I lost 6 auctions Mike, because:
A) Your system malfunctioned, "had difficulties", or what many of us are saying, "crashed"...
B) Auctionsniper did NOT send out a mass emailing to all its members/customers alerting us that the system would be down for several hours.
Now, I and all my friends who use Auctionsniper, are wondering why you didn't alert us. Or rather, why you do not have a system that does. I work at UCLA, and I have sent out many mass emailings to over 26,000 students (the entire student population) - my job there; I have also worked at large companies that - when their system went down - they would send out over 132,000 emails to tell their customers that there was a temporary problem with the site and it would be up again in several hours. (a spammer can email 2 MILLION people in 10 seconds!)
I do not think this is something you cannot do because it has already been done many times before by others. It is also the responsible thing to do for your customers so we won't lose our auctions.
And if you suggest that we are supposed to check your site every time we have an Ebay auction closing - that is illogical, unreasonable, unprofessional and just plain lazy on your part.
I ask you: WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO SO THAT WHEN YOUR SYSTEM GOES DOWN AGAIN - AND IT WILL - AS EVERY COMPUTER SYSTEM DOES AT SOME TIME - WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO TO PROTECT YOUR CUSTOMERS FROM LOSING THEIR AUCTIONS?
ARE YOU GOING TO INSTITUTE A SYSTEM TO EMAIL AN ALERT TO US SO WE CAN FIND OUT EARLY ON? Or do you plan on ignoring us? What will you do next time? Do you have new plans?
Before you answer - just put yourself in our shoes. If you have any empathy - think of how we feel about losing auctions on things we would have won - some auction items will never come up again, like vintage photographs. You can't be just a computer IT robot who says, "Gee, I'm sorry folks, computer difficulties, you know. You lost auctions? Toooo bad, gee." GET REAL, and think of your customers. We use you because we trust you. Provide us with action/protection to match our trust.
We are waiting to hear what you are going to do if and when this happens again. Another way of putting it - DO YOU HAVE ANY CONTINGENCY PLANS TO PROTECT YOUR CUSTOMERS IN CASE OF A SYSTEM MALFUNCTION THAT LASTS FOR HOURS?
If not - will you immediately start work on some kind of alert system that reaches out to your customers immediately in case of major malfunctions? What are you doing now?
I hope Auctionsniper is not just about just collecting our money and then ignoring us when your systems falters. What will you do? We all want to know.
Lawrence Brooks