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Mad
The same thing happened to me!!!! I have been dealing with Ebay and have sniped several items.
I can't believe someone can't prevent this from interrupting a Snipe. Copy below

Born Sandals Brown Leather Sz 7M Ankle And Toe Strap Barely Worn!!


Item
281651011641
Max
US $23.87
Bids
4
Lead
5
Ended
04/05/2015 17:28:54
Status
Ebay Requires Account Verification
Seller
fly3295 (631)
Last price
US $17.00
Shipping
US $ 3.95
Bid Enhancement
None
Folder
My Snipes
*********************************************
This should have never happened....check how much money I have spent and how many years I have been doing this!!!!
Original Post

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I have had same problem ebay needs Verification message 2 days ago and my snipes were no placed . Ebay says it is Auctionsniper problem and I can't even access the reason using auctionsniper link provides I have typed the numbers 30 times and go no place today I can not even enter a snipe ? I have used this service 10 years so someone tell me what is wrong ?
Hello All -

Please be aware that eBay may request such verification at any time for any account and as we are unrelated to eBay, we have no way to know ahead of time when such a request may be made. Auction Sniper is unable to work around such requests when eBay makes them.

Also note that the confirmation page from any snipe record is a snapshot. It is a record of the last communication between eBay and Auction Sniper at the time our service attempts to place your bid - it is not an actual eBay page and is not intended for any purpose other than letting you know what occurred at the time Auction Sniper tried to place your bid; it is not a functional page.

Our engineers make consistent adjustments on our end to reduce the likelihood of this type of request occurring from eBay.

- Craig
quote:
Originally posted by Craig A:
Hello All -

Please be aware that eBay may request such verification at any time for any account and as we are unrelated to eBay, we have no way to know ahead of time when such a request may be made. Auction Sniper is unable to work around such requests when eBay makes them.

Also note that the confirmation page from any snipe record is a snapshot. It is a record of the last communication between eBay and Auction Sniper at the time our service attempts to place your bid - it is not an actual eBay page and is not intended for any purpose other than letting you know what occurred at the time Auction Sniper tried to place your bid; it is not a functional page.

Our engineers make consistent adjustments on our end to reduce the likelihood of this type of request occurring from eBay.

- Craig
Now, isn't that odd? EBay accepts NO responsibility for the action Auction Sniper calls "EBAY REQUIRES ACCOUNT VERIFICATION" The way it was explained to me by a well-seasoned EBay customer service representative VIA TELEPHONE (something Auction Sniper really needs to invest in, because, as anyone who comes to this so-called forum can see, the dates are so few and far between that users are being testy because we have no place to turn to to get real time information from this third party service); Auction Sniper is a third-party company, unrelated to EBay in any way, and having a snipe unplaced by this service is ridiculous. Buyers will always chose to have their auction end within 2-5 seconds of auction end, and it looks like the EBay computers and the A.S. computers just cannot talk to each other that quickly.

I just spent more than an hour using the customer service page, via internet -- because it is the ONLY way we can "talk" to anyone at Auction Sniper -- inputting all of the snipes I missed because of the ridiculous EBAY REQUIRES ACCOUNT VERIFICATION and DID NOT WIN glitches -- and then something occurred to me.

I sent a message to Auction Sniper, using that same "reach Customer Service" internet page, in May of 2014 -- ALMOST A YEAR AGO -- and oddly, I did not remember receiving any help from anyone at A.S. So, I looked up my own inquiries ... guess what I found? The inquiry I made last May (again, in 2014, almost a year ago), WAS NEVER REPLIED TO BY ANYONE AT A.S. It is still waiting for disposition.

The customer service rep at EBay told me I would be better suited to sitting at my desk, and placing bids ON MY OWN, since they could verify that they had NO way of contacting anyone at Auction Sniper to fix the problem that so many buyers are complaining to EBay about. They find it is a common problem in their complaint file, as well, when Auction Sniper uses these "terms" when a glitch has happened to folks who use the service honestly, expecting an outcome to WIN if they have the high bid.

If EBay cannot contact anyone at Auction Sniper to address a problem that is being tossed into their complaint file, and, believe me, it sounds as if folks are quite angry when they hear from EBay that they have no say-so in this because of the old THIRD PARTY COMPANY that Auction Sniper is, and that EBay can do nothing to help. Turning here, as I have learned today, is futile; remember, I have a problem I turned in almost a year ago that has not been addressed by Auction Sniper, still.

