Hi all,

Before I go off on AS I'd like to first say I've had nothing but wins .. and I'm talkin' dozens here. Ok, here's the issue I have as of now. I set the time to "10" sec (I always do) but for some reason, as you can see below, the snipe went off a good 31 sec before the auction close!! The point of AS is to NOT give an opponent a chance to come back with a bid. I believe I would have had this item for $81.00 and not $91 if AS had fired at the approx "10" sec time frame. Even 15 would be fine. Yes, I can understand how in "primetime", especially when an auction ends Sunday night at an even hour, one might increase a snipe to 15 or 20 sec BUT this thing ended at 11 am PST!! Hardly primetime! This is an instance when AS is surely at fault here. I hope auctionsniper support investigates this one. Damn, if I wanted 31 sec then I'd snipe manually. I count on AS to be more or less accurate and not be 3x off target! Truthfully, I'd wish for AS to credit (as in refund) me for $10 USD. Yes, I am oficially asking for a $10 refund payable to my PayPal account. Thank you. -----Daniel

http://offer.ebay.com/ws3/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=3701664985

Hi Daniel

You would have won for $10 less? Maybe, but maybe not. I've seen manual snippers place 7 bids in less than a minuet. Someone that fast can beat a 10 second lead time quite often. bassman placed his first bid at 3 minuets till close. He saw your bid, but then waited till 2 seconds and TRIED to do to you what you did to him. Why did he wait that long? He probably thought you were manually sniping as well, and was afraid you would counter again if he bid earlier.

Doesn't feel right to say 'congrats' on your win...
so I'll say congrats on your previous wins.

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Originally posted by Puppy Raiser:
Hi Daniel

You would have won for $10 less? Maybe, but maybe not. I've seen manual snippers place 7 bids in less than a minuet. Someone that fast can beat a 10 second lead time quite often. bassman placed his first bid at 3 minuets till close. He saw your bid, but then waited till 2 seconds and TRIED to do to you what you did to him. Why did he wait that long? He probably thought you were manually sniping as well, and was afraid you would counter again if he bid earlier.

Doesn't feel right to say 'congrats' on your win...
so I'll say congrats on your previous wins.

http://home.twmi.rr.com/keithspage/images/dog001.gif http://home.twmi.rr.com/keithspage/images/life.gif

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With all due respect, it would be practically impossible to get in a bid (manually) at 10 sec or less, if the "other" bidder saw my bid get in at that time. He'd then have to go through the mental and physical tasks of outbidding me at 10 sec or less - unlikely he'd be successful.

Daniel

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Originally posted by Puppy Raiser:
Why did he wait that long?

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The question should have been "why was he allowed to wait that long and know my bid a full 31 sec before auction close ?". If AS bid at around 10 sec, then he'd be scrambling to counter-bid - he'd be most unsuccessful, especially when he wasn't expecting it. At 31 sec he knew of my intentions .. he was ready and he could have placed in seconds before. ----Daniel

i agree with dan and anyone else that complains about the snipe being posted too early - retalitory bids will always drive up the price. some of you will argue that 10 seconds isn't long, is very difficult to place a manual retalitory bid, etc. i don't agree with this at all, i have pulled off plenty of wins with a manual snipe in the last few seconds. with a good size retalitory bid ready to counter and a second window next to it quickly refreshing it's definately possible to get good at posting last 3 second bids. i don't know about floating dan 10 bucks but would definately recommend he use a lead time of 2 seconds. the only reason i don't put 1 is because i'm scared of a potential situation where the bid just doesn't get in.

i understand with latency and system load AS is playing a little guessing game - but when dan puts in 10 second lead and AS does it with 31 that is a real bad guess.

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This is an instance when AS is surely at fault here.

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Ha ha ha. Just because it's at 11am?

Lets see.... who here knows more about sniping? Us or you? Why is it that you think you have all those wins?

Leave the sniping to us. It's what you pay us for, we know best. We want you to win because if you lose we dont get paid. Why on earth would we do something that would decrease our chances of getting paid? We wouldnt.

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don't agree with this at all, i have pulled off plenty of wins with a manual snipe in the last few seconds.

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Not on the auctions we snipe early on. So your argument is pointless. If all you did was snipe such items we'd have a 90% win ratio, and you'd have maybe a 35% ratio. Manual snipers cant compete with an automated system that has millions of historical snipes as guide data, and can measure eBays speed in real time from the snipes going through the system at that point.

