2 snipes lost in one week?

Hi, Joolzrulz.
I know that on Sundays you need a large lead time--say 60 seconds--in order to win because E-Bay is very slow on Sundays. It's their busiest day. I don't know what kind of lead time you used, but that is a consistent Sunday problem. And it causes a lot of snipes to not get placed in time. The same thing happens with a maunal snipe on Sundays.
I don't know about Monday, but lately there have been posts saying that auctions ending on the hour and half hour have a similar, but less severe, problem. Again, it's E-Bay and its equipment.
Then every so often, E-Bay will have equipment go down and bids from certain areas won't get placed. It's a bummer, I know. I don't know what happened in your case, because I'm not an expert--just another sniper--but if you file a case with AS they will look into it and find out exactly what went wrong. From my experience, the two things that go wrong most of the time are either a lead time that isn't long enough for when E-Bay is real busy, or E-Bay's equipment going down.
--Christine

The miss on monday was clearly our fault as that was during the 3 hour window where a large switch here was beginning to fail, and finally burned out. At which point we hooked in our backup. This is a pretty rare occurance and we fixed it as soon as we knew what the problem was. It got real easy to figure out once that thing finally fried and wouldnt start up again.

The miss this Sunday evening is just another eBay hiccup. I think a 7-8 second lead is enough on Sundays, except for snipes on the hour and half hour which should be at 20-25 seconds. Snipes during times there are those hiccups at eBay wont work with any lead time so increasing every leadtime beyond my suggestions above wont give much benefit in my opinion.

>>And one of the items is a collectors item and I have no recourse.<<

"Recourse"??? Holy legal issues, Batman!

Unless the collectors' item was unique, another will turn up on eBay eventually. That's your recourse. And, in my experience, the second time around or later often results in lower auction prices. I know, it's tough to miss out on something that's scarce and collectible, but life's like that.

I used to think my collecting interest was so specific I would bid on EVERY item within it when they came up.

Now, I know better - there will always be another one - might take a while, but there will be one.

I'm also not spending nearly as much money - I place my snipe with the amount I'm willing to pay (which is lower than it used to be - given that there will be another one) - then I sit back and see what I win. I'm still happy as can be when my snipe executes at a lower amount, and not at all upset when I don't win something.

Great advice; I will switch how I am bidding in terms of my lead time and when the auction ends. Yepper, it's true that if you hang long enough, usually what you want shows up, and at a cheaper price. But, not always. I have been looking for a particular kind of cookware, and there have been 3 pieces in the last 2 years, but I was able to get the ones I wanted. I just had my pride hurt when I lost those auctions because with sniping and careful bidding, I don't usually lose on the auctions I really want, and I thought I had that stuff in pocket. Right now I am buying Barney stuff for my daughter, so it's not a big deal. There is way more Barney stuff than any kid could ever want on eBay. Thanks for your time and input.

Julie