Enough Is Enough
I for one am fed up with eBay games designed to inflict injury to bidders, sellers and 3rd party developers that they won't let join their API developer program because they support and author Snipe software and services.
Pierre's Blog (founder and Chairman of eBay)
We believe every individual has the power to make a difference.
We exist for one single purpose:
So that more and more people discover their own
power to make good things happen.
Jeffrey McManus is an eBay developer.
Micah Alpern is an interface designer at eBay
Today I submitted a press release with proof that eBay is conducting sporadic bid interference and it is a matter of policy.
Subject: Ebay is intentionally interfering with Bids - Real News
To: msnbcinvestigates@msnbc.com
CC: info@ap.org
Hi
My name is David Eccles and I invented eBay Snipe software in late December 1997. Sniping is a term used by eBayers to describe bidding in the final few moments of an auction. My software program's name is Cricket Power Sniper. My phone number is XXXXX Pacific Time.
Adam Cohen a senior staff member for Time magazine wrote an article about me in Time Warner's now defunct magazine ON and dubbed me the Sniper King in the May 2001 issue, page 65. Later when he wrote the book, The Perfect Store a book about eBay, there were six pages devoted to me and my software program.
I've been on Tech TV and have numerous write ups in newspapers across the country including the New York Times. There were so many little blurbs here and there in fact that I couldn't keep up with them.
My point is this. I am an expert in this area.
eBay has on and off waged a war with myself and other 3rd party program developers especially those that write and maintain Snipe bid software. An archived page about the games big companies play with little people behind the scenes is here.
On January 17, 2005 a user of my software reported an unexplainable bid loss.
I am sick to my stomach, I just lost a 42" plasma tv that ended at 202.50 and I put in over $500 as my max bid. It keeps screwing up on the real good auctions, it knows when to. This is the 4th time... John
On January 22, 2005 I was alerted by this same user that he had bid manually and discovered an extra step in the bidding process.
Hello, Have you seen that e-bay is putting another step in the bidding process? I've hit it a couple of time my self when just doing normal bidding, thats why this is happening. Also every once in a while I get a blank box in my tsaskbar with just a cricket in it and I have to close the program to get rid of it. John
I isolated the issue to a Buying Reminder page that would be delivered to the bidder with a continue button before eBay would what we call confirm the bid. (Making sure the bid is acceptable) I made a work around fix and uploaded a patch.
Yesterday I received a report that the problem was back but now instead of happening at the confirmation it is happening at the moment the bid or as we call the Snipe bid is submitted.
Today I confirmed this is true with my program's Snipe logs and other documentation recorded by the program after a successful or failed bid submission.
This is a failed bid submission.
6:21:52 PM: Sniping now...
6:21:52 PM: Submitting Snipe Bid...
6:21:52 PM: Snipe Bid '108.00' submitted...
6:21:52 PM: Snipe Submitted...
6:21:52 PM: Data Retrieval, please wait...
6:21:55 PM: Snipe Completed
6:21:55 PM: Time Left: Not Determined
6:21:55 PM: Cannot determine initial Snipe result...
This is a successful bid submission:
2:59:24 PM: Sniping now...
2:59:24 PM: Submitting Snipe Bid...
2:59:24 PM: Snipe Bid '700.00' submitted...
2:59:24 PM: Snipe Submitted...
2:59:26 PM: Data Retrieval, please wait...
2:59:31 PM: I have the auction item page...
2:59:31 PM: Snipe Completed...
2:59:31 PM: Time Left: 12 secs
2:59:31 PM: YOU ARE HIGH BIDDER
As you can see we are not talking chump change when serious buyers bid on eBay.
 |
|
|
Buying
Reminder |
|
|
The reason I am reporting this to you is because I am just a little guy and the Giant eBay has been playing bid interference games on an off for the last few years.
In this particular case there can be no doubt that eBay is practicing bid interference with those that practice Sniping on their auction site. They absolutely know that 10's of thousands practice this and the art of Sniping involves bidding in the last 10 or so seconds of an auction with a lot of people bidding with less then five seconds left.
Above represent real proof.
There has been another issue that pops up here and there and has been doing so for the last few years. Again my program documents the issue but there has never been a way to prove 100% for sure that eBay was intentionally doing things to frustrate Snipers.
My program synchs a user's computer to an atomic clock. It then retrieves what eBay calls their official time. The program then compares these two times and there is a difference, makes an adjustment to the bidding time per eBay's official time. Unique to my software is that it takes an additional step with comparing time. It retrieves the GMT time stamp by the server and compares the GMT time to the end users time. So that my program can say that we are sure of the time difference, both times must match.
