Clarifying Ending Times and Results?

[will-411]

Hey Jeremy - just wondering on the following:

All auctions include a "Ends at 10pm EST" type closing time. Does that mean that a last minute post has to show 9:59:59 or earlier as the post time? Or is it 10:00:59? (one second before 10:01). Since the posts only show the hour and minute, I think it would be good to clarify.

Second, without an actual automatic bid system, you could end up with multiple bids by different people in the last seconds, meaning the highest bid isn't necessarily going to be the last bid. Is the expectation that the earliest, highest bid is the winner? Just thinking if you have two people with the same bid amount, I would guess that the person who bid the amount first (ie higher in the thread) wins. Meaning ties in value and time would be broken simply by which post appears first in the thread.

Just want to be clear heading into the end here to help avoid any potential confusion!

Cory

 

[gomaz]

Hey Jeremy - just wondering on the following:

All auctions include a "Ends at 10pm EST" type closing time. Does that mean that a last minute post has to show 9:59:59 or earlier as the post time? Or is it 10:00:59? (one second before 10:01). Since the posts only show the hour and minute, I think it would be good to clarify.

Second, without an actual automatic bid system, you could end up with multiple bids by different people in the last seconds, meaning the highest bid isn't necessarily going to be the last bid. Is the expectation that the earliest, highest bid is the winner? Just thinking if you have two people with the same bid amount, I would guess that the person who bid the amount first (ie higher in the thread) wins. Meaning ties in value and time would be broken simply by which post appears first in the thread.

Just want to be clear heading into the end here to help avoid any potential confusion!

Cory

Good stuff Cory.

In terms of end times, if an auction is listed with an end time of 10:00PM EST, that means that any bids posted one second after the clock switches to 10:01 will not count. So the time of the post must say 10:00PM. As soon as the clock says 10:01, any bids do not count. Since the HI time stamp on posts does not include seconds, any post made up to 10:00:59 would count.

As I mentioned in another post a few minutes ago, I do anticipate some confusion at the end of the auctions because we do not have the max bid technology and people will likely try to get in last second bids. In the event of a tie in last second bidding, the member whose bid came in first will win the auction.

Also, for this round of auctions you are exactly right. The last bid may not be the highest bid so in these cases, the highest bid wins the auction, (not necessarily the last bid).

Great questions and issues we will work out as we gain experience holding auctions within our limited technology.