posted on October 18, 2000 06:06:57 PM new
...just stop the ticker on auctions when when they go down? In other words, if they go down for 45 minutes, the auction would automatically have an extended ending time--45 minutes later than originally.
I'm getting so nervous. I have a big auction (hundreds) closing in 40 minutes and ebay has been down for quite a while now.
Throwing up my hands. Wondering if there's a better way...and don't say Yahoo! is better. Can't sell sh*t over there, except nickel and dime stuff..
posted on October 18, 2000 06:18:12 PM new
Loosecannon...Your idea certainly has merit. Unfortunately, I read on a thread somewhere (from an eBay representative) that it takes them an additional thirty minutes to extend auctions. This being the case, I am sure that they (eBay) really don't want to invest that amount of time every time the site has a problem. I, for one, think your idea is great, just unpractical, from eBay's point of view. Perhaps if they had to do this for a week, eBay would address the stability issues, instead of the window dressings. Just my opinion, of course.
posted on October 18, 2000 06:19:51 PM new
loosecannon....they are back up again, kinda sorta. Lets keep our fingers crossed they STAY up for a few more hours, eh? I have sales ending too
posted on October 18, 2000 06:23:57 PM new
Hiya Loosecannon
I think that is a great idea. With all the other features they seem to be able to impliment it seems that it wouldn't be too tough for them to build it in to be automatic.
Oddish~ The Odd One
posted on October 18, 2000 06:34:34 PM newYour idea certainly has merit. Unfortunately, I read on a thread somewhere (from an eBay representative) that it takes them an additional thirty minutes to extend auctions.
The 30 minutes comes into play because the extension has to be done manually. The "functionality" to stop the clock from ticking should be a simple afternoon programming project. Then it would take zero minutes because it would be automatic.
posted on October 18, 2000 06:36:45 PM new
abingdon...hurry! Email ebay and tell them you will set it up for them...maybe they will let ya do it and we can get this done mui pronto, eh?
posted on October 18, 2000 06:38:54 PM new
Good idea, however, what if your auction didn't launch when it was supposed to because eBay was down - extending it will only drag out the nightmare.
Example: I use Auction Watch - I always set my auctions to launch at 6:00 p.m. California time. However, last week, by 9:00 p.m. their time, my auction still hadn't launched because eBay was down. Cancelled the launch, but it was already in progress and couldn't. So now auction ends at 1:00 a.m. on the East Coast. If eBay extended the auction, it would be much worse for me in this particular situation.
However, it really also depends on WHEN eBay thinks they are down. I have been watching eBay all day today and they only posted a problem around 5:30 p.m. when it has been going on all day.
I would just prefer that they extended 24 hours. Still wouldn't solve my problem as outlined above, but at least would give bidders who are fed up during these outages another "day" to come back and try again.
I am now getting emails for an auction that ended a few minutes ago, from potential bidders who couldn't bid on this auction - or at least "thought" they couldn't bid because they couldn't access my "Seller list" that they had bookmarked.
WHEW THIS IS WAY TO LONG for just a quick reply. Sorry about that - long day I guess
www.xenavalloneantiques.com
posted on October 18, 2000 06:41:12 PM new
I wouldn't want to get personally involved with their coding. I just might cause problems with the stability of the site and I wouldn't want to ruin their great record for up-time.
posted on October 18, 2000 06:48:11 PM new
I'll tell ya, must be an angel watching over me. The thing went up another 160.00 in the last 1 1/2 minutes! Breathing a sigh of relief. Hoping others have similar triumphs.
posted on October 18, 2000 07:00:52 PM new
Extending the auction for the time eBay was down is something that would help, however, another problem that occurs when eBay is having "functionality issues" is that potential bidders only search for so many minutes before leaving eBay and going somewhere else. They may go to another site, go watch tv, go to the park, etc. and don't get back to eBay for hours or longer. The potential bidders aren't sitting at their computers waiting for eBay to set back on task.
posted on October 18, 2000 07:05:04 PM new
No such luck on my end loosecannon...I cant refresh the page, so I wont know what things sold for until later on I guess. But Im glad for you!
