Tonbo,
Well, to add to the mystery, the winning bidder (victor_and_andrei) is in Ontario, Canada, and shotandroll and pepeleica are in Spain.
I’m still a bit suspicious of the “blocked bidder” diagnosis, but I’m a suspicious character.
Since the auction ended at 23:45:00 PDT (7:45:00 BST), and since ebay’s maintenance starts at 23:00:00 PDT (7:00:00 BST), the snipe should have been placed at least 45 minutes before the end of the auction to insure that the snipe wouldn’t be blocked by ebay’s scheduled maintenance. Of course, if AS attempted to place the snipe well after the start of the maintenance schedule, say 23:44:50 PDT (7:44:50 BST), then that would be further indication that the reason provided by AS needs to be reexamined.
Also, there’s an AS status of “Blocked by seller” that should have been displayed, if that was indeed the reason. At a minimum, it would seem like AS has a bug by showing the status “Undefined” instead of “Blocked by seller”, but I’m just a user.
Note: The date for all BST times in this post is 23-Jun-06 (damn - this time zone conversion stuff is difficult).
Happy wee-hour sniping.