After my first day as an AS user I set ALL my snipes to 15 seconds. Initially I'd used the default of 5 seconds, then upped it to 8 seconds, but was just not comfortable with the narrow margin I was seeing. This was because I got a bit paranoid after reading about the default of 5 seconds possibly not being enuf at certain times of the day and week. I have done a few 8 second snipes, but my default is 15 seconds and so far I've not lost any auctions because of a missed snipe. However, I only had ONE set to run on Sunday and count myself fortunate for having won that one. On occasion I've adjusted the 15 seconds up, but rarely down.
AS does add time to your lead time. I've been keeping track of my snipes and how many seconds they were placed before closing. On an average my 15 second snipes come in at about 18 seconds before auction close. This average is based on 12 snipes all set to run at 15 seconds. Most came in between 17 and 19 seconds, the highest one at 20, the lowest one at 13. The one that ran on Sunday the 21st at 20:04:42 PDT came in at 17 seconds. I consider myself VERY fortunate to have won that auction, because I doubt 15 seconds was sufficient for most of that afternoon/night.
So, you can see that AS does add time to your lead time. But for most people AS's lead time wasn't enough of a buffer to manage what was happening on eBay on Sunday. And yes, I noticed AS was having response-time problems on Sunday too... but that was only this site, not their servers that run the snipes (separate entities).
I believe Sara (AS staff) indicated Sunday the 21st was the busiest eBay day of the entire year. And again, based on what I was experiencing on Sunday, I have to agree. When you try to email a seller to ask a question about their listing by clicking on the "Ask Seller a Question" link and you get an eBay error that tells you to check out the System Administration announcements, you know something is up! I'd have to hit the back button and try sending again... and sometimes again. There was a period of time where I couldn't log into eBay on a 2nd browser, even tho I was successfully logged in on another. There were many many clues that eBay was choking on Sunday for several hours... but it would not likely have been evident on standard browsing.
And yesterday I logged in and behold! a new combined shipping function! I think they had techs working a little overtime on Sunday!
Anyway, I think it might be wise to set our snipes a little higher now that the "busy" time is upon us. I agree 45 seconds is too high... 30 seconds may also be too high... but 20-25 is probably reasonable. I'm certainly not going to lower mine below 15... 15 has served me very well so far... and if an auction is an absolute must-have, then I'll up it to at least 20. I keep reminding myself that it's not those last few seconds that count so much as it is that my bid is my absolute max. If someone snipes me in the last 5-15 seconds... then my bid wasn't high enuf.
And here's an odd and likely off-the-wall thought... I wonder if anyone subscribes to an additional sniper program? I wonder if for those people where winning auctions can make or break their business if it would help for them to have two companies sending snipes for them? One sending a snipe within a very "safe" lead time like say 60 seconds... and the other set for 10, for example. Since you can't outbid yourself at least you'd have a safety net. I don't know... maybe that's a crazy idea. Maybe AS could offer an option of double-snipes where we could set the time for the first safety-net snipe and then set the time for the final snipe... again... maybe I've not been getting enuf sleep!? Crazy woman talking here??
Anyway, I really feel for those people that lost chances at auctions on Sunday. Lately I've not had many "I've just GOT to have this" auctions I'm bidding on. I've set a max and either won them or not. But if I had a business that relied on winning certain auctions, then I know I'd want some way to avoid big losses. There must be some way of setting up a backup plan that doesn't resort to personally baby-sitting auctions and sniping manually in panic because we aren't sure our snipe is going to make it.
Thanks, as always, for listening to my meanderings. I hope there is something useful for someone in what I said.
Good luck everyone!
diva (aka Dag)