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Post by chris on Jan 23, 2014 10:18:20 GMT
I waited until a page refresh showed the auction was opened then bid £100 - that was accepted - then £80 - that was accepted - then £60 - accepted - and lastly £40 - accepted. Then i took a breath and the system showed i had bid £100 - the first two bids hadnt gone through. This is not a problem now loans are not filling in seconds! Old Grumpy: Shadow bids were never available to me for Boiler Man - they were to Mister Kidder - but not Boiler Man?  Jack Are you sure there wasn't an error at the top of the page? The bids are placed atomically in the database with an error thrown if there are any issues. It's possible for the front end website to fail to catch that error but unlikely as it is definitely catching them in other circumstances. The error should have said that you can't place a bid in an inactive auction, which is due to the web server and database server clocks being slightly out from each other. I'll get that fixed to eliminate that issue.
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oldgrumpy
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Post by oldgrumpy on Jan 23, 2014 10:20:17 GMT
.... Old Grumpy: Shadow bids were never available to me for Boiler Man - they were to Mister Kidder - but not Boiler Man? Jack Shadow bids are not the same as pre-bids, Jack. No pre-bids on Boiler Man.
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Post by jackpease on Jan 23, 2014 10:36:19 GMT
>>>15 minutes ago jackpease said:
I waited until a page refresh showed the auction was opened then bid £100 - that was accepted - then £80 - that was accepted - then £60 - accepted - and lastly £40 - accepted.
Then i took a breath and the system showed i had bid £100 - the first two bids hadnt gone through. This is not a problem now loans are not filling in seconds!
>>>Chris replied:
Are you sure there wasn't an error at the top of the page? The bids are placed atomically in the database with an error thrown if there are any issues. It's possible for the front end website to fail to catch that error but unlikely as it is definitely catching them in other circumstances. The error should have said that you can't place a bid in an inactive auction, which is due to the web server and database server clocks being slightly out from each other. I'll get that fixed to eliminate that issue.
Jack replied: I wasn't aware of any error message and there was no difference in response to the (subsequently noted) unsuccessful bids and successful bids. I'm on Chrome. This is a trivial problem in a slow auction.
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mikeb
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Post by mikeb on Jan 23, 2014 10:46:26 GMT
I refreshed the loan page @ 10:00, saw the bid box appear, typed in the amount (normal not shadow bid) and pressed submit. Received an error message in the alerts banner along the lines of unable to place the bid as the auction was inactive. I retried a few seconds later and the bid was accepted OK. Fast finger first -> Fastest finger failed  I saw that too, but it cleared on the 2nd attempt ...
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Post by chris on Jan 23, 2014 11:20:34 GMT
Jack replied: I wasn't aware of any error message and there was no difference in response to the (subsequently noted) unsuccessful bids and successful bids. I'm on Chrome. This is a trivial problem in a slow auction.Hmm... It's a trivial one in a slow auction but still shouldn't be happening. Can I ask everyone to keep an eye on this in future auctions. We should have fixed the timing issues so that the bid box won't appear until the database clock says it should, which removes that class of error, but if a bid can't be placed for whatever reason the user should be informed. I've manually sifted through the errors we had at the start of the auction (which were all either insufficient cleared funds or auction hasn't started, I hasten to add!) and found the two errors that you had on your account. They were both because the auction wasn't open, so you should have had an error displayed at the top of the page. Perhaps you missed it or perhaps it didn't display correctly for some reason. Hopefully we can find out next auction.
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Post by yorkshireman on Jan 23, 2014 11:47:01 GMT
Jack replied: I wasn't aware of any error message and there was no difference in response to the (subsequently noted) unsuccessful bids and successful bids. I'm on Chrome. This is a trivial problem in a slow auction.Hmm... It's a trivial one in a slow auction but still shouldn't be happening. Can I ask everyone to keep an eye on this in future auctions. We should have fixed the timing issues so that the bid box won't appear until the database clock says it should, which removes that class of error, but if a bid can't be placed for whatever reason the user should be informed. I've manually sifted through the errors we had at the start of the auction (which were all either insufficient cleared funds or auction hasn't started, I hasten to add!) and found the two errors that you had on your account. They were both because the auction wasn't open, so you should have had an error displayed at the top of the page. Perhaps you missed it or perhaps it didn't display correctly for some reason. Hopefully we can find out next auction. At least you’re talking to us Chris unlike another well known P2B site that’s having IT problems.
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Post by chris on Jan 23, 2014 11:49:46 GMT
At least you’re talking to us Chris unlike another well known P2B site that’s having IT problems. I'd like to think that our issues are an order of magnitude or two different from those being experienced elsewhere, but thank you for the acknowledgement!
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pikestaff
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Post by pikestaff on Jan 23, 2014 12:18:24 GMT
I had that error message too. I logged into the page before the auction started and kept hitting refresh until I saw the bid box. This was maybe 15 seconds after 10:00 by my PC's clock (which if anything is a tad slow). My first two bid attempts were rejected with the message that the auction was not active.
