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