With all the hoo-hah about this past Sunday's extreme slowness on eBay's part, one wonders if some clever programmer at AS could hack up a script to ping eBay every few minutes to get an idea of how responsive it is.
Then the current ping (or a running average) could be put right on the AS home page, so instead of a hundred AS users all trying to figure out how responsive eBay is now, they could just look at eBay from AS's perspective.
Of course, there would have to be a disclaimer saying that the responsiveness figure is not authoritative, AS takes no responsibility for it, etc, etc. Otherwise all the complaints about lost snipes will turn into complaints about the responsiveness indicator!
A graph would also be nice so that we can see how responsiveness varies by the hour, by the day, etc.
With the technology available today, I am sure this is possible. The only problem I see would be the buyer flipping back and forth and so forth, trying to keep track of the traffic....and then, changing their lead time up..back.. well you get the idea.
I like the idea in theory, we put it on a list, but it still may get nixed by the programmers.
Since snipes cant be edited within 2 minutes of the snipe being place it wouldnt be super useful, but I guess if eBay was running consistently slowly for a long time it could be. But in that case our software that snipes already handles extending your snipe lead time to match.
Although I appreciate your answer, I am still very confused. If AS adjusts snipe times for busy periods, why all the advice by users to increase snipe time to 15 seconds (from 8) on Sundays?
I'd like a definitive answer: should snipe times be increased by *users* for busy periods, or should snipe times remain the same and let AS handle the increase automatically?
Very good observation, Auto! I am assuming they don't adjust it enough or perhaps the program only allows a certain degree of adjustment. What about it, AS?
quote: If AS adjusts snipe times for busy periods, why all the advice by users to increase snipe time to 15 seconds (from 8) on Sundays?
Because eBay is so erratic that sometimes even our adjustments arent enough. Say eBay is running 8 seconds slow so we adjust by 8 seconds, but then when we place those snipes more people are using eBay and they slowed even more and now they are running 13 seconds slow. At that point 5 second lead time snipes are in jeopardy and any lead times less than 5 would likely show up as "not in time."
We only adjust your snipe so that we still try and get it in at the lead time you specified. We dont take into account flucuations in eBays speed in processing snipes that may change from second to second and thus still cause your snipe to be late. Bigger lead times help cover that end for you.
i.e. if eBay is 20 seconds slow and you have a 15 second lead time even your gracious lead time wouldnt have saved you. But our adjustment by 20 seconds will have. So we do save many many snipes by our adjustments. But when there are big swings in eBays speed in handling a snipe we send then a snipe can be missed if it has a small lead time.
We do a pretty good job. Even last night, eBays busiest night this year only 1 in 200 snipes was "Not in time." And I can tell you that a TON of people still use 1,2,3, and 4 second lead times. Mostly 1 and 2 were the ones losing.
Sara, thank you for explaining it so well! We all appreciate understanding how things work. This way, we can better judge what we should be doing with our snipes.
Compounding this issue are those folks that get fairly passionate if their snipes are placed too early. They can get very vocal about a 5 second snipe being placed 10 seconds before the close of the auction. Makes for a very difficult balancing act AS has to play.
I kinda like that suggestion. We'll keep it in mind as it could be useful. I'm not sure how hard it would be to do. If it's not too much work you just might see it.
Most snipes we miss or are late are due to the the dumb hour and half hour things or random eBay burps that even a 10 second lead wouldnt help with. On a day like today maybe 1 in 400 snipes would miss. And that would include all 1,2,3 second snipes. Odds are slightly higher it's one of those that was late.
I've had great success (Sarah, did you look?) with a 3 sec lead until just the last couple months. I'm not really much of a gambler but cutting it close makes it more fun somehow.
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Mrs. M
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