Missed bid

[spiritussanctus]

Hello,

I am a subscriber, and my Gixen bid for 231069295215 was not entered. I originally entered a snipe of 162 via the web, and then just prior to the auction ending, entered a snipe of 177 via the For Bidding iPad application I purchased from the iOS app store. Neither bid was submitted to eBay, and the item was sold for a lower price. Even if the ForBidding app is at fault, given should not have tossed my earlier bid which was entered via the web interface.

On a related note, I observed the For Bidding app occasionally zeroing my snipes, in addition to crashing and entering repeated refresh loops on my iOS 6 iPad. But those are minor relative to lost snipes!

Thanks for investigating this, I'm now concerned that either there's a Gixen server side problem, or I should stop using "For Bidding".

[spiritussanctus]

BTW: under "status" for both the main server and the mirror, it just says "ENDED".

[spiritussanctus]

I realized my post wasn't very clear: the original snipe of 162 was entered via the gixen.com web interface well before the auction completion date. The final snipe of 177 entered via "For Bidding" within 1 minute of the auction's end is visible on the web interface, so it's presumably not a case of ForBidding zeroing the snipe.

[mario]

The final edit you made from "For Bidding" app was made only 9 seconds before auction end. That's far too late. You should complete all your edits 2 minutes before auction end.

[Gixen]

[Spiritussanctus]

Mario my point is that the earlier snipe I had entered via the web interface did not fire either. Why is that?

[mario]

When you do an edit, every attempt is made to cancel any previous snipe first, and then execute a new snipe, if possible and enough time remains. When there is little time left, it's common that the first action succeeds (as it requires less time to stop execution), and the new one doesn't.

You may not like this choice, but it was my decision when designing behaviour to err on side of inaction, instead of risking an undesired action.

[Spiritussanctus]

Surely there must be a notion of an atomic update transaction on the database backend?

I strongly suggest you update the FAQ to reflect these implicit surprising behaviors. I can 100% accept that a late snipe isn't honoured. But to have it result in data loss (which is absolutely what this was) with no feedback seems unacceptable.

[Cupid]

Once a snipe is in flight it isn't a matter of what data is on the database, but what should happen to the process that is already executing when a request is made to change the outcome of that process... the process would not be reliable enough if it were constrained to consult the database every second just to see if a change has been made.

Of course it is more important that the original snipe is cancelled when a user tries to delete the snipe, or when they lower the amount that they are willing to pay... but to have a different procedure for the case where a user wants to increase the amount seems over the top, particularly when the behaviour is pretty well understood by the majority of Gixen users.
_________________
Mark

[mario]

[Guest]

The warning merely states that the snipe may not be honoured. It doesn't say the previous snipe may be cancelled and nothing replaces it. Also, the "for bidding" app, which I paid for and is apparently written with the Gixen admin's support/consent given that it requires a subscription, doesn't display any warning. Why not just add an FAQ entry explaining this, rather than fighting with your customer?

I found your attitude/response to a simple question extremely defensive and reactionary, you're apparently not even open to adding an FAQ entry, let alone doing something more creative like not cancelling if a lower snipe exists.

I will not be renewing my Gixen subscription. I encourage others to find products where the developers don't have this sense of entitlement or "my way or the highway" attitude. Good luck.

[mario]

[Cupid]

The access to this area is via a tab titled 'Community'... As such it is an open forum for everyone to post about and discuss Gixen related topics and issues... For those not prepared to engage in such a discussion and just expect everyone to agree with their views, this is not the place for you, as the feeling that you are most likely to experience, with such an attitude, is one of frustration, which is not what you are after.

To continue the discussion... the problem with not cancelling when there is a lower snipe in progress is that, unfortunately, creative types are likely to use such a feature to take two bites of the cherry on auctions by deliberately making late edits... no matter that such action, in my view is counter productive, and certainly antisocial to the wider Gixen community, given the amount of server resources involved in providing that behaviour, which consequently are not available to other users that have decided on their maximum bids well in advance of the auction closure.
_________________
Mark

[mario]

[mario]

I updated the FAQ, under question "Can I change my bid after I've entered it in Gixen?"

The added text is the following:

Note that all edits, deletes and new entries should be completed at least 2 minutes before auction end. In case of late edits, Gixen will make every effort to 1) cancel the edited snipe if already in progress, and 2) execute the updated snipe, but neither is guaranteed to succeed. It is, however, more likely that late delete / cancel will be successful than late addition, so in most cases late edit will result in cancelation only.

[spiritussanctus]

Mario: appreciate the reasonable response and for changing the FAQ. As an engineer myself (ASIC designer), I'm content as long as any edge case behaviour is clearly specified.

Most of my surprise stemmed from the fact that I was expecting a "Modify" action to have somewhat transactional semantics...either one action succeeds or the other, and I was fully prepared for my late modification to fail. If I'd understood beforehand that it was an implicit "delete and re-enter" subject to a race window where no bid makes it to eBay, which your FAQ now makes clear, I wouldn't have blinked!

[mario]

I am glad that we were able to find some common ground, and sorry you missed that one. Hopefully this discussion and FAQ update will be useful to users in the future.