In the case of the "100-second snipe" I agreed that it appeared to be an anomaly. However, you don't seem to be aware that AS varies the preset time for a snipe when its monitoring of eBay bid reaction time indicates that the preset time is likely to be insufficient for eBay to register the snipe bid before auction close. This has been the source of much commentary, a lot of it adverse, over the pros and cons of adjusting a snipe in hopes that it will be accepted in time by eBay versus just submitting the snipe as preset and letting the chips fall where they may. It's a no-win situation for AS, which doesn't make any money if a snipe isn't submitted in time. If AS sends in the snipe with, say, 4 seconds left and it's a busy time at eBay, the sniper is likely to turn up in this Forum breathing fire and demanding to know why his snipe didn't go through. On the other hand, if AS adjusts the timing of the snipe and is successful in getting it through to eBay before auction close, the same sniper is likely to turn up in this Forum breathing fire and demanding to know why his timing was ignored or adjusted.
On balance, I think AS's course of adjusting the timing of a snipe -- within reason, not by a hundred seconds -- is preferable. In any case, it is not correct to say, as callmejack does, that "My guess is that if ebay is slow, AS sends the snipe that has the higher amount on time and the others (who will be outbidded anyway) a few seconds in advance. Could someone from AS confirm that?" I am not "from AS," I'm just a sniper like you folks, but I know that AS is all about submitting snipes, to the exclusion of considerations like "one snipe is higher than the other so that one goes in first." AS does not weigh one snipe against another, or compare to see whether more than one AS subscriber is bidding on the same item. They don't make the servers that could handle that kind of load.
The suggestion has been made that AS could offer its subscriber-snipers the option of indicating whether they want their preset time altered or not. I don't know whether AS could do that, or if they're planning to make that option available at some future time if they can.