CBS Auction Experience

[Jefe]

My league has used CBS since 2000 but I think next year we'll be changing, mostly due to the horrible auction experience. It's a bit of a cluster every year, but this year was the worst. Probably added 30+ minutes to our already long auction, with people constantly being kicked out of the room and unable to get back in, so over and over I had to pause the auction and back out a pick. It was so frustrating, I think it was our final straw.

Might try Fantrax I guess.

[Don Quixote]

Back in March, I was in three auctions on CBS, and IIRC all came off without a hitch. A few owners had intermittent problems, but none of it was major. The problems can be with owners' Internet connections or with their computers, or it could be just luck of the draw, or you could be right and it is CBS. it beats the heck our of the pre-CBS days of running an auction on AIM.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience. Good luck with your future auctions!

[Jefe]

Back in March, I was in three auctions on CBS, and IIRC all came off without a hitch. A few owners had intermittent problems, but none of it was major. The problems can be with owners' Internet connections or with their computers, or it could be just luck of the draw, or you could be right and it is CBS. it beats the heck our of the pre-CBS days of running an auction on AIM.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience. Good luck with your future auctions!

Thanks. I'm surprised -- I don't think we've ever had an auction on CBS where people dropping out of the room wasn't a problem. Maybe it is their internet connections but in this day and age that seems unlikely to be the consistent culprit. Who knows.

[DMT]

Been using them for years and never had any major issues except when one owner left a guy on his DL and had like an extra $50 that we didn't realize until about an hour later (i.e., user error). They still piss me off with overcharging and weak customer service, but their auction room is one of their best features IMO. One year we tried switching to OnRoto and that was a disaster.

[Hornsby]

Thanks. I'm surprised -- I don't think we've ever had an auction on CBS where people dropping out of the room wasn't a problem. Maybe it is their internet connections but in this day and age that seems unlikely to be the consistent culprit. Who knows.

I would actually think that the internet WOULD likely be the culprit in this day and age of people working from home. More people working and more strain on the system would seem to me a likely issue. Like DQ, I've been doing CBS auctions for years now, and have rarely had an issue.

We had a few guys who were dropping out, but actually didn't drop out. IIRC, the issue was they were using Macs of all things...

[Jefe]

I would actually think that the internet WOULD likely be the culprit in this day and age of people working from home. More people working and more strain on the system would seem to me a likely issue. Like DQ, I've been doing CBS auctions for years now, and have rarely had an issue.

We had a few guys who were dropping out, but actually didn't drop out. IIRC, the issue was they were using Macs of all things...

Well, to be fair I'd expect 90-95% of my league is on macs. If that's wrong, I don't want to be right.

[bryanbutler]

My main league had its auction Sunday. Worst experience we've had on CBS in years. I don't know if it is internet traffic, or something that's changed - the RJEL auction back in March went off pretty much without a hitch.

There was a quite specific bug (or cause and effect anyway) - if anybody typed into chat while there was a player being bid on, there were 5 or 6 GMs that would immediately get kicked from the room. Always the same GMs. They all tried different browsers, and a couple even had different computers they could try (different OS). Nothing changed. On rare occasion it happened randomly, but the typing into chat during player bids was repeatable. We had to put a moratorium on chat during bids, which made the auction rather boring . I'd guess that it added about an hour onto our normally 3-hour auction. Very frustrating.

[Ken]

My main league had its auction Sunday. Worst experience we've had on CBS in years. I don't know if it is internet traffic, or something that's changed - the RJEL auction back in March went off pretty much without a hitch.

There was a quite specific bug (or cause and effect anyway) - if anybody typed into chat while there was a player being bid on, there were 5 or 6 GMs that would immediately get kicked from the room. Always the same GMs. They all tried different browsers, and a couple even had different computers they could try (different OS). Nothing changed. On rare occasion it happened randomly, but the typing into chat during player bids was repeatable. We had to put a moratorium on chat during bids, which made the auction rather boring . I'd guess that it added about an hour onto our normally 3-hour auction. Very frustrating.

ah - that explains it - during one of our drafts people would drop out seemingly randomly. One time I noticed that they dropped out at the same time as my chat comment was entered as well - they all dropped AND my comment didn't show up.

[DMT]

My main league had its auction Sunday. Worst experience we've had on CBS in years. I don't know if it is internet traffic, or something that's changed - the RJEL auction back in March went off pretty much without a hitch.

There was a quite specific bug (or cause and effect anyway) - if anybody typed into chat while there was a player being bid on, there were 5 or 6 GMs that would immediately get kicked from the room. Always the same GMs. They all tried different browsers, and a couple even had different computers they could try (different OS). Nothing changed. On rare occasion it happened randomly, but the typing into chat during player bids was repeatable. We had to put a moratorium on chat during bids, which made the auction rather boring . I'd guess that it added about an hour onto our normally 3-hour auction. Very frustrating.

This is why you do live auctions!

J/k that is very annoying.

[revo]

My main league had its auction Sunday. Worst experience we've had on CBS in years. I don't know if it is internet traffic, or something that's changed - the RJEL auction back in March went off pretty much without a hitch.

There was a quite specific bug (or cause and effect anyway) - if anybody typed into chat while there was a player being bid on, there were 5 or 6 GMs that would immediately get kicked from the room. Always the same GMs. They all tried different browsers, and a couple even had different computers they could try (different OS). Nothing changed. On rare occasion it happened randomly, but the typing into chat during player bids was repeatable. We had to put a moratorium on chat during bids, which made the auction rather boring . I'd guess that it added about an hour onto our normally 3-hour auction. Very frustrating.

As Ken said, it did happen to us in a league we're in, buuuut.....did those players actually get kicked out? Because with us (and it happened again yesterday in my redraft league draft), those owners said they never actually were "kicked" out of the room, even though it said they left.

[Ken]

As Ken said, it did happen to us in a league we're in, buuuut.....did those players actually get kicked out? Because with us (and it happened again yesterday in my redraft league draft), those owners said they never actually were "kicked" out of the room, even though it said they left.

good point - I'm wondering if a new comment forces a data refresh, under which it may look for "timeouts" on users and specify those who have not checked in across a certain period as "left". Across separate time zones I could see a data consistency issue where everyone in a different time zone from the person making the comment could get incorrectly labelled as gone. Purely a guess.

[Jefe]

good point - I'm wondering if a new comment forces a data refresh, under which it may look for "timeouts" on users and specify those who have not checked in across a certain period as "left". Across separate time zones I could see a data consistency issue where everyone in a different time zone from the person making the comment could get incorrectly labelled as gone. Purely a guess.

In our auction I saw both. People kicked from the room, and people the chat said had "left" who actually hadn't. We didn't notice any sort of association with people chatting, though. The chats were pretty constant the whole time.