aaargh. BID not big! See, i'm still so peeved I can't even spell. ARGH ARGH:

For those who can't read Swedish, I bid on the same couches for one hour and fortyfive minutes a few weeks back, in this neverending war against some geezer who then decided not to buy the couches. So when the re-appeared, I waited with baited breath all damn day just to press "Bid" at the last 30 seconds. And then the website says "too late! we're just foolin' yas with that countdown!" ARGHHHH!

So today I learned that you write in fluent Swedish.

Please tell me it did not actually say "too late! we're just foolin' yas with that countdown!"
Because that would just be cruel.

Heh - no but when I called the auctionhouse wondering what the hell was up with that rubbish countdown, that's basically what they said "the numbers aren't an actual countdown" - WTF? Then why bother with them mate?

Sorry, I'm just sooooo pissed I had to vent.

Damn, I feel your pain. 1800 SEK for both? A bargain. Good looking chairs, as well.

That said, lauritz.com should hire a couple of proof readers. »Bruk av detta website forutsätter accept av avtalen om köps- och försäljnings-villkor samt säkerhet och förtrogenhet«? That's just bad, wrong and sloppy writing

One way to thwart bid snipers is to enter your actual maximum bid in the first place.

Oh, and it's bated breath. ;-P

it is? I've been misspelling that since kindergarten!

And soundsofsurburbia is right about their sloppy writing, it's some mishmash known as farked scandinavian, not Swedish, not Danish, not Norweigan. A bit like that stuff SAS stewardesses beging to speak after a few years on the job. Or what the Swedish Chef in the muppets speaks.

ALso, it was gonna go for 800 SEK this time around ARARRGH. *kicks stuff*

Yeah, bate and bait have quite different meanings, but hey, only a psycho like me would care.

"the numbers aren't an actual countdown"

There's a couple of reasons why this may be so.
Firstly it's there to discourage sniping. Say what you like about the ethics of sniping, but the process must reduce the amount of commission auction sites earn so they're probably going to program against it.

Secondly, the issue may be logistical. If the countdown timer shows as a clock which physically counts down in front of you, then it's going to make more sense to refresh this clock on the client side of the browser. This means that there is potential for the time you see and the server time to get out of synch. The software could constantly poll the server for the real time, but this would make the server have to work harder. Also, the time being reported to you may be from a middleware component. Come the time to actually "win" the bid, your request may be passed from this middleware bit to a database which may easily be on a database server which reports a different time.

Finally it may be a programming error.

If Time("hh:mm") < FinishTime("hh:mm") then makebid()

else error "Bidding over"

It sounds like it should be trivial to match all these times up, but actually it isn't. Next time, snipe 65 seconds before the bidding ends.

I kind of understand that. The bummer is that last week on the same item, sniping 2 seconds before bidding ended worked.(for almost two hours which was *agonyyyy*) This week, it did not. I'm going to sulk all night. And eat a giant bag of cheezdoodles. All by myself. *fumes*

One way for auctions to thwart sniping is to make all bids during the last minute blind.

blind?

They withhold the value of bids made during the last minute.

OOooh. Yeah or maybe they could set a limit as to how many times the auction can extend, it was only because of last time around for those couches just kept getting extended that I sat and waited (sniped) my bid. Because watching the time get extended again and again and again for almost two hours (three minutes at a time) was like pulling teeth.

That sucks, dabitch. Those chairs are awesome!

Those chairs are so gorgeous.