Although AS made me discover some time ago the pleasure to snipe and win, I finally gave up and decided I should move to another service provider.
Reasons are mainly the numerous problems encountered with the sniping lead time, and the answers I got from AS support. Not only did I have to pay for a 'snipe' placed about one hour before auction ends, I also noticed variable lead time depending on the hour - like you all actually. The usual answer from AS is eBay slowness, but hey, as far as the other bidding softwares are concerned, how do they perform ?...
So I made a quick google search with "snipe ebay" and got dozen of answers ! Including comparisons etc... I finally found out that I could get a better service, way cheaper :-) Eg. illimited for $5/month, or as low as 16cts per snipe, etc... And even a free tool under Linux, yes free ! The drawback is that you need to have a Linux machine connected on the internet on a full time basis, of course...
I have a very few dollars remaining here, that I will consume from time to time, for eBay items for which the final price will not exceed $25. All the other snipes will be placed using another web-based sniping software, and you know what ? Even on Sundays evenings, even on the hour, for a requested lead time of 10 secs, this site performs with less than 1 seconde of difference, that is 11 secs for 10 secs... Not too bad
And my conclusion is that these problems with lead time are on AS' side rather than eBay's...Feel free to comment on this post, but don't forget that most if not all of the sniping softwares can be tested free of charge, so you might want to make your own opinion as well.
Best to you, and happy sniping,
AG