Reply to "my 6 second advance "snipes" are sitting ducks"

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other than it being easy to test almost any other service and watch as 3 second snipes go through time after time.

I think it would require more effort than that to determine an “industry standard”.

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If the auctionsniper system is constantly testing ebay response times and compensating for those response times, that compensation should result in the bid being placed at the correct time, not at 6 seconds, correct?

No. Think about what it would take to test the response time, and how to go about it. The “test” (whatever it is) would have to be done enough in advance of the end of the auction to allow enough time to actually do the test and to adjust the lead time as a result of the test. If ebay sometimes (maybe rarely) has a 20 second response time to place a bid (or maybe 10 seconds), then to be safe the test would have to be done 43 seconds before the end (20 seconds to test, + 20 seconds potential adjustment, + 3 seconds to satisfy the user’s desired lead-time). Well, 20 seconds later and the response time could be 3 seconds, or 8 seconds, or 1 second, or who knows. If the intent is to avoid not-in-times, then all this, and all kinds of other things that only someone that actually programs this would think about, has to take place. It’s a no-brainer (or a less-brainer) to take the end time and place the snipe minus the specified lead time and hope ebay and everything else is doing what is optimal. Since all this response time is very fluid, I’m surprised AS gets it within 3 seconds. Perhaps they always pad their test results with an extra 3 seconds just to accommodate Murphy.

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then many users will be looking at other services.

Maybe yes; maybe no. You do have a tendency to make statements that you can’t verify. The only thing you can be sure of (usually) is what you’ll do.

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but consistent +3 second performance is nuts and is not what your users expect.

Again, maybe yes; maybe no. I think that if that were the case, there would be more users on the forum beating on this issue as you have for several years.



This is a judgment call. If you think the extra 3 seconds makes you vulnerable to another sniper “reacting” (their usage of a sniping service is not “reacting”) to your snipe, then you have to either decide that AS isn’t the right service for you, or every couple of years or so getting on the forum and rehashing this. I suppose the third option is to continue to use AS knowing that your snipes might/probably be placed 3 seconds early without the rehashing? Of course, if you like to periodically debate this, then I’m your guy.