Nah, the AS bug deleted the whole bidgroup, and I wasn't reusing an old bidgroup. In fact, the AS bug interpreted the erroneous 'cancellation' the same as having won the auction! It wouldn't let me rebuild the bidgroup under the same name, so I removed the record of the failed auction when I rebuilt the bidgroup.
Anyway, this is beside the point, because I'm not asking for help. I'm just drawing the attention of AS programmers and users to a bug in AS software, that's probably trashing a couple of percent of auctions. I'm doing y'all a favor. Relax.
Third point: you're right that a small minority of ebay auctions are won using AS. However, almost certainly, a much higher proportion use AS in certain categories. A lot of used camera buyers and collectors use AS, but there's no way to know if it's a majority. Obviously the AS corporation would never disclose this kind of proprietary information. But from the camera collector mailing lists, it appears AS is becoming part of the culture.
This leads to the interesting situation where an AS failure leads to a weirdly low final price, the same as an ebay crash just before closure. I think I've seen this happen twice now, but of course there's no way to prove it.
Fourth point: I'm aware my bid may not have won. (Duhhh . . . )