Thinking it might have something to do with the age of the page I was looking at, I went back to the listings page, and clicked afresh on the link to the auction. It worked fine then.
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oldgrumpy
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Post by oldgrumpy on Jan 23, 2014 14:03:46 GMT
What is the order of completed auctions supposed to be? They are looking somewhat haphazard today.
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Post by chris on Jan 23, 2014 14:20:31 GMT
What is the order of completed auctions supposed to be? They are looking somewhat haphazard today. For some reason it was sorted by the start date of the auction. It's now sorted by the closed date which should remove any confusion.
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Jan 23, 2014 14:35:40 GMT
Could be a real problem tomorrow if it affects all the pre-bids and so offsets them all by an hour. At the moment, pre-bids are up to 94%. I expect that will hit 100% shortly and continue upwards. Unless enough of those pre-bids are destined to fail because the lenders' accounts have insufficient funds, the pre-bid handling system will have to work flawlessly if it is to place all those bids before 'normal' bids placed on the website when the auction opens take up enough of the loan that there isn't enough left to satisfy all of the adequately funded pre-bids. Chris has said that the pre-bid handling system checks every minute to see when a loan becomes available for bidding. That might not be frequently enough, as I note that today's auction that started at 1000 had over 50 bids placed before 1001, so if the pre-bid system doesn't start acting the instant the auction goes live it looks like there's a fair chance that some of the pre-bids could be displaced by fast-fingered lenders. This makes me think that pre-bids ought to be processed a few minutes before an auction officially goes live. Or alternatively, that 'normal' bids should not be allowed until all the funded pre-bids have been dealt with -- either by stopping the 'Place a bid' box from going active until all pre-bids have been processed, or by putting a message in that box saying something like "Pre-bids are being processed now. Please wait." -- and producing a bid failure and an error message for anyone who tries to bid anyway. Perhaps I'm worrying unnecessarily. I presume Assetz easily can check what portion of the pre-bids are backed by funds in the lenders' accounts -- though I also realise that this is very much subject to change as the auction start time approaches. I was going to suggest that perhaps it's so blindingly obvious from the pre-bid status that anyone considering bidding should realise that the only way to have a chance of a successful bid would be to pre-bid, so there'll be very few lenders poised at their PCs when the auction does open. However, looking at the horseshoe graph, it's hard enough to detect the level of pre-bidding now, and once the pre-bids reach 100% there may not be any indication at all except if you know to hover over the appropriate part of the graph. In many ways, it's unfortunate that the first outing for the pre-bid system is a loan that looks destined to be oversubscribed and put the system to a very severe test, with much more awkward consequences if it doesn't work perfectly than if it's first outing had been on a less popular loan that wasn't expected to be fully subscribed in minutes.
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bugs4me
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Post by bugs4me on Jan 23, 2014 14:45:28 GMT
Could be a real problem tomorrow if it affects all the pre-bids and so offsets them all by an hour. At the moment, pre-bids are up to 94%. I expect that will hit 100% shortly and continue upwards. Unless enough of those pre-bids are destined to fail because the lenders' accounts have insufficient funds, the pre-bid handling system will have to work flawlessly if it is to place all those bids before 'normal' bids placed on the website when the auction opens take up enough of the loan that there isn't enough left to satisfy all of the adequately funded pre-bids. Chris has said that the pre-bid handling system checks every minute to see when a loan becomes available for bidding. That might not be frequently enough, as I note that today's auction that started at 1000 had over 50 bids placed before 1001, so if the pre-bid system doesn't start acting the instant the auction goes live it looks like there's a fair chance that some of the pre-bids could be displaced by fast-fingered lenders. This makes me think that pre-bids ought to be processed a few minutes before an auction officially goes live. Or alternatively, that 'normal' bids should not be allowed until all the funded pre-bids have been dealt with -- either by stopping the 'Place a bid' box from going active until all pre-bids have been processed, or by putting a message in that box saying something like "Pre-bids are being processed now. Please wait." -- and producing a bid failure and an error message for anyone who tries to bid anyway. Perhaps I'm worrying unnecessarily. I presume Assetz easily can check what portion of the pre-bids are backed by funds in the lenders' accounts -- though I also realise that this is very much subject to change as the auction start time approaches. I was going to suggest that perhaps it's so blindingly obvious from the pre-bid status that anyone considering bidding should realise that the only way to have a chance of a successful bid would be to pre-bid, so there'll be very few lenders poised at their PCs when the auction does open. However, looking at the horseshoe graph, it's hard enough to detect the level of pre-bidding now, and once the pre-bids reach 100% there may not be any indication at all except if you know to hover over the appropriate part of the graph. In many ways, it's unfortunate that the first outing for the pre-bid system is a loan that looks destined to be oversubscribed and put the system to a very severe test, with much more awkward consequences if it doesn't work perfectly than if it's first outing had been on a less popular loan that wasn't expected to be fully subscribed in minutes. Agree this is going to be an interesting test. I expect once the auction starts, then any pre-bids will automatically be knocked out of the system where there are insufficient funds. If it's still showing 100% from the pre-bids then I assume it will be on a first come first served basis or will the pre-bids be scaled back to accommodate. In any event, I don't expect this auction will go live for normal bidding as there's only 5% left with just under a day to go.