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Yes, I am oficially asking for a $10 refund payable to my PayPal account. Thank you. -----Daniel

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Request denied. If you think you'll win a higher % of snipes manually sniping go for it. You wont, and as for snipes such as this when we bid early you'll lose even more. But please do manually snipe every auction that ends on an hour. When you've dont 50 or so come back and let us know how many you lost.

PS: the snipe was 41 seconds early, not 31.

sara i don't agree, i think i can manually snipe auctions just as well if not better than auction sniper. i use auction sniper because i'm watching a ton of auctions and don't want to sit around my house all day on ebay, and don't want to get up at 7am just to watch an auction when i could be sleeping instead. in terms of sniper prowess i am fully confident i could match this system though!

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Originally posted by Sniper Sara B.:
[QUOTE]
PS: the snipe was 41 seconds early, not 31.

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It's even worse that I thought! In all this "excitement" I miscalculated .. Yes, it's a FULL 41 sec prior to auction end. I would really like an explanation, one that makes sense, of why AS was in the right to do this ? 41 sec at 11 am with only 2 bidders (myself included), when I put in 10 sec and when countless times I've heard all you guys say that this amount of time (10 - 15) sec was plenty of time even on weekends, is BEYOND me! "Refund denied" ?? WHY ??? FACT remains that a manual sniper outbid AS and I lost to a manual sniper.

Daniel

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Originally posted by Sniper Sara B.:
[QUOTE]
Lets see.... who here knows more about sniping? Us or you? Why is it that you think you have all those wins?

Leave the sniping to us. It's what you pay us for, we know best. We want you to win because if you lose we dont get paid. Why on earth would we do something that would decrease our chances of getting paid? We wouldnt.

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Once again, I give FULL credit to my past wins to AuctionSniper but mostly to the fact that I can be away from my pc or not have to go through the stress of doing this manually etc .. BUT if you feel so confident about AS why give us the option of putting in our own "lead time" ? Why in the hell would I want to put in 10 sec if you sniped at 41 ? What's the point then ? It defeated the whole purpose of "sniping" and surprise.

Daniel

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Originally posted by taveirne:
sara i don't agree, i think i can manually snipe auctions just as well if not better than auction sniper. i use auction sniper because i'm watching a ton of auctions and don't want to sit around my house all day on ebay, and don't want to get up at 7am just to watch an auction when i could be sleeping instead. in terms of sniper prowess i am fully confident i could match this system though!

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Agreed. AS is fabulous when you want to sit back, relax or go out knowing your snipe will go through. Forget lead-times though. They're hit & miss. If you really wanna "snipe", either use AS at non-primetime hrs or just manually proxy bid at 30 sec.

Daniel

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Originally posted by taveirne:
i agree with dan and anyone else that complains about the snipe being posted too early - retalitory bids will always drive up the price. some of you will argue that 10 seconds isn't long, is very difficult to place a manual retalitory bid, etc. i don't agree with this at all, i have pulled off plenty of wins with a manual snipe in the last few seconds. with a good size retalitory bid ready to counter and a second window next to it quickly refreshing it's definately possible to get good at posting last 3 second bids. i don't know about floating dan 10 bucks but would definately recommend he use a lead time of 2 seconds. the only reason i don't put 1 is because i'm scared of a potential situation where the bid just doesn't get in.

i understand with latency and system load AS is playing a little guessing game - but when dan puts in 10 second lead and AS does it with 31 that is a real bad guess.

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Precisely. Exactly what I'm talking about. Thanks! But it's 41 sec so it's even worse. As a result price got inflated by 10 bucks. Person knew 41 sec before auction close what my intention was and he was ready. If I'd hit him at 10 sec, and he wouldn't know it and he didn't use proxy (which he did not) then there's no way he could have countered back.

Daniel

...this is the only forum where people get MAD about WINNING ebay auctions!

If you don't like what you end up having to pay, don't set your snipe so high!

Jabbergah                                                    

Thats a particularly good point Jab - BRAVO!!!

I think its best to focus on the fact that you won - your bid made it in - you can never know whether the outcome would of been different.

It would of been real different if you had of gotten a "Bid not in time" message.

Lexie

Daniel, how do you know the other bidder was a manual sniper? You have no way of knowing whether he bid manually or through a service.

