Steve -- to reply to your question --
Sara indicates that AS employs proprietary, secret technlogy utilizing data collected on ebay response time to determine the exact time that AS needs to place a bid so as to ensure that it will be accepted by Ebay at the snipe time specified by the user.
If the system were effective, we would not see early bids placed. We'd see our snipes placed at the times specified, with perhaps we'd see a 1 or 2 second margin. However, it is apparent that this secret technology is ineffective. For whatever reason, during peak traffic, the system does not accurately calculate ebay's response time, and enters bids as much as 10-20 seconds prior to the end of the auction, regardless of the snipe time specified by the user.
Any bid entered more than 5 seconds prior to auction closing is not a snipe. Its a bid. It allows other competing bidders to enter last second bids. We snipers are smarter than that. We enter our max amount as a snipe, and rely on the system to deliver that snipe "at the last second, automatically." But other bidders who don't understand the system are watching the high bid amount at the end of tha auction and will bid to beat the high bid.
When AS works as advertised, the snipe is delivered in the last few seconds and the dorks with the stopwatches lose out - they don't have time to react to our snipes.
When AS does not work as advertised and delivers early bids instead of last second snipes, we lose.
AS receives a fee whenever an bid results in a win, regardless of the performance of the system in delivering snipes per user specifications. I have no problem with AS making adjustments to the bid time, provided that my snipes hit ebay accurately, at the last second. Delivering snipes early is the easy way out. Improving the system so as to accurately deliver snipes might be the more difficult path, but it is the RIGHT path.
Perhaps AS should credit any fees on snipes that reach ebay more than 2 seconds ahead of the specified snipe time, win or lose. Now THAT would provide an incentive for AS to fix the bugs and get the snipes delivered accurately.
Jeff