My EBAY Nightmare

[snitzer]

I don't disagree on the possibility of glitches, but why now on just on this auction, Roy? I know when we had eBay "glitches" before, that it was all over the web with people yelling.

 

 

+1 (thumbs u

 

glitches of this kind would warrant serious attention. If nothing else, it hurts the bottom line.

[RockMyAmadeus]

 

If I were a juror, I would vote VALID AUCTION - NO GLITCH! Just a lame-brained ebay rep giving wrong information.

 

If you and I were both jurors, I'd not only avoid a hung jury, I'd have you convinced that eBay purposely stopped bidders from bidding just so Jeffles could monitor this discussion.

 

 

I'm pretty persuasive when it comes down to it.

 

No, you are not

 

You've never met me in person. I avoided a hung jury last year and sent a gang member to prison for 25 to life. (thumbs u

 

Are you Henry Fonda?

 

Couldn't be...if I was, I'd be dea..........{thud}

[Prince Namor]

But doesn't that seem strange, or am I missing something here?

 

In my experience as both a buyer and a seller, the largest bids get sniped in at the end.

 

I don't find it strange at all.

 

In your experience, you've had MULTIPLE unverified (no credit card on file) bidders throwing out $15,000 bids, yet not knowing they had to be verified to make a bid like that?

That sounds like someone NEW to eBay. Yet savvy enough to try and snipe an auction... I'm not trying to be a smart-a&&, but I want to make sure you see the point I'm trying to make.

[comicwiz]

After seeing a total of 455,000 results returning on a Google search for the keywords "eBay + glitch" (some as recent as a few months ago), I'm starting to think the two are a match made in the cloud

[CKB]

The auction functioned correctly for people bidding below $15000. You are offering nothing by pointing out the bid history. We only see the bids that went through.

 

It was deleted because it was not relevant.

Actually, you have no idea why it was deleted, since I'm the one who deleted it.

 

I wiped it because it seems kind of pointless to keep "litigating the case". Those who keep speaking of an "ebay glitch" are getting backed into a corner, because the conditions under which that glitch can happen are getting stricter and stricter. I think most people can see that, and it does no good to keep beating everyone else about the head in order to prove it (to the extent such a thing can be proven from our outside perspective.).

 

Pointing out the bid history is relevant, because it shows that the auction site was functioning properly at the end of the auction.

 

If proponents of the "glitch" theory can point to some real evidence that something happened, by all means, do so. Because all they really have offered is the testimony of 2 disgruntled bidders and 2 clueless ebay reps.

 

It would be entirely different if you could say "look at the bidding history, no one bid in the last 3 minutes, that seems odd for a book of such high interest" and combine that with the testimony. That would be something to investigate. But that's not what we have.

 

We dont have that - there is no claim that was the problem. No one is saying eBay went down. The problem was with bids over 15K. If there was a bid over 15K you would have a point on the bid history. There wasn't, you don't.

 

Another smell test is this: Is it reasonable there would be multiple bidders trying to snipe this auction with bids over 15K? An open, no reserve auction of a mega key from a respected seller? Certainly.

 

No one got a bid through over 15K. The dollar limit that the verify checks happen to kick in at (which I was unaware of and have been selling on eBay since the late 90s.) Isn't that interesting?

 

[skypinkblu]

After seeing a total of 455,000 results returning on a Google search for the keywords "eBay + glitch" (some as recent as a few months ago), I'm starting to think the two are a match made in the cloud

 

I did the same search before I posted...and I didn't see any for that date...the only thing that came up was this thread.

 

I did get to experience Deja Vu all over again though;) I was reading about the ones in 2000...seemed like every weekend.

 

[skypinkblu]

No one got a bid through over 15K. The dollar limit that the verify checks happen to kick in at (which I was unaware of and have been selling on eBay since the late 90s.) Isn't that interesting?

 

1. I don't think we KNOW what the high bidder's max was, do we? It could have been over $15k.

 

2. Maybe no one was bidding over $15k, there is a recession.

 

 

and I promised a friend to stop reading this thread, ....so I will just wish everyone a great night!

[Pmack-migration]

find it odd that you keep calling the eBay employees clueless. Does that mean that every employee of a corporation is clueless if they don't give us an answer that we want?

No, of course not. But the ebay employees the OP dealt with did not know their business. One of them told him bidders over $10k need to verify. But it's not $10k, it's $15k.

 

Consider that in some other business. You go to your mechanic and ask him if you need new tires, and he tells you tires last for about 20,000 miles. The guy standing next to you in line says that's not true, tires should last between 40- 60,000 miles and shows you the tire spec chart on the wall. When that mechanic tells you he thinks your oil needs to be changed do you take his word for it?

 

Look at the chat the OP posted on page 5:

------------

12:06:38 AM tempusfugitivus

I'm pretty sure someone with a feedback score over 4000 shouldn't have any of these problems putting down a bid.

12:06:53 AM Sherrie G.

Right.

--------------

 

No, wrong. Verification has nothing to do with your feedback score. I don't expect the OP to know this, but I do expect the ebay employee to either know it or look it up and give the right answer.

