I was watching an item I’d like for my radio collection, and despite the item being offered in the US I placed a bid for it. As you know, when you bid for an item you press “Bid” when up comes a dialogue box asking for your bid amount and, when ready to actually bid, you press “Confirm”. As long as you’re connected via reasonably fast broadband (mine is 8Mb/s)the response comes back within less than a second. This time it didn’t. When I pressed “confirm” with 3 seconds to go I got another dialogue box banging on about “terms and conditions” with another “confirm” button which I immediately pressed. I lost the auction. Needless to say I was seriously pee’d off to put it mildly. I’ve had long experience of placing bids and I know precisely the speed of my PC and iPad, the speed of my connection, together with the speed of my reflexes. I don’t use the telephone because everyone who knows me know that I cannot maintain a meaningful conversation over the telephone – another of the joys of having a stroke.
After negotiating eBay’s convoluted “Customer Service” pages I found out how to contact their “Chat” system (no email address offered – wonder why?) So when I engaged them this is the result of our (anonymised) discourse:
eBay agent. 19:21:12
Hello and welcome to Ebay Buying Customer Support. My Name is Agent. May I have your first and last name? And if you’re a registered eBay member, can I have your User ID please?
Agent 19:24:51
Hi
me 19:25:35
I lost this item because when I made a last-minute bid, I’d already pressed “bid” and was asked for the bid I entered my amount I waited until 3 seconds and pressed “confirm”. This should have immediately placed my bid, but instead I was given a Terms and Conditions notice, and when I again pressed “confirm” the auction had ended. To say that I’m annoyed is a gross understatement
me 19:26:19
The item was xxxxxxxxxxx
Agent 19:28:03
You don’t need to worry . I will be more than willing to help you with your concern. Let me check on the bidding history of this item.
Agent 19:33:40
As per checking here the item that you tried to place a bid was Ross Personal Micro Transistor Radio right?
me 19:34:20
If this happens all of the time how do I “snipe” an auction as the response of your system is now unpredictable
Agent 19:35:21
I feel unfourtunate that we didn’t win this item. Last-minute bidding is not the surest way to bid. If there’s a delay with the your Internet connection or local network, or if you have misjudged the end time of the listing, your bid may end up being submitted too late to be accepted.
Agent 19:35:55
We don’t recommend sniping, but we also don’t prohibit it. Every listing on the site has an exact ending time, and many bidders place their bids at the very last minute in an attempt to win the item.
me 19:36:17
Yes, it was. I pressed “confirm” for the bid but then a got of nonsense about “terms and conditions”. I missed the end of the auction because of that damned “terms and conditions” notice which I shouldn’t have had.
me 19:41:37
I live in a large UK conurbation and have a fast ADSL connection so it wasn’t down to the speed of the interweb. Should you look at my profile I joined Ebay in 1999 so I’m obviously not “green”. It’s recently that your system has become highly unrpredictable. As for sniping, I don’t use a sniping system, but I bid manually and I have the fast reflexes and fast broadband connection to do it.
Agent 19:42:26
I can imagine how this situation can be so frustrating. But there are some system updates in the web site right now. It is just unfortunate that you were able to discover that during the time that you are trying to snipe for an item
me 19:45:15
Just looks like in future I just stick to “buy it now” items because as everyone else uses sniping systems I might as well not bother bidding for anything else.
System19:48:44
The chat session is being wrapped up.
System19:48:44
The chat session has ended.
System19:48:44
This chat was on 10/20/2014. All times in the above transcript are in the following time zone: (GMT) Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London
So there you go. As soon as they realise you’re asking awkward questions not on their “crib sheets” – “goodbye”. Note the timings – the agent obviously had to confer with colleagues, hence my replies being out of sync.
At least it looks like my grammar has improved enough to write prose “on the fly” with only a couple of examples of missing words, poor grammar and spelling.
Wildswimmer Pete, the diary of a cyborg wild swimmer. 