<Edit> Where's the support on this - this is a real problem, very few views, no replies? Is it just expected and ok that the bid groups will fail when they are most useful? <end edit>

Hi, I've searched and discovered this has been discussed a lot, but I've had a failure with bid groups that doesn't seem to be explained by the discussions.

I've been trying to snipe a cheap iPod and have had an ongoing bidgroup for the purpose. They've all ended in bid too low until a couple of days ago. I had bids on items:

320140346176, 28/07/2007 9:41:19 AM
320140346301, 28/07/2007 9:42:04 AM and
220133893780, 28/07/2007 9:45:03 AM

First too ended in Bid Too Low, but the last one showed Unresolved Bidgroup item. My max bid was $123.57 where the last price was $39.99. Why was the bid not placed? I had a lead time of 8 seconds and the Auctions were 3 minutes apart.

Everything I read suggests that around 30 seconds between ending times is normally safe for bid groups.

Additionally I notice that the preceeding item went to Bid Too Low status a whole day before the item closed, so there should not have been any problem.

This is so frustratig as it was exactly the sort of bargain I was using AS to try and get.

Any ideas why this failed?

Brad

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Brad,

Ok, so I've had AS engineers look at it and it all makes sense, there is a bug but only with the reported error message. This was interesting.

Here is their support response:

Hi Brad,

Thanks for following up with us regarding this matter! ...and I apologize for the confusion this issue has caused. As Sam previously stated, the "Unresolved Bid Group" status is usually returned when we snipe(A) becomes cancelled automatically because were unable to confirm the end-of auction status of the previous snipe(B) in the bid group by the time snipe(A) is scheduled to be launched. It also typically takes less than 30 seconds from an auction‘s end for us to confirm the end-of-auction status of an item, so your understanding that the end times of snipes in a bid group just need to be 30 seconds apart is also correct.

In this case, we were actually unable to place your bid on item # 220133893780 because the seller ended the item early. You can verify this by visiting the auction using the following link, http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220133893780, where you will notice the message "The seller ended this listing early because of an error in the listing.". I ran this case by our engineering department and, apparently, the reason this status message is displayed next to the item is because the "Unresolved Bidgroup Item" is the default "failed snipe" status we display next to bid group items when the system is confused. This snipe really should have been stamped with "Ended Early" status, but we‘ve been having some problems with that status lately that we‘ll be addressing with a future release.

Sincerely,
Michael Davies
Customer Support Manager