Update! Our ISP is currently experiencing some technical difficulties that have caused the Auction Sniper website to be unavailable. Unfortunately, as a result, any snipes that are scheduled during this period of down time will be unable to be placed successfully.
I will post further updates on this issue when additional information becomes available. In the mean time, if you are relying on Auction Sniper to place bids on auctions that are ending soon, I recommend bidding on those directly through the eBay website.
We are currently experiencing some hardware related technical difficulties that have caused the Auction Sniper services to be unavailable. Unfortunately, we are unable to submit bids on behalf of our customers during this downtime so, if you have any snipes scheduled to be placed over the next few hours, I recommend planning to place bids on those items directly through eBay.
I will be posting further updates on this issue on the following thread of our community forum as additional information becomes available:
I was curious as to why situations like this aren't emailed to the community. I normally set my snipes 4-5 hours in advance but for the people that set snipes, let's say 24 hours ago...when are they going to be aware of this? When the auction is lost? This affects the community as both sellers and buyers.
The only reason I found out the site was down was because my bid didn't go through. I placed about 15 snipes last night and as the first auction ended, nothing happened. I tried to check the website, but you can't access it right now. I checked my email thinking I would get the usual snipe report and there was nothing there. So I missed 2 auctions today. First time this has happened to me, and looks like I am going to have to spend more time in front of the computer. The 2 auctions cost me about $2-300 worth of lost profit.
Considering it is now been an hour since the original post saying the system was down was posted at 12:48 how hard would it be to set up a mass email to let everyone know the system is down??????????.
Posting a notice that Auction Sniper's servers are down -- in a forum apparently hosted by said servers after the fact -- is totally lame and inadequate. I learned of the failure by having my snipes fail to be submitted.
AuctionSniper needs to build redundancy in their system, at several levels. First, bids can be submitted more than once, by two different server sites. Competitors do this now. Second, a separate notification service should be set up, on a different server, to email people who will be affected by an outage of considerable magnitude.
As it is, the only remedy that may motivate changes here is for people like myself to shift business away from AuctionSniper, unless of course AuctionSniper agrees publicly to make the necessary changes now.
I believe I may join you in going to bidnabber or something. Here I have multiple auctions closing right this minute, some with over 20 watchers, and not 1 last second bid on anything....not to mention I have to sit here for a couple of upcoming auctions as well and babysit proxy bids
Update - Our technical department is still working on getting the Auction Sniper website and services bank online as soon as possible and, I hope to be able to provide some additional details soon. I'll post again to this thread as soon as further updates on this situation become available.
We apologize for any inconveniences this downtime is causing and we appreciate your continued patience as we deal with this difficult situation.
Mike D, Anyone who tries to access the main site, or tries to make a new Snipe already knows the server is belly up, but thanks for stating the obvious. Even though I don't see a history of notifications that the site was down, I have noticed several times over the past 4-6 weeks when it was down, or unaccessible. Have you upgraded to a suite of old 386's. This site used to be very dependable. Now, I cross my fingers every time I place a bid through auction sniper, assuming I can log on to the site to place the bid. Since eBay is raking in record profits, I would guess you folks aren't doing too bad. Why not make some drastically needed improvements?
Update - I just received notification from our technical team that the Auction Sniper bidding services have been restored and that the web site is up and running again, but only on limited hardware. As a result, any snipes scheduled to be placed from 5:00 PM PT and later should be placed successfully, however, the web interface will most likely exhibit some sluggishness and fail to respond at times because it is running at diminished capacity.
Our IT team will be traveling down to our data center later tonight to resolve the situation completely and restore the functionality of the web site to its usual form. There may be a few brief service interruptions during the night time as we add new hardware to our system but they should barely be noticeable if at all.
We sincerely apologize for any inconveniences this issue has caused, and we will continue to work hard to have the Auction Sniper website running at full speed again by tomorrow morning. Thank you for your patience with respect to this matter.