Everyone might do as I am doing this weekend (APRIL 10-11-12, 2015, FRIDAY THRU SUNDAY). Give Auction Sniper a chance ... list items this week-end. If you encounter the same problem, that we have been told is so very erratic and not at all common (which is why it happened to me on 3/29/15 AND 4/5/15, which, by my estimation is two weeks in a row, with today starting a third week that could follow the same pattern IF Auction Sniper has not yet verified by existence ... it seems to be VERY common), find a different listing service and/or go back to sitting at the computer and placing those last second bids yourselves. I thought I was getting a wonderful service through Auction Sniper, but now I am seeing a lot of things being done wrong. They are only a service if we pay our bills.

Once again, Auction Sniper, look to companies like SPRINT to get a cheap 1-800 number so your users have a place to call to get REAL help.

I do look forward to hearing how both of my "INQUIRIES" are being resolved. Thank you, Kathy Noland

can be reached on EBay through user name genuinething for a copy of this should it disappear
Yesterday, I lost three of five snipes that were placed due to account verification. Of those three, I would have won them too. Of course, the lost snipes for the three things I wanted the most. While I understand AS can't know when this issue will rise, I still find it very frustrating. I am left with no other option but trying other sites or stop the practise all together.

It pains me to do this as have been a very satisfied customer here for many years...
Monday 13/4/15 I also had three snipes fail due to "Ebay Requires Account Verification". I am also very annoyed at this Mad , because they were auctions I really wanted to win, and would have if the snipes did not fail.

I pay money for Auction Sniper and expect a high level of reliability because it is a paid service. If a good explanation cannot be provided by Auction Sniper, I will use a different sniping service provider instead.
The exact same thing happened to me, and not only that, but the page where I was asked to enter the "captcha" "verification code" would not accept their own code.

I tried it so far, eleven different times.

If there is no way around this, I will either be forced to find another sniping method, or take legal action against Auction Sniper for breach of contract in not providing the services I paid for.

Fix this.
Hello Community -

Unfortunately Auction Sniper is unable to work around such additional request from eBay at log in and eBay may make such a request for any account at any time. As we are unrelated to eBay, we have no means to prevent or predict when such may occur.

As for the confirmation pages associated with your snipes, please keep in mind that these pages are records of the last communication between Auction Sniper and eBay in relation to the bid they are associated with; they are not, at that point, viable eBay pages - they are snapshots of eBay pages - so it is not expected behavior for them to operate as such.

Also note that our engineers regularly make adjustments on our end to reduce the likelihood of this occurring.

- Craig
Exact same issue last night. "Account Verification Required" prevented one snipe for an item on which there were no bids. Would have won, seller would have sold, ebay would have made money. Instead everyone loses. A snipe an hour later went through just fine. A manual bid entry today required no verification. I called ebay today and was bounced around to 4 different customer support reps in a foreign call center. After an hour on the phone they confirmed there is nothing wrong with my account and ultimately blamed the seller for requiring entry of the account verification captcha code, which is ridiculous. My theory is this is ebay attempting to thwart AuctionSniper and other bidding robots from sniping. Sniping clearly suppresses competitive bidding and likely costs ebay significant money. Appears to be random, maybe tied to IP address and time remaining in the bidding process, maybe a history of prior snipes. If this is true, it will unfortunately render Auction Sniper an unreliable means for bidding. Too bad because it has worked well for me for quite some time now. Sorry to hear others had the same experience. I plan to contact the seller who lost out and let him know why his item didn't sell.
I agree completely with Cellarseller. This isn't AS's fault - it's eBay. First, there's no reason for eBay to suddenly require a captcha when bidding, since manual bidders have already logged in. It must be directed at sniper bots. Why? Over the years I have received emails from other bidders (from a time when they could get your email) complaining that I had sniped an auction and "hadn't given them a chance to bid again." Despite the fact that they are clueless about proxy bidding, I suspect their complaints to eBay have caused this captcha nonsense. And as in Cellarseller's case, I lost out on an auction that had no other bids. Once again eBay is protecting the newbie bidders at the expense of sellers. If enough of us notified sellers that they missed out on a higher bid, maybe eBay will drop this nonsense. Otherwise AS's sporadic lockout renders it useless.
A better solution for eBay is what other auction sites do: an auction won't end until x minutes after the last bid. At least that way the newbie complainers have to be at their machines to re-bid.
I also experienced this problem, the first time last week on the 19th. after reading a lot of discussions on the ebay boards, i came across an interesting point - that these captcha problems often occur on sundays, when the ebay bidding traffic is very high. my initial two times of this occurring happened last sunday. so today i was wary, and manually bid when i was able, with no problems whatsoever. but one of my snipes didn't go through and gave the ebay verification required message on auction sniper.