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Post by batchoy on Jan 23, 2014 14:49:24 GMT
Could be a real problem tomorrow if it affects all the pre-bids and so offsets them all by an hour. At the moment, pre-bids are up to 94%. I expect that will hit 100% shortly and continue upwards. Unless enough of those pre-bids are destined to fail because the lenders' accounts have insufficient funds, the pre-bid handling system will have to work flawlessly if it is to place all those bids before 'normal' bids placed on the website when the auction opens take up enough of the loan that there isn't enough left to satisfy all of the adequately funded pre-bids. Chris has said that the pre-bid handling system checks every minute to see when a loan becomes available for bidding. That might not be frequently enough, as I note that today's auction that started at 1000 had over 50 bids placed before 1001, so if the pre-bid system doesn't start acting the instant the auction goes live it looks like there's a fair chance that some of the pre-bids could be displaced by fast-fingered lenders. This makes me think that pre-bids ought to be processed a few minutes before an auction officially goes live. Or alternatively, that 'normal' bids should not be allowed until all the funded pre-bids have been dealt with -- either by stopping the 'Place a bid' box from going active until all pre-bids have been processed, or by putting a message in that box saying something like "Pre-bids are being processed now. Please wait." -- and producing a bid failure and an error message for anyone who tries to bid anyway. Perhaps I'm worrying unnecessarily. I presume Assetz easily can check what portion of the pre-bids are backed by funds in the lenders' accounts -- though I also realise that this is very much subject to change as the auction start time approaches. I was going to suggest that perhaps it's so blindingly obvious from the pre-bid status that anyone considering bidding should realise that the only way to have a chance of a successful bid would be to pre-bid, so there'll be very few lenders poised at their PCs when the auction does open. However, looking at the horseshoe graph, it's hard enough to detect the level of pre-bidding now, and once the pre-bids reach 100% there may not be any indication at all except if you know to hover over the appropriate part of the graph. In many ways, it's unfortunate that the first outing for the pre-bid system is a loan that looks destined to be oversubscribed and put the system to a very severe test, with much more awkward consequences if it doesn't work perfectly than if it's first outing had been on a less popular loan that wasn't expected to be fully subscribed in minutes. If the full documents aren't posted soon, I shall be pulling some of my pre-bids so that should free up a bit and there may be a few more doing the same, either that or there could be a lot of dumping on the secondary market. You are rightly concerned about the way the pre-bids are to be handled in relation to normal bids mikes1531 one of the issues that was recently seen over on IP was that manual bidders were managing to circumvent the rules and both get bids in before the profile bidding (rules based pre-bidding) had completed and bid for a larger share of the loan than they should have been able to.
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Jan 23, 2014 15:01:43 GMT
I expect once the auction starts, then any pre-bids will automatically be knocked out of the system where there are insufficient funds. If it's still showing 100% from the pre-bids then I assume it will be on a first come first served basis or will the pre-bids be scaled back to accommodate. In any event, I don't expect this auction will go live for normal bidding as there's only 5% left with just under a day to go. Most of the issues raised above are covered in Chris's post at the top of this thread... - Unfunded pre-bids are skipped over rather than knocked out. They're rechecked hourly to see if they've become funded. If they have, they're turned into real bids.
- Funded bids are processed in the order they were placed.
- The pre-bid processing system seems to be an add-on to the normal system, and works within it. Pre-bid processing starts only after an auction has been opened for normal bidding. Since the pre-bid system checks the main system every minute, it would seem that normal bidding could be open for up to 59 seconds before the pre-bid system springs into action.
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bugs4me
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Post by bugs4me on Jan 23, 2014 15:05:36 GMT
I expect once the auction starts, then any pre-bids will automatically be knocked out of the system where there are insufficient funds. If it's still showing 100% from the pre-bids then I assume it will be on a first come first served basis or will the pre-bids be scaled back to accommodate. In any event, I don't expect this auction will go live for normal bidding as there's only 5% left with just under a day to go. Most of the issues raised above are covered in Chris's post at the top of this thread... - Unfunded pre-bids are skipped over rather than knocked out. They're rechecked hourly to see if they've become funded. If they have, they're turned into real bids.
- Funded bids are processed in the order they were placed.
- The pre-bid processing system seems to be an add-on to the normal system, and works within it. Pre-bid processing starts only after an auction has been opened for normal bidding. Since the pre-bid system checks the main system every minute, it would seem that normal bidding could be open for up to 59 seconds before the pre-bid system springs into action.
Well this one could fly as there's plenty of time for 3k bids to be made in those 59 seconds. Interesting 
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