I couldn't refresh my seller's page, but I could bring up the auction page and that would refresh fine. Plus, the smart search seemed to be working and I could bring it up that way. Well, obviously it was working 'cause I got bids at the end.
posted on October 18, 2000 07:32:49 PM new
loosecannon,
Logical and practical.
I have just been reading up on eBays' policy concerning Hard Outages.
The following is copied from eBays' site.
[i]Hard Outage Policy
Our highest priority is your trading success. However, eBay occasionally experiences "hard outages" during which bidders cannot place bids. When these hard outages occur, we offer an Outage Policy to compensate for your inconvenience.
For any hard outage lasting two or more hours, eBay will automatically extend listings for 24 hours and automatically credit all associated fees for affected listings. The following listings will be eligible for extension and credit:
Any listing scheduled to end during the hard outage
Any listing scheduled to end in the hour after the end of the hard outage
What is a Hard Outage?
A hard outage occurs when no one can bid as a result of unscheduled system downtime. At our discretion, eBay may consider two hard outages that occur very closely to one another to be one hard outage when extending listings.
Listings that end prior to a hard outage will not be extended.
During a Hard Outage
Updates will be posted on the Announcements Board during a hard outage. Please check there for details about the outage and listing extensions.
When Listings are Extended
Following a hard outage of two or more hours, eBay will extend the end times for all eligible listings by 24 hours. This activity prevents bidding on these listings while the end times are being reset. After resetting listing end times, eBay updates search and listing indexes. Until these index updates are completed, these listings will be unavailable via search or view listings features. This re-indexing can take a few hours.
To End Your Listing
eBay offers the Outage Policy as a courtesy. However, you may be satisfied with the bidding activity before the extended listing end time. If you are, you may end your listing at any time at: http://cgi3.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?EndingMyAuction
SCHEDULED DOWNTIME
eBay periodically schedules system downtime for maintenance and other purposes. This scheduled downtime is not covered by this policy. Listings that end during, or are otherwise affected by, scheduled downtime will not be extended, even though bidders are not able to place bids at the close of the listing.[/i]
You will notice that in the event of a Hard Outage lasting more than two hours, eBay will automatically extend and credit associated fees.
By implication it can be argued that Hard Outages lasting less than two hours can also have fees credited if you ask for credit.
You will notice that in their definition of a Hard Outage eBay quote "A hard outage occurs when no one can bid as a result of unscheduled system downtime.
eBay does not define how long a Hard Outage is, so therefore it infers that any unavailability of bidding function is a Hard Outage.
This also infers that a seller has the right not to sell if this Outage has prevented the auction to run to its full length of time.
Given this line of reasoning it follows that if a seller is not satisfied that the closing price of an item is satisfactory, due to the site being unavailable to bidders, they have the right to refuse to complete a shortened sale.
JMHO.
Bob, Downunder but never down.
[ edited by bitsandbobs on Oct 18, 2000 07:35 PM ]
posted on October 18, 2000 07:55:13 PM new
One problem is that if there is any convoluted work around that will give access they don't consider it down - as if your bidders are going to use such an approch when half of them can't even use the search function!
posted on October 18, 2000 09:07:16 PM new
LC, it has been suggested before that when there was an outage, the clock just be stopped until eBay was up and running again, and at first I thought that would be the simplest easiest thing to do.
However, after thinking about it for a while, I could see that there could be another set of problems there too.
Suppose you had an auction scheduled to end at 9pm...and eBay goes down 1/2 hour before it ends, and stays down for 5-1/2 hours. (Of course, there would be no way of predicting in advance how long they would be down.) But, voila! at 2am all is right again. Now your auction has 30 minutes to run, and will end at 2:30am PST. Unfortunately, your bidders have all given up and gone to bed; for all they know it will be another day or two before eBay is back up.
Would we be any better off with our auctions ending this way? Sans wine, sans song, and sans bidders?
Just a thought on the potential problems which might could be solved with some additional thought by better minds.