I'm a once-a-month type auctionsniper user. I don't have a big problem with the site being down. But this question has not been addressed in the current topic. Sure, if we can't get into the site, we will just bid our own buys like we did in covered-wagon days. But if we do place a snipe in your hands, will one of these breakdowns kill the snipe we have already set up? I'd hate to lose a thousand-dollar item when I didn't see any hint of trouble.
Very disappointed in the continued failure of AuctionSniper to post my snipes. I've lost dozens of auctions because the service is so unreliable. It's inexcusable given all of the profit made from my accounts. I'm looking for a new service which is RELIABLE! I'd be bankrupt if I managed my businesses like this.
As with any internet business when something goes wrong it tends to be very VERY noticable.
One thing is for sure... Auction Sniper doesn't want to be offline or missing our bids.
I dont agree with those posting details of similar websites and I'm surprised they let you get away with that.... Personally for an important item I would use sniper as a backup and bid manually. I guess the lazy could use one of those similar services and put the bid in twice
Anyway Mike...thanks for keeping us informed and dont miss my bids tomorrow lol !!
I too lost an important bid today. I foolishly placed another bid on this site when it was restored, and down it went. Then I just crossed my fingers that the bid would go through even though I couldn't get on the site. Didn't work. Isn't there a way to email us the info about technical problems?
I lost 6 items today because AUCTIONSNIPER CRASHED. 'Mike the Auctionsniper guy' says: "Update! Our ISP is currently experiencing some technical difficulties..." Hey Mike -- why didn't you send out a mass emailing/Alert! to all of your customers that the service was malfunctioning - or don't you even CARE about your customers? I'm angry - what are we all supposed to do every time we have an Ebay auction ending - CHECK AUCTIONSNIPER TO SEE IF IT'S WORKING? HUH, MIKE? I work at UCLA, and we can easily email THOUSANDS, literally every student, if need be. I've worked at large companies where they email their customers if there's a sudden system failure and it's down. WHY DIDN'T AUCTIONSNIPER CARE ENOUGH TO LET US KNOW IT WASN'T WORKING? WHY DO WE HAVE TO CHECK THEIR SITE JUST TO FIND OUT IF IT'S WORKING?! I, and the rest of us, deserve better. This company has shown real lack of Professionalism and lack of concern for us (have you gotten one of those copy-and-paste emails when you complained that you lost an auction? Talk about insincerity!). As I said, we're paying money to Auctionsniper, and WE DESERVE BETTER!!!
Originally posted by JET: This tool, between the poor service and the usually rude forum board regulars (Rick, can't remember the others names but they're always here and ALWAYS rude) is the pits.
Nope, it just me. None of the others are “rude”. But, perhaps we differ on the meaning of “rude”. Leaving the name of a competitive sniping service – now to me, that’s rude – maybe even vindictive?
And, could I impose on you – in your past crusades to bash AS and me, when I reply you post something about “proving your point”. Do you think you could come up with something different?
P.S. Did AS miss placing a snipe for you yesterday?
The good news Laz is that when AS doesn't snipe you don't have to pay 'em any money! Probably not that much of a consolation though...
No idea why JET had to chip in to this posting - I thought they'd bogged off ages ago having been offended by (amongst others) my pointing out that reading the FAQs and the forums prior to ranting might save their time (and blood pressure)!
Update - I just spoke to our technical team again this morning and verified that they are still working to restore the Auction Sniper website to its usual state. The Auction Sniper website is running at limited capacity and scheduled snipes are being placed, however, while some users may be able to access their accounts, many others may notice that the site will produce server errors or not respond. We're hoping to have this situation fully resolved within the next couple hours.
I will post further updates on this thread, as well as the one entitled "Auction Sniper Technical Issue Updates (1/27/08) !!!" in our "News and "Updates" section, as additional information becomes available. In the mean time, your continued patience with respect to this matter is appreciated.
Good news! - I was just informed by our technical team that all of the Auction Sniper web servers are back online, so the Auction Sniper website should be fully accessible once again. We apologize for any inconveniences these circumstances have caused, and everyone's patience with regard to this matter has been greatly appreciated.
