posted on April 4, 2001 03:37:19 PM
The story on the sign in page about eBay closing auctions early on Sunday really confused me.
This is Spring. The clock hand moves forward. When Eastern Standard time says 10 AM ,Daylight Savings time says 11 AM. Right?
Ok. So if I have an auction listed last week on Eastern Standard Time to end this Sunday April 1 at 10 AM and there was a bug that prevented eBay from updating their clock then the auction would end at 11AM daylight savings time or 10 AM Eastern Standard time.
How could this bug cause eBay to end the auction early? That could only happen in the FAll (fall back) Explain please, because someone in one of the newspapers or even here should have caught this as a bold faced lie.
posted on April 4, 2001 04:37:55 PM
If I had scheduled an auction on March 29, 2001 at 11:00 a.m. PST, for three days, it would have been scheduled to end at 12:00 p.m. PDT due to daylight savings time.
Instead, they were ending at 11:00 a.m., an hour early.
[ edited by kidsfeet on Apr 4, 2001 04:38 PM ]
posted on April 4, 2001 06:12:26 PM
Don't your auctions end at the same time that you launch them? Why would they be scheduled to end an hour early. Perhaps grumteach and I are confused because we are both in the Eastern Standard Time Zone? You in the West operate differently?
posted on April 4, 2001 06:17:58 PM
It is confusing. We finally figured out what they were talking about when looking at our auctions that end tonight. For exapmple you have a barbie you listed on March 28th at 18:15:43 and because of daylight savings time, it was set to end at 19:15:43 (according to the listing email and the auction prior to April 1). This is something eBay always does with daylight savings time and I've never seen them have problem. But now my auciton ended at 18:15:43 because of the Visual C (or whatever) problem. Therefore if you were going to bid on it at the last minute and you planned this before the 1st you would be an hour late if you were going to bid in the last hour that has now dissapered. Ok?
Mel
[ edited by fonze on Apr 4, 2001 06:19 PM ]
posted on April 4, 2001 06:56:06 PM
I am in the central time zone.
They were not scheduled to end an hour early.
Normally, an auction starting at 11:00 a.m. would also end at 11:00 a.m. (pacific time since that is where Ebay is). If auctions were scheduled to end on April 1, the ending times would have shown as one hour later (due to the time change). They were not actually ending one hour later, they were listing the ending time as it would be on April 1. On April 1, what WAS 11:00 became 12:00. So, the ending time was given as 12:00.
Due to the glitch, instead of ending at 12:00, as they were SUPPOSED to do, they ended at 11:00, one hour early. (As if daylight savings never happened).
BUT, if you were planning to bid at the last minute, you missed out because the Ebay timings were wrong.
