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martin
Active contributor


Joined: 07 Mar 2006
Posts: 8

PostPosted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 7:30 am    Post subject: eBay changes? Auctionsieve acting crazy...not refreshing.... Reply with quote

Tonight, Monday, March 6, 2006, eBay made some changes (apparently). AuctionSieve no longer works as expected. Doesn't parse informaiton correctly and generally is, uh, useless. Hope you get a fix soon! I rely on Auctionsieve! Thanks for a great product. Martin
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mar-tron
Active contributor


Joined: 12 Jan 2005
Posts: 9
Location: U.S.A.

PostPosted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 11:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, it's been acting up on me, too. I started having problems a couple of weeks or so ago when eBay changed their search results pages from listing "X" number of items PLUS additional "Buy It Now" items, to "X" number of items INCLUDING the "BIN" items. Before, I would only get AuctionSieve results for any "BIN" items that came up in the searches -- NEVER any of the additional items that were ending in like up to a month or whatever. But now, I get all of those additional "BIN" items as well, and it has made it MUCH more time-consuming to do my searches. Whereas before a sieve would search 4 or 5 pages, that same sieve might now have to search 15-20 pages. And sieves that used to search 50-75 pages can now be 300-400 pages! That has created a few problems. First, it just simply takes a LOT longer now to do searches. Second, it's causing the program to frequently run out of memory, which used to rarely happen before. And third, the program doesn't seem to know to handle a lot of the "BIN" items. A lot of them show up in the sieves as having already ended (even though they haven't). And if you add any of them to your watchlist (I'll sometimes add "BIN" items that I'm not sure if I'm that interested in, so I can go back and look at the listing more closely later when I have more time), some of them, no matter when the listing expires, are always at the top of the page, saying that the item is ending in less than one minute (and if you quit the program -- when you open it afain, it throws up the alerts for all of them at the same time that they're about to end...).

Another thing I noticed a few times in the last week or so was that sometimes the time left was screwy, unless you refreshed. Whether the items were going to end in 1 hour, 8 hours, or 4 days and 3 hours -- the minutes would be the same on all of them. For example, the "Time left" column might say:

53m
53m
53m
1h 53m
1h 53m
3h 53m
5h 53m
5h 53m
12h 53m
20h 53m
1d 2h 53m
1d 2h 53m
1d 15h 53m
2d 5h 53m
4d 9h 53m, etc, etc.

I'd never seen it do that before. Refreshing would correct it, but it was kinda annoying. I don't know if that might be related to the program running low on memory or something, or what...

But as Martin has said, I've also noticed today that the program is a LOT more wonky all of a sudden. The main thing I'd noticed was that items weren't always refreshing as they're supposed to. But in the last hour or so, it's gotten to where I can't get anything to refresh AT ALL... Question Shocked Question
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nev
Site Admin


Joined: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 1144
Location: Sydney, Australia

PostPosted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 2:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Crying or Very sad
Yep, eBay have made some major changes!
That's what I get for taking 2 weeks holiday... Wink

The main changes seems to be to the item detail pages.
Shouldn't take tooooo long to sort it out.

Well, I know what I'll be doing the next few nights after work.

Nev
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cervon
AuctionSieve regular


Joined: 16 Sep 2004
Posts: 11

PostPosted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 4:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

About the only thing I can say about this eBay problem is you find out HOW MUCH you rely on and how LOST you are without Auction Sieve!

Bruce
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nev
Site Admin


Joined: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 1144
Location: Sydney, Australia

PostPosted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 5:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ok, fix is out!

- The item detail pages have changed quite a bit - that stuffed up the watchlist.
- Those items that were showing up as ended were actually BINs with an ending time more than ~23 days (int was overflowing past 2 billion) - they now show correctly.
- I've added 2 new time frames so you don't have to download all those useless BINs past 10 days.
- Minor thing - you can now press the enter key in the search term field and it will start getting auctions.
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martin
Active contributor


Joined: 07 Mar 2006
Posts: 8

PostPosted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 8:03 pm    Post subject: Well, almost... Reply with quote

Thanks for the prompt update. But still a couple of problems in my system (Mac OS X): 1) the "Refresh all" button does not work (can refresh by selecting all then clicking the 'Refresh' button); 2) The "Time left" column is filled with "unknown", not with the time left (this one hurts as I can no longer tell when an auction in the list is going to close).

At first blush, these are the only two pieces of Auctionsieve that don't function properly in 1.7.7. Again, thanks for the speedy attention. I love this program!
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mac
AuctionSieve regular


Joined: 23 Sep 2005
Posts: 16
Location: HONOLULU, HI

PostPosted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 9:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for the latest fix. However, I'm still constantly getting the message, "Failed to connect to Ebay, Perhaps try again later. Java.io.IOException" As soon as I click OK, it comes right back and I have to quit AS. or go crazy with a bouncing icon.

Mac Oliver
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martin
Active contributor


Joined: 07 Mar 2006
Posts: 8

PostPosted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 9:20 pm    Post subject: I'm getting that, too. Reply with quote

Now that you mention it, I have been getting a lot of Java error exception messages, just as you describe. Usually, though, the error message does not return after I hit return.

But sometimes it will. Some auctions (usually ones that had ended prematurely, but not always) are more problematic and almost always hang a refresh until I delete the offending auction.
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nev
Site Admin


Joined: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 1144
Location: Sydney, Australia

PostPosted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 9:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Can you give me some example item numbers?
Over a range of ending times (ie, one that's ended, one that's ending in a day, 2 days, 3 days, etc)

Thanks
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mac
AuctionSieve regular


Joined: 23 Sep 2005
Posts: 16
Location: HONOLULU, HI

PostPosted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 10:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The ending date for all items on my watch list, with the exception of 2, show ended or unknown. In my Price History several of the item numbers have turned to a single cross, and a lot of the ending dates show unknown. I've deleted all these. The java exception error has now subsided.

