I have been having periodic errors all week. I have never seen a server upgrade take 3 days. You guys are going to lose some valuable customers over this, along with myself. I use AS to place alot of my bids, but unreliable sniping, excessive downtime, website downtime most of this week, etc--this sucks and I am not sure I can even depend on AS to properly place my bids anymore.

Hello,

While I can understand your frustrations with our service over the last couple of days, please know that we are doing everything we can to correct these problems.

Our server went down 36 hours before it was scheduled to be replaced and we currently have every possible resource allocated to resolving this issue.

We value all of our customers and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience. Please contact customer support for any missed snipe or credit issues http://support.auctionsniper.com.

Thanks for your understanding,

Steve
Auction Sniper Product Manager

Do you not have any backup/contingency systems in place? What if the server had gone down and you didn't have a replacement waiting in the wings.

You should have a backup for every server online, which kicks in automatically (like the back-up generator for our house), in case any one -- or all -- fail for no reason.

You state that you are working to correct these problems. What are you doing to prevent them from happening in the future?

If a sniper is not reliable, it is worthless.

Hi Barb,

Thanks for your question. As far as building extra redundancy, we are currently doing just that. We will now have servers in two different geographical locations so that a problem like this won't happen again.

We did have backup systems in place, but without clearing a cache or contacting the IP addresses individually, some people weren't able to access the backup system.

It was a bit of bad luck that our hardware failed during the same time period as a program error placed snipes early, which increased problems exponentially.

Please know that we are committed to being the reliable and trustworthy service you can count on, and that we regret any problems or mistrust we have caused you.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Respectfully,

Steve
Auction Sniper Product Manager

Hi Steve,

Thank you -- I'm pleased to hear that.

If you had these redundant servers placing snipes redundantly as well, that would be even better -- if one server failed, the snipe placed by the other one would get through.

While it is frustrating to be unable to access AS to place, cancel or edit a snipe, you are still in a position to snipe manually because you KNOW AS is unavailable. But if you are relying on a sniper and it doesn't fire, you're screwed, especially since AS never notifies us when our snipes MIGHT fail.

What else are you doing to improve service?

Barb

Hi Barb,

That's a great question. For one, we have just completed a very substantial investment in new equipment and hardware for the Auction Sniper infrastructure.

In addition to that I am working on a program that will open up Auction Sniper to our community. This entails the sharing of missed sniper percentages and any weekly down times.

We want you, our community, to have visibility into our product so you can have a foundation for trust and confidence and the ability to make informed decisions.

There are many changes slated for the coming weeks, including reduction of lead times and a full site redesign.

Keep and eye out for these exciting changes, and as always, let us know how you think we're doing.

Respectfully,

Steve
Auction Sniper Product Manager

quote:

Originally posted by Sniper Steve:

There are many changes ... including reduction of lead times and a full site redesign.

Good news!

R2