 

And finish reading his chat... even the OP thinks this rep is clueless:

---------

12:07:40 AM Sherrie G.

But come to think of it, why would they place their bid on the last seconds of the auction if they're really interested on buying the item as they say?

12:09:20 AM Sherrie G.

If they haven't placed a bid before, then they trying to snipe the auction.

12:09:48 AM tempusfugitivus

You did not really just say that. Do you even understand your own business?

---------

 

So what I'm saying is that we can't trust that what these reps are saying is actually what happened. Your position seems to be that we trust them because they're ebay employees, but when they've shown they are doing theior job badly, I don't extend them that trust.

 

Since eBay has had a precedent of having software issues of all kinds over the past decade why is it so difficult to believe that it happened here, especially after several people both from inside eBay (employees) AND outside of eBay (clients including potential bidders and the seller) have agreed that there seems to be a problem with the software?

Because the conditions that are required for this problem to exist are rather extreme, and there are very simple explanations that would account for the problem.

 

I see no other point that over rides the single most important fact that eBay software messed up.

I see no evidence at all that the ebay software messed up. What I see is the first person to say ebay tucked it to him is a bidder who didn't get his bid in on time because he got hung up on the unexpected verification whining to the seller. Then I saw the seller react in horror to the idea a bidder couldn't get a bid in because the seller didn't understand the purpose or conditions of the verification in the first place. Then I saw some CSRs agreeing with whatever the seller says, correct or not.

[RockMyAmadeus]

 

 

and I promised a friend to stop reading this thread, ....so I will just wish everyone a great night!

 

Why? It's not a bad thread.

 

Don't you think getting to the bottom of something that could potentially affect a lot of people here is worth discussing...?

 

[hockey&comicsguy]

\

I see no evidence at all that the ebay software messed up. What I see is the first person to say ebay tucked it to him is a bidder who didn't get his bid in on time because he got hung up on the unexpected verification whining to the seller. Then I saw the seller react in horror to the idea a bidder couldn't get a bid in because the seller didn't understand the purpose or conditions of the verification in the first place. Then I saw some CSRs agreeing with whatever the seller says, correct or not.

 

 

But how does this explain the bids that timed out and never registered, where no further hoops were asked to be jumped through. The bids just didn't register at all. Are we to assume people with $15k+ to spend on comics can't afford high-speed internet service?

 

Also, how do you explain the ebay rep telling the seller that certain bidders bids should not have had to have been verified?

 

You seem fixated on the one bidder(s) who simply ran out of time due to the verification process (which is your theory of course, nothing more). What about the other bidder(s) and these other problems? Allegedly, of course.

[asteroid-comix]

Wow, this thread still has legs

 

I wonder, with all the high-dollar collections that are represented on the boards, how come this issue has not surfaced before?

 

If it were an application glitch, it should exist from when the defect is introduced in the code until it's corrected.

 

Assuming the defect has existed in the code since the functionality was developed, anytime an item reaches the 15k dollar amount the defect could occur. Factors like item category, user type, bid increment, etc. would trigger the auction/verification process either correctly or incorrectly (reason why I would think other high-dollar comics (more likely collectables) would experience this defect).

 

The OP is the only one that had situations where verified bidders were incorrectly asked to re-verify? Sorry guys/gals, but they call this phenomenon “user error".

 

As much as everyone would like to believe it, I can assure you beyond all reasonable doubt that random events don't exist within compiled code unless they are designed to be random. There is input, processing, and output. If there were a defect, it would exist until corrected.

 

As much as we like to beat on eBay (I'm on board with that (thumbs u ), 99.9% of their technical problems don't come from glitches in their programming. Their technical problems are outages (not enough capacity to handle the volume), a lack of vision towards scalability, and disaster recovery/planning (very poor management of how they maintain going forward). These cause outages where you can't get to certain pages or the site in general, but don’t cause situations where you are asked to do something more.

 

In fact, the eBay programming logic is pretty sound. Google “eBay source code”. Although I'm sure it's been updated, it leaked out on the net a few years ago. There were plenty in the business that picked it apart.

 

[CKB]

No one got a bid through over 15K. The dollar limit that the verify checks happen to kick in at (which I was unaware of and have been selling on eBay since the late 90s.) Isn't that interesting?

 

1. I don't think we KNOW what the high bidder's max was, do we? It could have been over $15k.

 

2. Maybe no one was bidding over $15k, there is a recession.

 

 

and I promised a friend to stop reading this thread, ....so I will just wish everyone a great night!

 

I agree, but maybe lots of people were trying to bid over $15K too. There's no way to know. And yes, we do not know the actual amount of the winning bidders bid unless it was less then the minimum bid increment above the runner-up's bid, assuming the runner-up bid last. I haven't looked at the history to see if this was the case.

 

[hockey&comicsguy]

Perhaps this is simply the first time an actual CGC board member has had this happen with a $15k+ book. Perhaps there are other people who deal in comics that don't actually post here everyday b/c they actually have real lives. Perhaps in the past, a bidder never contacted the seller to complain that their bid "timed out" or that they weren't aware of the verification process or whatever.