Mac
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Randy Treadway
AuctionSieve regular


Joined: 20 Oct 2004
Posts: 11
Location: Lakewood, California U.S.A.

PostPosted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 10:36 pm    Post subject: New Version 1.77 Reply with quote

I usually only get the 'cannot connect' error message on those of my Sieves which typically return results in the hundreds of eBay pages (the page count it is finding is shown at the top of the Auctionsieve screen while the sieve is being executed).

I had previously attributed this to the return being so big in number of items found, combined with the length of time that it taked to retrieve all of them, that eBay's number count sometimes changed before the sieve could finish executing.
In other words- if eBay reported that it found 180 pages of items that met the search criteria, and started downloading the lists of items to Auctionsieve, by the time it got to page 160 or so, some of the items might have closed and the count would only be 170. So if AuctionSieve gets to that point and says to itself 'okay I've got 170, now send me page 171 please, eBay would respond with '171 does not exist' and an error would result.
Back a year or so Nev suggested that making the search criteria tighter might reduce the number of items found, and this error would not happen as often. And indeed that was the case (it still happened occasionally).
When a couple of weeks ago eBay started returning all those BINS, it put me back over the threshold on some of my "mega-sieves", and started getting that error more frequently again.
I got around it by pressing the 'keep trying' button until it worked its way all the through the sieve. Only once did it keep erroring to the point where I had to stop it, and try again the next day (when it worked).

I just downloaded the new version. It says there are now two date options. But I looked through the menus and didn't spot them. How do I select the 7 day or 10 day option?

By the way, when all these BINS started coming in, I presumed that eBay had switched one of their filters, so that Auctionsieve was now searching all the "eBay stores" (which are mostly BINS) in addition to the standard auction listings. I believe the stores are where the dates are typically set out at 30 days or so as a default.
When I first looked through these massive sieve returns, surprisingly I found two or three items that were extremely rare and I bought them! No telling how long these had been sitting in an eBay store. In one of them, the seller had 3 of them, so I grabbed one and e-mailed two of my friends who snapped up the other two within about a half hour. An item priced at $1.99 which we knew is worth about $30.00.

So...bottom line...I'm not sure I WANT to exclude items that are set with a 30-day expiration date. As long as I have the filter set to exclude items I've already seen, would this be a problem?
In an eBay store item, if the item passes the 30 day mark unsold, and the seller chooses to extend the item for another 30 days, does it keep the same Item number? If so, Auctionsieve would recognize the same number and not bother me with it again. But if eBay CHANGES the item number, Auctionsieve wouldn't recognize it as the same item, and hit me with it again.
I know that regular auction listings which are unsold, but re-listed, get new Item numbers and Auctionsieve displays them for me once again. That's okay as long as it's low volume, but I'm afraid unsold relistings in the eBay stores could be high volume.

Since this change happened two or three weeks ago, high volume has hit me two or three times- always on a weekend. I'm not sure what's going on there- maybe those 30-day re-listings always happen on a weekend?

I run all my Sieves once a day, rarely missing a day.


Last edited by Randy Treadway on Wed Mar 08, 2006 10:51 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Randy Treadway
AuctionSieve regular


Joined: 20 Oct 2004
Posts: 11
Location: Lakewood, California U.S.A.

PostPosted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 10:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mar-tron wrote:
Second, it's causing the program to frequently run out of memory, which used to rarely happen before.


It won't solve all of the issues we (and you) have been experiencing, but Nev has suggested a way to allocate more memory to Auctionsieve (only limited by how much memory your system is equiped with). It worked quite well for me. It involved changing a paramater in the auctionsieve.jar file (for MACs it's a different file I believe), using a text editor.
Nev, can you review that procedure with us? It might be in the FAQ list too.

I believe Nev said that one of the requests on his 'to-do' list is to add memory allocation as one of the 'options' in the auctionsieve menu bar, so that you don't have to use a text editor to do it. But I haven't seen it yet, so I guess it's still on the to-do list.
I would guess that even if you could re-set the memory allocation from within Auctionsieve (while it's running), you might still have to exit and re-start it, for the new allocation to take effect....but I'm not the expert on it, so I could easily be wrong....


Last edited by Randy Treadway on Thu Mar 09, 2006 12:38 am; edited 1 time in total
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nev
Site Admin


Joined: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 1144
Location: Sydney, Australia

PostPosted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 11:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Info on how to allocate more memory is in the last 2 answers in the faq :
http://www.auctionsieve.com/faq/#memory
Yeah - if I implement the setting in the program, it'll require a restart.

Re the 7 & 10 day options, click on the Options button next to "Get auctions". You may have to resize the panel to show all the options (click and drag the divider). There's a dropdown called "Time frame" - you should see all the "end in x days/hours" options in there.

Mac, can you give me some of those item numbers in your watchlist with unknown?
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cervon
AuctionSieve regular


Joined: 16 Sep 2004
Posts: 11

PostPosted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 12:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

All my watched auctions (except one) say "unknown" for the time and the pixs do not load. Aside from that all is working well. javascript:emoticon('Rolling Eyes')

Bruce
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mac
AuctionSieve regular


Joined: 23 Sep 2005
Posts: 16
Location: HONOLULU, HI

PostPosted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 12:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nev,

Some watch list # with time left "unknown".

7596606774
7223511839
7749306918
4619260083
7596554209
4619441065
8264910827
6610195238
7597676307
7223774605
7749311431
8266039239
4618849117
8266038818

There's a bunch more, but this should give you some idea.

Mac
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