Most of the time after the atomic synch, the user and eBay time difference is 0 or perhaps 1 second allowing for a margin of error due to rounding time. (milliseconds)
I have snipe logs that show a 0 time difference then 5 or 10 minutes later when the bid is submitted, the auction had already ended but the auction end time per eBay remained unchanged.
This is a copy of a typical Atomic Synch and Ebay Time comparison:
7:49:35 PM: Last synch: 01/30/2005 3:33:56 PM
7:49:35 PM: Clock needs synch...
7:49:35 PM: Atomic Synch Begin: 132.163.4.102
7:49:36 PM: Atomic Synch: time out in 30
7:49:36 PM: Atomic Synch Complete...
7:49:36 PM: Checking Official Ebay Time...
7:49:36 PM: Ebay Time: time out in 30
7:49:37 PM: Ebay time: Sunday Jan 30 2005 16:49:37 PST
7:49:37 PM: Ebay Official Time equal to your time
7:49:37 PM: Snipe Time: 01/30/2005 7:54:33 PM
Next the program confirms the bid and makes the necessary bidding time adjustments:
7:49:53 PM: Confirmation process complete...
7:49:53 PM: Your Snipe Bid Is Adequate
7:49:53 PM: BID CONFIRMED!
7:49:53 PM: Trans time is <= selected safety margin (SM: 7) (TT: 2) (SD: 0)
7:49:53 PM: Snipe Time: 01/30/2005 7:54:31 PM
SM = Safety Margin, the amount of time before the end of the auction that Cricket will submit the bid. TT = Transmission Delay, the time it took to make the trip to eBay and back. SD = Synch Difference.
As you can see in the above log write, the 7 is a result of a 5 second safety margin plus the 2 second delay.
If you assume that the program submits a bid after delay adjustments 7seconds before an auction ends and eBay reports the auction ended already and you know that both computers were equal in time just prior to bidding then there must be some kind of problem.
The problem is this.
Computer clocks to not speed up. Like all quartz clocks they lose time. Web servers typically perform an atomic synch every 15 minutes. Some servers have their own atomic servers. We do not know what eBay has but that does not matter.
What matters is their clock(s) out of the blue, go against the law of physics periodically for a couple of days and mysteriously advance in time 10 to 15 seconds momentarily. I have another archived page about this issue here.
There is more to this then meets the eye
eBay began making significant changes on their site in the last quarter of 2002. There was an isolated issue with signing in and another program I sell, Safe2Bid was brought down by eBay. This program detected shill bidding patterns. When I discovered what caused the problem. I saw clearly that if eBay wanted to, they could stop bidding as 10's of thousands know it. I came up with a solution that basically entailed me redesigning my program's Snipe engine. Just over a year later the work seems to be complete and the program is stable again. I have over 200 testers that work with me testing my Snipe engine.
In the German courts, eBay successfully got Sniping banned making it a crime in Germany to provide for a Sniping service. I have an archived set of pages that discusses this issue also here including an interpretation by a customer of mine, an attorney in Europe that deals heavily with German law.
The bottom line is this. eBay is most definitely anti Sniping but because so many do it, it's been a real quandary for them now since my program hit the market in late 1997.
Their official position on sniping is neutral and per their web site they will not investigate bid sniping.
This latest intentional act of bidding interference is costing their sellers a lot of money and it's causing excessive frustrations by bidders trying to give the seller "all the money."
This additional step in the bidding process is redundant because the confirmation page can easily serve as a buying reminder page before confirming the bid.
The act of adding the change to the actual bid submission when they know 10's of thousands are counting down seconds is an intentional anti Snipe position on their part designed to frustrate bid snipers and software developers like myself.
eBay has the right to make whatever changes they wish on their site but when they make changes designed to inflict injury, this is wrong. By behaving like this, eBay hurts their stock holders, they hurt their sellers and they hurt the bidder that was sending the seller "all the money."
Added to this site:
The Buying Reminder belongs in the bid confirmation page. It does not take a rocket scientist to see that a friendly buying reminder can fit here.
| Place a Bid |  |
||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
eBay automatically bids on your behalf up to your
maximum bid. Learn about bidding. |
Bookmark This Site
Target Your Ebay Bid Amount
Is last second bidding or "Sniping" all you need to know about winning more Ebay auctions?
Cricket Bulletin Board
Check the Bulletin Board for the latest notices concerning cricket snipe products
Product Downloads and Updates
Check here for available downloads and software updates
Custom Software Solutions
Not a programmer and need a Windows programming solution? Choose from our list of custom controls or let us know what your needs are. Reasonable rates are the rule.