On this forum it has been stated literally hundreds of times that auctions that end exactly on the quarter hour are given extra lead times because of the intensely high amount of eBay traffic during these times. While it may sting you that your bid was placed early, the reality is that you won, and you likely won because the bid was placed early. AS's highly experienced computers know the odds during these times, and they adjusted accordingly. While it is true that one may occasionally luck out and be able to get through in less time, the probability is that he would not, and AS compensates for that. I have seen many times where snipes placed at 20, 25 or even 30 seconds on quarter hours did not get through in time, there was so much eBay traffic

If AS did not do this, they would get many more posts in here complaining that snipes did not reach in time. As Sara has said before, they get complaints either way (snipes placed too early, too late), so they would rather have the small number of too early complaints, then the avalanche of too late complaints, which would mean no revenue for AS.

I am getting in a little late on this thread...but I have the same complaint....I just lost about 4 auctions because of this...The person I was bidding against was outbid by my AS bids and then came back and outbid me with 5 secs left....AS placed my bid approx 30 secs early on all bids....If AS can not make bids according to what the customer wants....then why even ask tje length of lead time....I can and often do outbid automatic snipers manually....I always use 3 second lead time with AS and I guess they think its 30 secs.

From now on I will only use AS when there are a large number of auctions ending within the same minute...but anything over 60 secs apart, I can definately bid much closer to the end time than AS.

By the way....I am not new at this... I have been using AS for over 4 years.....I have never had this issue before. Lately there are a lot of minor issues adding up.

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Manual snipers cant compete with an automated system that has millions of historical snipes as guide data, and can measure eBays speed in real time from the snipes going through the system at that point.

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I think I'm going to be one of the dissenting votes here - but please don't flame me! I like and use AS for what it is and does. It is certainly more reliable than the previous, now unsupported, software package I was using. However ... if AS were measuring eBay's speed properly then it doesn't make sense that bids would go in early. Here's my thinking (which may very well be incorrect):

AS: Hello eBay, it's now 00:00:00
eBay: Hi AS, I think it's 00:00:03

AS now thinks there's a 3 second lag. Ok, add 3 seconds to the bidders snipe time and bid when appropriate.

This isn't what happens in the majority of complaints (and I'm not complaining). Most of the time 20 sec, 30 sec and more are being added. Perhaps this relates to AS assuming that 'special ending times' require more padding? I don't know.

How about a compromise from AS? Add a user setting that says, "Don't change my lead time"? If you are concerned about AS loosing revenue when the lag time prevents a bid from being placed then perhaps you could charge .05 each time it happens? Send the bidder an email which clearly states "Your bid could not be placed because your lead time was too short. You have told us not to extend your lead time during busy eBay loads. To change this setting, please click on this link...."

Just a thought.

Mother Mary Says, 'HONESTLY! you're just ruint!'

Or maybe adding 30 seconds is too much? It seems to me that if AS were adding time to compensate for the lag, they would add 30 seconds, but the lag would eat up ten or 20 of those seconds, so the snipe would still get in 10 seconds early. But all these complaints are from people whose bids were accepted 30-40 seconds early -- so what happened to the lag?

But then, we have to remember that AS MAY VERY WELL BE adding extra time to lots of OTHER auctions, and the lag eats up the extra time so it LOOKS like the snipe was placed exactly when we wanted it to be. We only hear about the ones that have an obvious (negative) effect on the outcome -- what about those that do exactly what they're supposed to do?

Personally, I prefer to assume that AS knows what it's doing, and if it adds time to my auction it had a good reason to do so. It goes against AS's interests to do anything that would DECREASE my odds of winning...

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Originally posted by boone62:
By the way....I am not new at this... I have been using AS for over 4 years.....I have never had this issue before. Lately there are a lot of minor issues adding up.

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That's pretty good--using AS for over four years, when it is a little over two years old.

You also state that you routinely beat automatic snipers with manual bids. How are you able to tell which bids are automatic snipes and which are manual snipes?

Sounds more than a bit fishy to me.

41 seconds before close doesn't seem like much. however, it was really 31 seconds before the intended snipe right? 31 seconds, to me anyway, seems like a lot, especially for an automated program.

refund? not if you got the item within your max bid.

imho, you have a legitimate complaint on the timing, but you won what you wanted so no $.