I’ve been a avid user of JBidWatcher for a few years but have had considerable problems and lose of money due to me winning auctions with JBidWatcher! I think most people are aware that JBidWatcher places ALL bids via Ebay.com regardless of where you reside. I live in the UK and have recently had two items that I had won but arrived and were “not as described”. I filed cases in Ebays “Resolution Centre” and was duly directed to Ebay.COM to make my claim – to cut a long story short Ebay UK would not deal with the case as the item was purchased via Ebay USA and I was advised to telephone Ebay in the USA (very expensive). Ebay USA told me it had to be dealt with via Ebay UK!! I eventually got a refund after returning the item but the refund was paid in US dollars UK pounds to my paypal account which meant I lost out considerably with the conversion rate. So be warned if it’s an expensive item (mine was) and you have a problem with the seller it can take considerable time and cost to “sort it out” via Ebay.com rather than your local Ebay site. The rules for Ebay.com may also differ from your local Ebay site. I found it an expensive lesson.

Morgan is the anyway you can provide a version that bids via Ebay.co.uk please?

Hoddy

Hoddy,

Also in the UK and had similar problems, last time with non delivery etc.
I recall reading a posting previously from a German user (?) all trying to get eBay / PayPal to take responsibility when we bid through the ebay.com rather than our local site.
So much for a global market place……….

I currently am a convert to Gixen for sniping, in the set up options are the ability to direct the snipes to ebay.co.uk and fortunately I have not had a reason to complain to eBay / PayPal over any auctions won and it’s a reliable sniper. So far………

I guess it’s an uphill struggle to keep an eye out for ebay and their bidding page changes.
It’s hard enough for Morgan to keep on top of changes on just ebay.com and still add to the JBW application and develop the MyJBidwatcher interface.
As well as keeping down a day job (hopefully), Wife & young family, a life away from computers. And only then there is a hobby called JBidwatcher.

Alan.

Greetings,
@Gaffer – You may like this, then… I’m looking to integrate JBidwatcher with Gixen, for users who have accounts on it. It’s not going to be free, unfortunately, but I don’t expect it to be particularly onerous. Essentially you have to have a Gixen Mirror subscription and a My JBidwatcher subscription, for which I’m eventually going to charge.

@Hoddy – This is essentially true. JBidwatcher will attempt to place snipes on ebay.co.uk if the item is not visible on ebay.com, but it places the bid on ebay.com if it can. There’s not a clear concept on eBay of an auction’s (or user’s) ‘home’ eBay site, unfortunately, and I’ve never found a good way to make it clear in JBidwatcher. There are too many things bound up in it, and the truth is there are only two sites that JBidwatcher can legitimately bid on: ebay.com and ebay.co.uk (under duress, since the text isn’t quite the same), because those are the two whose text I can read and add into JBidwatcher to parse.

If I offer an ‘option’ of just those two, people would believe that JBidwatcher couldn’t snipe on, for example, ebay.de. It works just fine, however…the bids are just placed on ebay.com or ebay.co.uk.

It’s a rock and a hard place for me, and so I’ve essentially chosen the path of optimizing for the common case; most folks don’t have problems with their transactions (in fact, percentage-wise, it’s exceedingly small), and so the bidding on ebay.com vs. their home site never matters.

— Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX!

Interesting scenario that hoddy describes.
I’m officially registered with ebay.ca but do all my bidding on either ebay.com or ebay.de if the auction doesn’t show up on ebay.com.
I have had very situations were I had a dispute with a seller – one last year with a US seller where there were several thousand dollars involved and another a few years back with a German seller where less than 100 Euros were involved, but I never had the slightest problem resolving these.
In fact, I don’t even know which ebay site I went through for resolution, I just clicked on the appropriate link on the ebay website the link in my email from ebay took me to, provided the information requested, and the rest just happened.
I wonder if this is a specific ebay.uk issue or if someone (as in the two ebay organizations) is trying to pass the buck.

I must admit that in the past it’s never been a problem but now Ebay have changed the way that they deal with buyers “problems”. Previously I was automatically directed to the PayPal site when I went to report a problem and I would then open a case with PayPal and they would deal with the issue. Now Ebay has changed the “system” and Ebay deals with the case not PayPal as before hence the problem. To anybody who does have a problem I wouldn’t open the case in Ebay but open a case in PayPal direct – cut out the middleman (and hopefully the problems)!! Unfortunatly I still have a case open that’s on going……

Morgan – thanks for the reply – how’s about producing a ebay.co.uk bidding version maybe available by subscription only? Or when’s the Gixen version going to be available?

Thanks
Hoddy

Hi,
I had a similar problem with a seller on ebay.de and had to log on ebay.uk to solve the problem..
I like jbidwatcher… but i have to switch to BOM (bid-o-matic.org) Sniper, because it’s able to snipe on ebay.de
BOM is developed under opensource licence, maybe Morgan can use some code to implement bidding on ebay.de?
BOM is a graphical desaster and i want really continue using jb but it’s useless for me until it can snipe on my local site… :(