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E-Bay Phantom Posting

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  • Member since
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E-Bay Phantom Posting
Posted by don7 on Friday, June 14, 2013 12:21 AM

In another posting someone had mentioned postings in E-Bay suddenly disappearing. Well that is exactly what happened to me.


i had been following four model railroad items that were auction postings.
When I first came across these items I added them to my watch list for easy retrevial.

These items had been for sale for around a week and yesterday was their final day.

I chose the flag for time ending soonest, and waited for the items to appear, when my pc did refresh the items were not indluced.

I then chose the flag for a search, nada, non of the items appeared\

I then tried the Watch file, immediately upon coming to life the items were all included,

I then tried a search, nada, non of the items were included in my search, yet my watch list included the items. This was a Canadian Listing, I have seen this happen before. I sure would be mad,  if  for no apparent reason my listing disappeared so close to its selling time

I talked to a couple of guys who were also watching the auction and they indicated it is not that rare an occurance.

The items did sell, and they re-appeared as sold items.

Strange, certainly would explain why there was so few bids,

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Posted by richhotrain on Friday, June 14, 2013 4:47 AM

Don,

Here are eBay's rules for ending an auction early.

12 or more hours left in the listing

  • No bids
  • 1 or more bids and you want to sell to the high bidder
  • 1 or more bids and you want to cancel the bids

Fewer than 12 hours left in the listing

  • No bids including cancelled bids
  • 1 or more bids but you must sell the item to the high bidder

The seller is supposed to indicate the reason why the auction ended early at the top of the listing.

If you have the auction item number, contact eBay and ask why the auction ended early.

Rich

Alton Junction

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Posted by EMD.Don on Friday, June 14, 2013 7:15 AM

If I understand this correctly, the items did sell through Ebay according to what your watchlist was later showing, and were not completely removed prior to selling? If so, then the  auction didn't necessarily end early due to something the seller did, they (the listings) just went missing for whatever reason towards the end of the auction according to your searches and attempts to watch and potentially bid on the item(s)...correct? If this is indeed the case, I would  be upset if I were the seller as he/she may have potentially lost out on additional bids/money. 

Happy modeling!

Don.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that both engines have failed, and we will be stuck here for some time. The good news is that you decided to take the train and not fly."

N Scale Railroader.
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Posted by don7 on Friday, June 14, 2013 5:12 PM

davidmbedard
What does this have to do with Model Railroading, or more specifically, Electrontics and DCC?

David B

I thought I was in the General Section when I posted.

Yes, the items did sell, they were not pulled. I would be upset as a vendor. I purchased on of the items, had no problems posting a bid, I had saved the posting on my watch list.

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Posted by don7 on Friday, June 14, 2013 5:17 PM

richhotrain

Don,

Here are eBay's rules for ending an auction early.

12 or more hours left in the listing

  • No bids
  • 1 or more bids and you want to sell to the high bidder
  • 1 or more bids and you want to cancel the bids

Fewer than 12 hours left in the listing

  • No bids including cancelled bids
  • 1 or more bids but you must sell the item to the high bidder

The seller is supposed to indicate the reason why the auction ended early at the top of the listing.

If you have the auction item number, contact eBay and ask why the auction ended early.

Rich

richhotrain

Don,

Here are eBay's rules for ending an auction early.

12 or more hours left in the listing

  • No bids
  • 1 or more bids and you want to sell to the high bidder
  • 1 or more bids and you want to cancel the bids

Fewer than 12 hours left in the listing

  • No bids including cancelled bids
  • 1 or more bids but you must sell the item to the high bidder

The seller is supposed to indicate the reason why the auction ended early at the top of the listing.

If you have the auction item number, contact eBay and ask why the auction ended early.

Rich

I obviously did not make myself clear. The posting was still active, was showing on my Watch list, i was bidding on the item and in the end won it.

I had tried a search for the item and could not find it, and even changing the array of item to closing soonest did not show the items.

Ad not pulled by vendor, item sold

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Posted by richhotrain on Friday, June 14, 2013 6:13 PM

don7

richhotrain

Don,

Here are eBay's rules for ending an auction early.

12 or more hours left in the listing

  • No bids
  • 1 or more bids and you want to sell to the high bidder
  • 1 or more bids and you want to cancel the bids

Fewer than 12 hours left in the listing

  • No bids including cancelled bids
  • 1 or more bids but you must sell the item to the high bidder

The seller is supposed to indicate the reason why the auction ended early at the top of the listing.

If you have the auction item number, contact eBay and ask why the auction ended early.

Rich

I obviously did not make myself clear. The posting was still active, was showing on my Watch list, i was bidding on the item and in the end won it.

I had tried a search for the item and could not find it, and even changing the array of item to closing soonest did not show the items.

Ad not pulled by vendor, item sold

Don, actually you did make yourself clear.

It was my fault.  I misread your initial post.

Rich

Alton Junction

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Posted by rrebell on Friday, June 14, 2013 8:55 PM

I have someone listing stuff for me and we have ended them because of a mistake or a bid we wanted to take now. There are auctions that people win and never pay for so if you have a known enity, sometimes that is the route you go!

