Website Interruption Procedures

In the event of a website interruption or downtime during auction closing (generally between 6-9:30PM CST), we have the right to extend impacted auctions in accordance with our website interruption policy.   A large percentage of bids come in during the last minutes of the auction, this policy allows us to protect sellers, bidders, and other affiliates in the event of unplanned downtime.  

OAS clients have been instructed to create their own policies to address downtime.    

• K-BID's Website Interruption Policy: 
• K-BID is committed to doing everything possible to ensure the reliability of our website. Unfortunately, there are factors outside our control that can impact access to K-BID.com. If K-BID.com becomes inaccessible at any point during an auction closing, the following protocol will be followed:
• Auctions that have closed prior to the website going down, will remain closed and the winning bidder invoices will be sent out.
• Auctions in the process of closing, regardless of how many lots have closed or have yet to close, will be reopened and the auction closing will be extended by 24 hours. Lots that closed prior to the website going down, will be reopened for bidding; the winning bidder will be the lead bidder upon the website becoming accessible again.
• Auctions scheduled to begin closing during the time the website is inaccessible, and for the 15 minutes following the website coming back online, will have the auction closing time extended by 24 hours.
• Auctions scheduled to begin closing when the website becomes accessible after an extended website interruption, will have the auction closing extended by 24 hours.
• K-BID reserves the right to determine when an auction closing will be extended by 24 hours. K-BID will use the home page of the website to communicate the impact a website interruption will have on auctions closing or scheduled to close that day.

Dev. Steps for Website Interruption: 

We do not want you to be overwhelmed with customer communications during this time.  I will plan to handle customer communications so you can focus on fixing the issue.   

• Text/call Chris at 612-618-9491, it's likely I've already been alerted by an affiliate if the site goes down during auction close.   
• Identify issue and provide estimate for return. 
• Start identifying which auctions have been impacted.  
• Follow steps below.  

Administrative Steps for Website Interruption:

Monitor the interruption – identify the auctions that are impacted at the time the interruption occurred to the time the website was 100% back online. 

If the auction was completely closed prior to the interruption.  

• Nothing has to be done and the results will stand.   

If the auction started to close before or during the interruption, but has not completely closed yet and invoices have not been generated.  

Edit Auction

• Change Auction Close to 24 hours later (or as close as possible)
• Add to Auction Title: AUCTION RESCHEDULE DUE TO WEBSITE INTERRUPTION

 If the auction started to close before or during the interruption, and finished the process of closing.   

• Reopen the auction and change the auction status to "Draft."  This will allow us to restart the auction with current bids where they are for a future close date. 
• Remove invoices that have been created from the bidder dashboard.  

Affiliate Communication:  

Many affiliates will be contacting us if the site goes down.  As soon as possible, I will make a post in the affiliate FB group and email the affiliates impacted or all affiliates.     

Bidder Communication:  

• Create Blog post explaining the situation:  https://www.k-bid.com/blog/112/Website+Interruption+Notice+4-25-21  
• Link Blog Post on homepage banner with notice about auctions being extended: 

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Home Page Top Section

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• Email impacted buyers with link to the blog post.  

Development Considerations going forward:

• the ability to utilize our transactional email system through mail gun to email bidders on a per auction basis.  Currently, I can email through our marketing email platform (IContact) but that does not account for bidders who've opted out of our email lists.
• The ability to change an auction from invoices generated to draft status, that removes the invoices that were generated. 
•  Look into the possibility of halting the transactional emails for invoice notifications for buyers when we know that the site will be down for an extended period of time.  Currently, I believe, that the batch invoice notifications will automatically send once we get back up and running.