Gixen not noticing that I was already the high bidder

[witchole]

Situation: I manually entered an initial bid on an item I was interested in (I often do that, for instance if there is a buy-it-now price, to force it to become a normal auction).

I then added a snipe for the same item on Gixen, and another snipe on a similar item, and assigned the same snipe group number to both items.

It turned out I won the auction with my first bid, but Gixen reported:

"BID UNDER ASKING PRICE: EBAY BID INCREMENT RULE NOT MET"

And Gixen had not automatically cancelled the second auction in the group!

Luckily I logged into Gixen before the second auction so I was able to delete the snipe in time.

[Cupid]

This is normal operation... Gixen will only recognise that an auction has been won if it is able to place the bid that you specify as a snipe value itself.

You need to have a snipe bid amount at least one bid increment more than the bid you have already placed... otherwise, I would advise you not to use the Group bidding function with the snipe.
_________________
Mark

[witchole]

Thanks for replying Mark.

I can't imagine it would be difficult to enhance the engine so that it recognises a win by the same user id, but anyway hopefully this post may help inform other users about this potential issue.

[Cupid]

It would be possible to extend it, perhaps by looking at the 'Purchase history' section of 'My Ebay' after every auction (not just the ones it is able to bid on as it does now) instead of looking at the selling price and comparing that with what was bid, as it does now...

BUT, that would make it much slower to recognise whether or not you had won... so people would not be able to even have grouped snipes as close as they do now... 2 minutes between them is already what is recommended, though often closer than that does actually work, it is not guaranteed and could not be as reliable, in that respect, as it is now if other methods of detecting a win were to be employed.

Those methods would also take up more computing resources than the current implementation... so, more would need to be spent on upgrading the service and maintaining it... none of which are cheap options.

It has been as it is now for as long as there have been Groups... it doesn't seem to cause an issue for the vast majority of Gixen users.
_________________
Mark

[Gixen]