 

Just b/c something hasn't happened before or hasn't been reported before, doesn't mean it didn't finally happen or hasn't in fact been happening unbeknownst to most of us.

[hockey&comicsguy]

I agree, but maybe lots of people were trying to bid over $15K too. There's no way to know. And yes, we do not know the actual amount of the winning bidders bid unless it was less then the minimum bid increment above the runner-up's bid, assuming the runner-up bid last. I haven't looked at the history to see if this was the case.

 

This thread is getting too long to remember all the details but I thought I read that ebay CS confirmed a $17k bid that didn't register or was timed out or some ing thing. Ah hell, who knows at this point.

[Beau]

You've never met me in person. I avoided a hung jury last year and sent a gang member to prison for 25 to life. (thumbs u

 

So that's why the Mexican Mafia PM'd me an hour ago asking about your name and whereabouts, due to a post I made a while back when I suggested I knew where you lived. When I wouldn't dish, they put out a hit on me. I go into protective custody tomorrow.

 

So, thanks for that.

[Pmack-migration]

But how does this explain the bids that timed out and never registered, where no further hoops were asked to be jumped through. The bids just didn't register at all. Are we to assume people with $15k+ to spend on comics can't afford high-speed internet service?

I explained this earlier, it could be server lag, it could be ISP lag. It could be any number of problems, Maybe their processor was doing something else and didn't refresh the screen fast enough. There are so many possibilities that there's no point in trying to list them all. What you need to know is what exactly happened, and did the same thing happen to more than one person.

 

You seem fixated on the one bidder(s) who simply ran out of time due to the verification process (which is your theory of course, nothing more). What about the other bidder(s) and these other problems? Allegedly, of course.

It's not that I'm fixated, it's the only scenario that we have information, even though it's barebones. Everything else is vague. How many bidders contacted the seller? When did they bid? Were people getting timed out two minutes before the end of the auction, or did they time out three seconds before the end? Were there bidders who were already verified? Had any of these bidders bid that high before? What exactly was the failure? Did ebay refuse the bid, did the page not refresh fast enough, was an error message returned?

 

So you've got something you're calling an ebay glitch that has no parameters. An unspecified number of people possibly tried to bid on an auction and weren't successful for any number of reasons. This is because eBay failed. How does than make any sense?

 

 

 

[CKB]

No one got a bid through over 15K. The dollar limit that the verify checks happen to kick in at (which I was unaware of and have been selling on eBay since the late 90s.) Isn't that interesting?

 

1. I don't think we KNOW what the high bidder's max was, do we? It could have been over $15k.

 

2. Maybe no one was bidding over $15k, there is a recession.

 

 

and I promised a friend to stop reading this thread, ....so I will just wish everyone a great night!

 

I agree, but maybe lots of people were trying to bid over $15K too. There's no way to know. And yes, we do not know the actual amount of the winning bidders bid unless it was less then the minimum bid increment above the runner-up's bid, assuming the runner-up bid last. I haven't looked at the history to see if this was the case.

 

I checked the history. The history indicates - actually it proves - that the winning bidder bid exactly $14.5K.

 

Member Id: j***c( 382) US $14,500.00 Aug-01-10 19:16:12 PDT

Member Id: r***m( 381) US $14,500.00 Aug-01-10 19:16:18 PDT

Member Id: r***m( 381) US $14,000.00 Aug-01-10 19:14:54 PDT

 

The underbidder r***m NAILED the winner's bid exactly. The only reason j***c won is that he bid first, 6 seconds earlier.

 

[hockey&comicsguy]

Obviously there are still way too many unknowns. And apparently there won't be any way to answer them all....ever.

 

That said, with even the hint of something gone wrong with this auction, at this dollar level, i'm going to stick with my original assessment that a do over is warranted.

 

 

I'm thinking back to times of being a kid, in the backyard playing a game of kick ball and all of a sudden there's a dispute. How did those disputes always get solved? The "DO-OVER" (thumbs u

[fantastic_four]

Aside from E-Bay screwing up and their low-pay CSRs being unhelpful, $14.5K isn't a bad price for this book in a no-reserve auction. $17K would have set a GPA high, which in this economy would be quite amazing, although not impossible. Books like this are mostly down, not up, although you never know what'll happen, an 8.5 Spidey 1 sold for a new GPA high on Heritage this month.

 

I still wouldn't be surprised to see a book of this caliber go for $12K - $13K on ComicLink or Pedigree. Soft auction results are occurring on a massive scale this year...this is why I've still never had the balls to try a no-reserve auction on ANY vintage book, much less on a book like this in a marketplace like the current one. If I had a Spidey 1 I wanted to move at some point, this is the worst point in 3-5 years to do it.

[RockMyAmadeus]

Perhaps this is simply the first time an actual CGC board member has had this happen with a $15k+ book. Perhaps there are other people who deal in comics that don't actually post here everyday b/c they actually have real lives. Perhaps in the past, a bidder never contacted the seller to complain that their bid "timed out" or that they weren't aware of the verification process or whatever.

 

Just b/c something hasn't happened before or hasn't been reported before, doesn't mean it didn't finally happen or hasn't in fact been happening unbeknownst to most of us.