Since Did Not Win isn't listed in the status descriptions, I'll assume this is the catch-all for items that don't fall into one of the other categories, and AS does not know if a sniper has won or not. (should that be changed to Unknown Status?)
Unfortunately, this makes bid groups stop bidding because the loss can't be verified.
How about emailing the sniper any time they have an auction with this status. Advise to check status at eBay and delete the snipe. Of course if they won the item, they should also delete the entire bid group it's in.
This seems like a software problem as I think that a query could be made on the item could be made to see if you have won it. That is only status which would be interesting to a group bidder. I went and read other posts on "Did not Win" and it sounds like most likely it is the bid did not make it in time. However really does not matter what the meaning is as long as the system could find out if you did win the item it could act rationally. I wonder if AuctionSniper uses the Ebay api. I guess I could pay the $100.00 for my own license and then fix the issues I have and see if there are other situations like this that can be handled.
Actually it shouldnt make bid groups stop. Since we know you didnt win. It's a catch all for when you didnt win, but we dont know why.
That usually happens when we dont get a reply back from eBay when we placed your snipe. It also happens if there is an unknown status before it in the bid group, and then we therefor don't snipe. So in that case it becomes a "Did not win."
The problem is you may never see the unknown because it's already been found by another robot we have that comes along and tries to figure out what an "unknown" is and give it a proper status. We though can tell by reviewing our logs. So probably that "did not win" was first an unknown that we later figured out was a loss but werent sure why and thus gave it an "did not win" status.
It also usually says "Did not win" in cases where you max bid is above the final winning bid. Otherwise it would be classified as a Loss. A did not win might have won, or might not have based on the winning bidders true proxy max bid.
quote: I wonder if AuctionSniper uses the Ebay api. I guess I could pay the $100.00 for my own license and then fix the issues I have and see if there are other situations like this that can be handled.
eBay won't allow snipe companies to use the API. Read the API license agreement, it's stated directly in it. Thus it would be much harder than you think. If we did use the API we'd be flawless of course. There is no eBay API call for placing a bid or buying an item.
eBays API is pitiful when it comes to buyer funcationality anyways, it was built to suit sellers and anything for buyers is a hack afterthought. They dont even have a reliable way to tell if buyer xyz won item 123. The most simple thing any buyer site would need.
It's amusing that every armchair programmer thinks they can do a better job than us. Fact is I'm sure we have the best, most reliable API out there for eBay buyers. Such programmers should send us their resumes, we're hiring
