posted on November 3, 2004 06:13:51 PM new
I had a bunch of auctions closing tonight, with very few last minute bids, which is unusual. Now I have had 2 people write and say they tried to bid, but the page came up saying "page cannot be found".
posted on November 3, 2004 06:45:56 PM new
Yes problems here in the midwest.
Cannot bid on items!!
Would have won four items if I could have gotten in.
posted on November 3, 2004 06:49:41 PM new
I just listed some items into my store and went in to put the shipping calculator in and ebay had decided that all I accepted was Pay Pal! Glad I had to revise. I am also glad that I include all of the payment info in the listing. Just in time for the Holiday Shopping Season!!!
Kevin
posted on November 3, 2004 08:40:58 PM new
I noticed a glaring error in the title of one of my auctions tonight. I went into revise, made the corrections, hit submit, and got the message "This page cannot be displayed". I had to let the error stay there for about an hour, then I went in and tried it again. It went through the second time.
Jack, you're right. Don't these people know what KISS means?
A $75.00 solid state device will always blow first to protect a 25 cent fuse ~ Murphy's Law
posted on November 3, 2004 09:28:12 PM new
I am getting fed up with this. I had 14 watchers on one item, and several people said they would be bidding, it went for the listing price that was bid several days ago. How come we have to lose money because of eBay's problems??
posted on November 4, 2004 01:44:22 AM new
We had someone email us last night that they were trying to place a bid but that a page kept coming up that said, 'this item not available'... and it's an auction that still has 4 days to go!
posted on November 4, 2004 03:21:47 AM new
I see on the Technical Issues board over at ebay that a pink at ebay posted that there was a problem last nite for people being able to place bids ... lasted a little over a half hour! ... if I had had auctions ending then, I would not honor the closing price (because it was ebay's fault), and would relist and demand refund from ebay on those affected listings ... what a bunch o' crap!
posted on November 4, 2004 04:44:44 AM new
AintRichYet That doesn't seem fair to the winners, it was not their problem, and as far as they are concerned, they won. I hope everyone who had problems will complain to eBay. I sent some of the emails people sent me saying that they had problems. You never know, they might step up to the plate and do something about it if enough people complain.
posted on November 4, 2004 11:23:26 AM new
I spoke to our "account rep" -- they'll reimburse insertion fees but not FVF. Moreover, no support for cancelling the auction result.
This should be easy to fix -- auctions shouldn't be allowed to end during an outage. Just extend the damn thing for a few hours.
If the lights go out at Sotheby's during an auction, does the current high bidder get the Picasso?
posted on November 4, 2004 11:42:40 AM new
A few years ago, when outages and crashes were a monthly event at Ebay, it was not at all uncommon to see a statement in descriptions of high end items that the auction would be void if it ended during an outage. Many sellers would also explain that the reason for a reserve was to protect their investment if the auction ended during an outage. If Ebay is going to return to the days of site instability and unreliability, it might be a good idea to dust off some of those old disclaimers and start using them again.
A $75.00 solid state device will always blow first to protect a 25 cent fuse ~ Murphy's Law
posted on November 4, 2004 12:29:17 PM new
cashincloset says: "If the lights go out at Sotheby's during an auction, does the current high bidder get the Picasso?"
ROFL~!!!!! that's a good one ...
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and good ol' Sparkx says: "If Ebay is going to return to the days of site instability and unreliability, it might be a good idea to dust off some of those old disclaimers and start using them again."
you're right ... that's exactly what i've been thinking ... along with encouraging people to place their bid earlier than the last hour of an auction, because you never DO know nowadays when ebay OR your pc is gonna glitch-out on you.
posted on November 4, 2004 03:46:12 PM new
AintRichYet,
I actually used the Sotheby's line with our eBay account rep (who BTW hasn't ever done us any good no matter what our Power Seller status us). To his credit, he laughed. Didn't make an ounce of difference in the outcome, but he did laugh.
Regarding disclaimers, I just don't see them working. eBay won't support you. We had roughly 20 auctions end during the outage or right after. Can I really afford 20 negatives in one day (or one month for that matter)? Maybe I would only have backed out of 4 or 5 auctions, but that is still guaranteed to get me a negative, and a difficult argument with eBay when the dispute starts. eBay was very clear with us that while we could have a discussion with the "winner," eBay considered it a binding contract no matter what our TOS might or might not say. As such, we're open to feedback or worse. By the way, I asked the rep how the "discussion" with the winner should go, "uh, listen, I know you think you won the auction, and eBay thinks you won the auction, but I was wondering if you'd let me re-list the item and allow you to bid again?" Why waste the time?
I guess reserves would help in the rare occurence of an outage, but would hurt the selling price (IMHO) nearly every time, and our insertion fees would probably quadruple. For example, something we sold last night for $140 probably would have gone for $250 (something similar did the previous week for us). I think a reserve of $200 would have "saved" us last night, but would have probably brought down the average price we'd get on that item day in and day out -- in the long run we lose.
I think the only solution is for eBay to automatically extend auctions for at least an hour after any outage is resolved. For that matter, they should adopt Overstock's policy of extending auctions that have a recent bid.
posted on November 4, 2004 04:13:22 PM new
How long was the outage? Ebay says it will extend for 24 hours for a "hard outage" of 2 hours or more: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/everyone-outage.html
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"Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting "...holy sh@#...what a ride!"
posted on November 4, 2004 04:15:10 PM new
I think the outage was close to 45 minutes ... and do you KNOW how MANY auctions end in that amount of time??? ... it is ludicrous .. they ought to extend auctions for ANY and all outage/down-times.
posted on November 4, 2004 05:08:11 PM new
It was a HARD outage for my consignors. We end 95% of our auctions between 6 and 7:10 PT.
Our consignors lost at least $1000 of expected returns last night. Not much money to eBay, but we had to make the phone calls saying "I know your xxx got $250 last week, but uh, eBay had a problem, and last night's xxx got just $130. So sorry."