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Posted by ChadLRyan on Friday, June 14, 2013 9:22 PM

I guess, luckily, I have not experienced this, but it is concerning...
I use the Watch List pretty severely, & when I had a questionable router, the images would not load, but I never lost contact in the general search or casual browsing.
Being in former IT, this reminds of a Web Server Farm (3 or more Servers sharing the same information [someone like eBay may have 200+ servers doing this]), where a troubled server was not keeping up to date with it's buddies, & in a random pattern when a user hit that server the page was not updated. However, that should result in a critical error, (if you called it from your Watch List & it was not found) but a general serch would not display any error, just an abscence.
I hope something like this is not the case, as that would lead to a question of; is that really all there is for sale today??  
For me this does have to do with Model RRing; It's a primary place where I shop, etc....
I will keep a keener eye out from now on..

Thanks,

Chad L Ryan
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Posted by don7 on Saturday, June 15, 2013 3:09 AM

Yes, a general search did not show the item. Using an advanced search also did not show the item, however because i had saved it to my Watch List, there it was, it was active. There were three items and i bought one of them.

I paid what I thought was a great price (Ifor me) and thought that there would have been more bidders, however it the posting was not showing at a general level, that would explain the few bids.

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    June 2012
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Posted by AVRNUT on Saturday, June 15, 2013 5:54 AM

Ebay recently launched a new search engine called "Casinni" and there have been numerous issues, similar to this, ever since. I belong to a couple antiques related chat forums (off Ebay) and several of the folks have reported items disappearing from search shortly before their ending time.

I've also had ocassional problems with watch list saves not bringing up the item. So, I don't use the watch list feature anymore. If I'm interested in an item, I bookmark it & save it in "My Favorites" instead. I've never had an item fail to show up doing that.

Carl

"I could never belong to any club that would have me as a member."

  • Member since
    February 2013
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Posted by dcyale on Sunday, June 16, 2013 7:27 AM

I never bid direct through ebay.  I have used esnipe, http://www.esnipe.com/ which bids for you seconds before the auction ends, for as long as I can remember.  That way I can set up a bid at my maximum price well before the end of the auction, and don't have to watch the items.  I have had good luck getting many model railroad auctions I wanted, and avoid getting caught up in the last seconds where I might bid more than I had intended.

I have not had any problems with the search engine interfereing with esnipe, but of course I could just be lucky.

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Posted by BRAKIE on Sunday, June 16, 2013 8:01 AM

ChadLRyan
For me this does have to do with Model RRing; It's a primary place where I shop, etc

I agree..I buy a lot of OOP  cars on e-bay and some OOP locomotive new or used and information like this is good to know.

Of course that Bev-Bel/Athearn Berlin Mills boxcar still eludes me.I goofed and missed my chance when the car was release over 20 years ago.

Larry

Conductor.

Summerset Ry.


"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt  Safety First!"

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Posted by richhotrain on Sunday, June 16, 2013 8:15 AM

BRAKIE

ChadLRyan

For me this does have to do with Model RRing; It's a primary place where I shop, etc

I agree.

Awww, that's just David being David.   Laugh

Rich

Alton Junction

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Posted by BRAKIE on Sunday, June 16, 2013 9:30 AM

richhotrain

BRAKIE

ChadLRyan

For me this does have to do with Model RRing; It's a primary place where I shop, etc

I agree.

Awww, that's just David being David.   Laugh

Rich

In my best Jimmy Stewart voice.

Well,gee whiz Rich,what can I say?

 

Larry

Conductor.

Summerset Ry.


"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt  Safety First!"

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Posted by maxman on Sunday, June 16, 2013 9:30 AM

richhotrain

BRAKIE

ChadLRyan

For me this does have to do with Model RRing; It's a primary place where I shop, etc

I agree.

Awww, that's just David being David.   Laugh

Rich

 
Before being moved here, this topic was originally posted in the Electronics and DCC forum.  Hence, the comment.
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Posted by richhotrain on Sunday, June 16, 2013 11:04 AM

maxman

richhotrain

BRAKIE

ChadLRyan

For me this does have to do with Model RRing; It's a primary place where I shop, etc

I agree.

Awww, that's just David being David.   Laugh

Rich

 
Before being moved here, this topic was originally posted in the Electronics and DCC forum.  Hence, the comment.

And the original comment, or should I say objection, was made by the inestimable David M. Bedard.

Rich

Alton Junction

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Posted by alco_fan on Monday, June 17, 2013 10:46 AM

richhotrain
And the original comment, or should I say objection, was made by the inestimable David M. Bedard

And he is still right. The original poster got his item, the auction closed successfully. This entire thread is what they used to call a no-op back when I was programming: "An instruction or operation that has no significant effect."

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Posted by richhotrain on Monday, June 17, 2013 11:00 AM

alco_fan

richhotrain
And the original comment, or should I say objection, was made by the inestimable David M. Bedard

And he is still right. The original poster got his item, the auction closed successfully. This entire thread is what they used to call a no-op back when I was programming: "An instruction or operation that has no significant effect."

And, of course, your comment simply adds to it.

Alton Junction

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