ENDED 15.06 12.50 GBP (4 bids) UNKNOWN ERROR (4)

Gixen · Advertisements

Guest · Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2020 8:08 am Post subject:

Third failure is different, I purged this so don't have record in gixen, no records exist in the history. Bids similar to other 2 failures, final status was shown as "None"

Cupid · Joined: 09 Aug 2007 Posts: 7926 Location: Bristol, UK

Thank you,

The first one, has the message:

Guest · Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2020 9:52 am Post subject:

303472331214

I think your suspicion is correct, all the ones that failed are from same seller.

I did have bids from other sellers, but no winning bids, although my bids were not high enough.

The ones that failed seem to have ended lower than expected so it seems manual bids can be placed, but some problem with automated bids

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 7241

I finally, on my second attempt (apology for that), made necessary modifications to actually display the error as reported by eBay, instead of "UNKNOWN ERROR".

There are some issues that I am waiting eBay to respond to ("item not available") and most of these unknown errors are caused by this. Note that this is still a relatively rare error, I see less than 20 or so in the past 24 hours, out of tens of thousands of snipes submitted. But this will be resolved nevertheless.

Guest · Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2020 4:24 am Post subject:

Well it happens every time when auction is in this state for me, so statistics don't tie up if it is a small amount of auctions in this state. This has caused an imense amount of grief. I decided to manually snipe relisted item, the same auction item, and eBays web site just slowed to a crawl at end and my bid was just too late even when giving a reasoable lead time. I have lost this now 4 times in a row, when my bid is above winning. If you could please pile on as much pressure on eBay as possible. I manually bid on a different item from same seller and bid was accepted, Sadly an item I didn't particularly want, to test before placing my main bid. If you are using eBay API there's probably some obscure unknown setting you need to appy, I have used it myself, not on bidding for items, but there are just so many options and data, it way over complicated

Guest · Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2020 4:34 am Post subject:

it seems to be happening to every auction that has this away message for me, that is not one in thousands, maybe of total number but not the correct way to apply statistics it is a political way

Guest · Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2020 4:36 am Post subject:

[quote="Anonymous"]it seems to be happening to every auction that has this away message for me, that is not one in thousands, maybe of total number but not the correct way to apply statistics

Guest · Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2020 4:38 am Post subject:

sorry I thought I was editing my post, didn't mean to post multiple replies

Cupid · Joined: 09 Aug 2007 Posts: 7926 Location: Bristol, UK

Obviously if you suffer one of these failures the rate on your particular account is much higher than the overall rate.

For the vast majority the failure rate is 0%, but it wouldn't be accurate to quote a failure rate that low either.

The rate of failure for an individual account is looking quite likely to depend on how many auctions from the same seller they have set up snipes for and also how many other sellers (where the issue is not present) that they also snipe.

In summary, I think an accusation of misuse of statistics is somewhat unfair in this instance.

You might be correct about some obscure setting that needs changing on the Gixen side... but I think it's reasonable to give Mario the space and opportunity to find out, in collaboration with the Ebay engineers, without attacking him directly. I think he's doing the best job possible in these circumstances and, as always, he's being open and honest about it. I don't think we can ask for much more than that.
_________________
Mark

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 7241

I am not going to ignore the issue, I assure you of that. We may have to wait a bit longer for eBay to investigate, but it's not going to be ignored. I don't think eBay wants issues like this ignored either.