Hey guys, I've read the FAQs and a few threads but I'm still a little confused on how this whole thing works. Or maybe on how ebay works. From my understanding AS is pretty much identical to manually bidding and putting in your maximum bid except it's able to calculate the average response time of the server so it makes certain you enter your bid before the auction ends. Whereas you might try to manually bid at 7 seconds but the server takes 8 seconds to process it ending in a loss.
So what does ebay do after you enter your maximum bid? Let's say the item is at $50 with 3 seconds to go. The other bidder has a maximum bid of $140. You enter a maximum bid of $150. Does ebay automaically start a bidding war between the two of you? Within a second ebay processes your bid, it automatically increases your bid by say $2 increments, and it automatically increases his bids by $2 increments until one of you ends up on top. All this happens with one refresh of the page, it either says you're the top bidder or you've been outbid. Is this the case? And is there any chance that you can still lose even if you have a higher maximum bid? For example, ebay processes your bid but there's only 0.1 seconds left, you outbid him by $2 but at 0.04 seconds he outbids you at $2. At 0 seconds it's too late for ebay to return a counter bid.
Lastly, what would happen if I set my snipe to 5 seconds but I bid myself at 9 seconds?
This is an awesome service but I'm really worried about the horror stories I've read. AS bidding at 35 seconds to adjust for lag but giving others a lot of leeway to counter bid. The item I'm interested in particularly is rare and a must have for me.
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