Bid time

[Apk]

I'm happy to have bought my second subscription, thank you

Aside from support the main reason I subscribe is I value the 3 second setting.. In the settings you specifically recommend not using 3 seconds because:

1) 3 seconds greatly increases failure rate.

2) 3 seconds has little or no benefit.


Could I please ask:

Re: 1

Do you have a stat on this? What is the failure rate of 3 second snipes please? This is significant / useful information when we assess the risk / situation.


Re: 2

Given a 3 second setting at how many milliseconds before the auction's 'last accepted bid' will the bid register on the eBay server? (Mean average value, if milliseconds are unavailable on eBay logs then Seconds averaged to 3 decimal places please.)

This will allow me and potentially others to evaluate the risk-reward ratio using real world data.

I think it would be very nice for users to have a quantified reason, very much like your quantified reason for preferring mirror server re: failure rate probability. Even if that information is only on this post

It would be good to see the stat next to your warnings in settings though, as the warning on its own is quite threatening lol


Thanks again for the great service!

(PS: As a web dev myself I should tell you that I was unable to send this post because captcha was buggy, it wouldn't refresh to the correct image until I cleared my Cache and hit page refresh which solved the issue. Android S10, chrome. Thank you)

[Apk]

Sorry to double post, I can't find edit..


In the 're 2:' section I should have simply asked for the bid arrival value 'before last bid accepted' for a 6 second bid.. but I assume the time difference will be approx the same on average.

Reason for this is because, if, for example, real world latencies decide on average a 6 second bid will register on eBay server 4.1seconds before 'last accepted bid' then we can somewhat assume the situation will be similar for a 3 second bid (3 subtract 1.9 second 'latency' equals 1.1 second window 'on average!')

This is very useful information. Firstly because we know 6 second setting only leaves other "manual snipers" 4 seconds to react to an unexpected overbid on a cheap price.. probably not enough.. if they had the full 6 seconds it would be very easy.. I've done this before often looking at the last 10 seconds of an auction is where the attention goes hoping to win ready to overbid manually without fix

Very useful secondly because: A 2 second latency results in '1 second before end' average of bids landing on server.. this is understandably a tight window especially considering the bell curve.. I'd be very interested to see the distribution data.. if you'd like to email privately please message the email associated with my account. In return for solving my curiosity regarding the above I could help with ssl issues or cache issues etc if you are busy.

Otherwise one request only: The 3 second setting bid failure rate please

Thanks

[Cupid]

For a snipe scheduled with a 3 second offset, the bid would have to reach Ebay servers a whole 3 seconds later than Gixen intended it to for it not to be accepted at all, because it was too late.

I do think that is quite unusual these days as network latency on the internet is usually pretty good (that is, not that high)... obviously only Mario could have access to the data required to quantify that, as you have requested of him here.

He may not however have the data as to exactly when bids are arriving at Ebay, since that occurs outside his domain. He'd perhaps be more likely to know when the acknowledgment of that arrival returned to the Gixen servers, but I suspect he won't be measuring that either as to do so would naturally increase the resources required on those Gixen servers.

I'd just like to point out that my recommendation of a greater offset is never based on any potential reduction in reliability, it is based on my experience that you are more likely to fall foul of the bid increment rule which dictates that Ebay will not accept any bid that is less than one bid increment more than the auction price at the moment the bid is submitted, evidently where there are more snipers operating on an auction the later your bid the higher the auction price is likely to be.... and when that does happen you can see another bidder win the auction at a price lower than you may have been willing to pay. I do know that this is the type of 'failure' that is much more likely than the bid arriving at Ebay servers too late.
_________________
Mark

[Cupid]

Internet latency is rarely more than a second between bids being sent and what appears on the bidding record that Ebay provides for all auctions, via its site.

[Gixen]

[Guest]

[Apk]

Mario

Apologies those last 2 posts took us off track. I understand you are very busy so I'll sum up this convolution simply:


It's great how the gixen site mentions the failure rates of the free gixen Vs mirror gixen.. is nice for users to numerically visualise the risks of staying on non-mirror..

Similarly, when the settings menu gives its big warning about the danger of lowering the bid time differential it would be nice and more comfortable for users to see a similar statistical representation of the danger.

For example given warns of the 1 in 500 failure rate can be improved to 1 in 250000 by upgrading to mirror..

Wouldn't it be nice if also with the bid time setting the current big red late bid warning actually included a similar advisory statistic so users can quantify the late bid risk in face of the significant warning?

This kind of thing:

"Warning: Lower times increase late bid failure! Use 6 seconds to decrease the average late auction failure rate from 1 in 250 to 1 in 250000"

Something to that effect Or it could simply be in the FAQ or forum for those concerned about the big late bid failure warning!

Thanks for understanding,





Also, separately, if your busy and you'd like the PHP tidied up and be happy to work for free because I like the site; there seem to be improvements available with refresh handling, caching and session data handling. If you give me a free year I'll also fix the SSL / security certificate if you wish as it's not properly installed which will damage your SEO for certain. Feel free to contact via my registered email!

(Additionally you may wish to know that as with my other post I couldn't post this until I cleared my cookies because of a caching error with the incorrect captcha. I would assume many users face this. Clearing cache solves the problem only briefly and then it's broken again.)

All the best!