Have been screwed up for days. I noticed it a few days ago and finally phoned them up today. Agent said "IT is aware of the problem and are working on it." No timeline for a fix. All listings now show two bidders (max) in the summary, rather than the actual number. This is especially a nuisance when it's a private auction. Dissuades bidders who may think it's a two-person bidding war. Is anyone finding accurate counts? I've tried phone, tablet, and website.
You did indeed find a problem. There are clearly 5 bidders who have placed a bid(s) for that item. Not 2 bidders. :-/ And yes, some biddders certainly do rely on the displayed counts of bids and bidders to make bidding decisions. I don't currently have any listings running (but "check back soon", as they say - LOL!), so I can't answer whether the same error would be occurring on accounts other than yours. But if eBay admits they "are working on it" -- then they might actually have another widespread problem. Anyway, will you please post an update when it is fixed?
Personally, I pay more attention to the bids and not the bidder count. It's easy to see if two people are going at it, or just you and someone else, or more than two people. In this case it's hard to decipher anyway - w***6 apparently kept bidding small increments until they were winning against a strong max bid by 9***j, but where is the original bid by 9***j? Their $112.11 bid was put in more than a day before w***6 started jacking it up, so they should have been winning it above the $80 bid by 9***0. I've never understood this about ebay bidding history. It's always been messed up as far as I can recall, but it's been a long time since I was in a true auction on there.
Thanks, I sure will. I have the impression it's not a high-priority item for them though. To you and the other poster, you can easily find examples by looking at any auctions which currently have more than two bidders. They don't have to be your own! For example, I just looked at an auction for a pair of Air Jordans. Same deal. This issue may well be site-wide then, which makes me think eBay will address it sooner than later. It's worst for private auctions. You can't tell how many bidders there are even by looking at bid activity. Hmm.
True. I just looked at several and saw that you are indeed correct. Interesting thing though: On all the items I reviewed, as soon as the auction ended the number of bidders immediately jumped from 2 to the correct number. So the problem is in the coding used to calculate the number of bidders pre-hammer, but the coding used post-hammer does not include the same calculation error. I would suppose many have contacted them about the issue. They will eventually find and correct it. But fortunately in the meantime, the number of different bidders can be quickly tallied via glancing down through the bid history.
Thanks for the useful information. I'm not so sanguine about Ebay addressing the issue in a timely fashion for two reasons: one, agents often say whatever they think will get you off the phone the fastest, and keep their call metrics up; two, before posting I searched far and wide, including reddit and ebay message boards, and found nothing. I actually waited a day before posting! However, as mentioned upthread, this doesn't work for private auctions. Of which there are many in our particular space.
9***j put in their bid two days ago as a max proxy bid. At that time it would have shown as one increment above 9***0. Then 19 + hours ago w***6 started doing incremental bidding and each time they did it showed their unsuccessful bid and 9***j bid one increment above it. 9***j's $112.11 max bid was not revealed until w***6 bid an amount one increment above that (the increment at this level is apparently $2.50). We don't know how much w***6 actually bid, just that it was more than one increment above 9***j's max bid. What was shown was the default display for showing bid history. But it is also possible to have it show the automatic bids in which case it would look something like W***6 $114.61 9***j $112.11 (automatic bid) W***6 $110.00 9***j $99.00 (automatic bid) W***6 $98.00 9***j $93.00 (automatic bid) W***6 $92.00 9***j $87.00 (automatic bid) W***6 $86.00 9***j $84.00 (automatic bid) W***6 $83.00 9***j $81.00 (automatic bid) 9***0 $80.00 9***0 $74.00 (automatic bid) 6***2 $73.00 Each place where it shows (automatic bid) ebays proxy bid system has executed a automatic bid for their max bid to keep them the high bidder. These automatic bid do not display unless you tell the history to display them. Since w***6 manually bid each time it displays their bid in both display systems. When W***6 bid $110 ebay did an automatic bid for 9***j. It wasn't a full increment so it just went to his max bid. Then W***6 had to bid at least one full increment ($2.50) to top it.
Thanks @Conder101 for taking the time to explain it step-by-step. I wanted to do so, but didn't have the time yesterday to compose and type it all up. It's really eBay 101 stuff (see what I did there?), but not all eBayers have had opportunity to come to understand it. I very much like that you took time to include this sentence . . . . . . Several times I've heard a 2nd place underbidder say something like, "I should have bid just a few increments higher, then I would have won it!", or, "I lost by just one dollar!" The problem with that logic is that because you don't know the winning bidder's max bid (as @Conder101 pointed out), you also don't/can't know how much higher your bid would have had to be in order to win. The max bid could have been $50, $100, or more! An exception to never knowing how much it would have taken to win... (and I HATE it when it happens to me!)... is when the winning bid is less than one full bidding increment above your max bid. THAT'S an occassion to lament over not having bid just a little bit higher. ;-(
Thanks for going into detail about all that. The quoted part is the confusing part for me. Before w***6 started bidding, 9***j would be shown as winning. But then that bid disappears. Casually looking at the bid history gives the impression that 9***j jumped in at the end. Same thing when it goes from $73 to $80. Of course Heritage doesn't show anything about the bid history at all, so at least ebay shows something.
If you were not showing the automatic bids, before 9***j started bidding it would have shown 9***0 $74.00 6***2 $73.00 When 9***j put in his max proxy bid it would have shown 9***j $81.00 9***0 $80.00 6***2 $73.00 It would stay like that until W***6 put in his first bid and then it would have shown 9***j $84.00 W***6 $83.00 9***0 $80.00 6***2 $73.00 W***6 put in his next bid and it would have shown 9***j $87.00 W***6 $86.00 W***6 $83.00 9***0 $80.00 6***2 $73.00 You note it shows both of W***6's bids because those were submitted bids and not automatic bids from a proxy bid. Since we are not displaying automatic bids all we see is 9***j's currently winning bid. It would have continued in this pattern for each of W***6's subsequent bids until it finally generated what we see in the original post.
