quote:
Since my thread here was linked to this one I'll add my comments here as well. It states my opinions on why lead-time adjustment on AS part is wrong.
To AS Staff: Increasing the lead time on bids to ensure processing while stating in your user FAQ and guides that you DONT increase bid times is misleading. You need to make it CLEAR to your users that AS tweaks lead-times based on internet traffic forecasts to ensure bid processing. Whether or not this is actually a sniping service enhancement is debatable. Regardless, users expect a service to perform how it states it will perform. When you clearly state in your literature that the risk of loosing a bid because of traffic is placed on the user, then you need to stick to that and not increase the lead-time to ensure bid processing. If you are increasing lead-times to ensure bid processing you need to clarify your company literature.
I prefer to decide whether or not to take the risk of not having a bid placed in time when using a sniping service. I think it’s a conflict of interests for AS to tweak lead-times--especially without properly disclosing it to their users. I don’t see AS benevolently increasing lead-time for its users ensuring a possible win at the expense of a bid war or out bid, but rather AS maximizing profit by ensuring winning auctions at the expense of customer choice. I will continue to see it this way until AS makes it clear to me and its current user base that its policy is to tweak lead-times to ensure bid processing.
PB
R2,
Adam told me 'I was able to [refresh and] bid no problem, [AS] was smoking crack.' At this point I really can't disagree with him. I think it's time AS changed its literature to reflect the fact that it compensates lead-times to ensure processing at both ends of the ether. By not doing so, AS is misleading their customers on how their service operates. Whether or not you see lead-time tweaking as a good thing (tm) or a bad thing (tm) is moot. The fact of the matter is that it's a practice that's not concurrent with their posted operating procedure.
In my opinion, tweaking takes away customer choice to take risks regarding the placement of their bid. This risk is exactly what makes AS a sniping service. If a user wants to ENSURE their bid gets placed, they can make a lead-time of 30-15 sec. If a user wants to take moderate risks, 15-10 sec. And high risk would be lower.
PB
Edit: Puppy, in any case I would gladly take not winning the auction due to the bid not being processed than take the risk of AS errantly placing a bid 45 sec early--or even 1 second earlier than the time I choose. And understanding that risk, I wouldn't have come here to post about it.
R2 you are correct that I would not have won if AS had not placed my bid early. The auction would have ended with two bids of 175 with Adam as the winner, which would have been fine by me. Our bidding the same ammount was a coincidence in our judgement of the item value.
He thought 175 was a nice round number to enter in at the last second. KODT #1 would have come around again eventually, and when it did, I wouldn't have had to worry about Adam bidding on it.