Hi airplanenut,
I don’t see the issue as whether another sniper did, could-of, might-of, or should-of had enough time to respond to your snipe within the 40 seconds, NOR is it relevant that someone else’s snipes were placed on time, BUT the issue is that since you specified 4 seconds, why was it 40? I could suggest that you contact AS’ support, but they’ll give you a canned response about fluctuating response times, or that ebay’s computers had a brief case of hardening of the arteries.
This issue comes up semi-frequently. AS adjusts the lead-time based on *its* evaluation of the current response time from ebay. In “theory”, during the close of your auction, AS determined that it would need to place your snipe much earlier so as to get the snipe in “around” 4 seconds. Perhaps something changed in the last few seconds and it wasn’t necessary for AS to place your snipe that early. One way (maybe the only one) to find out is to contact the winning bidder and see if they placed a manual snipe, and see if they experienced a delayed response.
These earlier snipes tend to be on weekend evenings, or auctions that end on the exact quarter hour – these are times when ebay’s traffic is higher than normal.
AS has decided that it is more important to get the snipe placed, even if it’s 36, or 46, or 56 seconds early, than to risk running out of time by placing the snipe when the user requested it. It’s a judgment call on AS’ part. Most of the times AS hits the target, but there are time, such as this, when it places the snipe early. My preference is early is better than not at all, but not everyone agrees with that.
For what it’s worth, I have seen “hiccups” in ebay’s response time, that never get mentioned on ebay’s System Announcements page.