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you have been rightly told that AS will bill you if you win, so long as your snipe was placed. They still performed the work. This is explained in the FAQ.
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Well, "your snipe is placed" and "AS performs the work," even when you lose, but the fee structure is based on when AS itself is what *enables* you to *win*, by "being there" when you can not be there yourself. When you have to bid manually, you are really just like one of the "other" competing bidders, doing the work yourself, and when AS does the automatic bid you originally requested, clearly it LOSES when that bid is not accepted (doesn't the "confirmation" show "bid too low"?)
You can, of course, if you have time, cancel
the AS snipe (but why, then, does AS even bother to snipe for you, if a "check prices" has detected that you have been outbid already?)
Another sniping competitor (bidslammer) provides for charging for failed snipes, at a somewhat lesser rate (10 cents, I believe), this seems to me like a fairer way to compensate the vendor, rather than to charge a percentage commission for services that you really rendered for yourself.
Chatter163 also said:
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I think another issue is why your snipe was not your max. The whole point of sniping is to bid your absolute max, which apparently was not the case here, since you then manually bid more.
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No, one of the "points" of AS is to *delay* your *commitment*, so that you can make up your "final" mind right up to the last minute -- that's even one of the points which AS makes in promoting its service, so it is perfectly normal to make a final decision after taking a look at this auction, as well any others which you may also be watching; however, AS "locks" you now at about *three* minutes before the end of an auction -- this may help AS to place snipes a bit more reliably, but it also loses for the customer the ability to make that last minute decision.
Remember, telling people to "bid their absolute max" in advance is the major piece of egregiously wrong advice given out by eBay, and its false premise is the major reason for the existence of AS, which exists for the very purpose of *delaying* that final decision (both its announcement to other bidders and your right to change your mind!)
Happy weekend!