so, my theory is that *THIS IS A PARTICULAR PROBLEM ON SUNDAYS* and my experience is particularly in the *AFTERNOON*.

my snipes from the morning had no problem, but my snipe that was blocked was in the afternoon (CST).

i, too, rang ebay last week after this occurred, and had a customer service rep tell me that 'ebay does not recommend third-party sites' etc. they clearly know about the problem.

i believe that this is probably not an attack on sniping sites, but rather a glitch on their very shaky server, a problem with ebay's technology, given that it seems to occur especially when there is highest traffic volume.

any other folks have this problem on sundays particularly?
This is the same thing that happened to me but on the 19th & 25th on 3 snipes. 2 I would have won and one I would have been outbid on. One of them no one else even bid on so I was sure to have won that. Interestingly on the AS lost page one of the items does not even have the final numbers right. I contacted auction sniper...they blame ebay. I contacted ebay and they blame auction sniper....but after being cut off once on ebay and calling back I was transferred to 3 people for over an hour of unresolved conversation only to state that auction sniper was obviously having "technical issues". I did register with another sniping Co. But they seemed more confusing and more costly so after I registered I decided not to use them and would continue looking for another one. I don't really see that it would be in ebay's best interest to interfere with sniping since there are SO MANY items NOT SELLING...you'd think they would welcome any honest bidding at all! ...PS: I have just "celebrated" (I use the term loosely) my 18th year anniversary being an ebay member! And ebay sent me an email to state such...and I say Between the bidding problems, the lack of selling problems I have had on ebay and a change in using terms coming in May, I feel like a needed break is in order. Not making any money anyway!
Ebay Requires Account Verification occurred 4 times now and I could have won all four. They occurred on

Sunday, 3/29 at 14:04 (bid placed to Switzerland)
Sunday, 4/26 at 15:01 (bid placed to United States)
Sunday, 5/03 at 13:41 (bid placed to Great Britain)
Sunday, 5/03 at 14:15 (bid placed to Great Britain)

Veronicalodge seems to have the correct theory as to when and why it occurs, Sundays in the afternoons, busiest times of the week.

Don't have the time to sit there and place all my bids, AuctionSniper has to do it for me. Do we all complain to Ebay to get this resolved?
No! EBay does NOT care. I've already been there and done that! The overwhelming sense I got when speaking to customer service reps on THREE different occasions is that if they did NOT have to do any business with 3rd party companies, they wouldn't! The can't do anything more than they already have -- NOTHING. They have no authority over A.S.'s third party sniping, and vice versa. Auction Sniper still gets their fee, even if we miss our auction because of "EBay Requires Account Verification," so what do THEY care?

I'm looking for an alternative, but all I've found so far require money in advance on the account. Which is more aggravating?

A.S. will continue to say it is NOT their fault and EBay will say they have no control over third party companies.

Griping, I have found, does no good when it comes to this topic. Red Face(

Hugs, and GOOD LUCK!

Kat
Hello genuingthing -

Please keep in mind that our service does not assess a snipe fee on an item unless you win using our service. There are no charges associated with a snipe that does not win. You can see the details of our pricing structure here:
http://www.auctionsniper.com/h...tion-sniper-pricing/

Also note that our service has no control over responses that eBay may request at log in, and is unable to work around additional confirmation pages should they arise at that time, but our engineers make adjustments on our end to reduce the likelihood of such events occurring.

- Craig
This has happened to me a couple of times as well, and it usually take a couple of complaints to get a rise out of AS. I wonder if they have some special class of customer who pay a little more to have AS sidetrack our bids, even though we are willing to pay more, in order that theirs can win. Certainly their service for the rest of us is cheap enough - maybe that's how they make their money.
Seems like Auction sniper is giving the same generic runaround answer to this problem. I lost a bid because of this...... eBay Account Verification Required.... I Bid on a different item minutes later without this eBay Account Verification Required problem. NOW WHAT???? If users keep losing items or bids because of eBay Account Verification Required this site will become useless. Like I said Now What? Even in the meantime keep losing bids/items until then??? This puts a BIG doubt into EVERY snipe placed on this site. Unacceptable
I find it very funny that for years this site has given me the chance to bid on items while I was at work by sniping bids on items of interest. I do not even remember when I started it has been so long ago, but it has been many years. Now in the past 30-40 snipes I have lost out on 15-20 chances to buy items of interest due to this problem that AS cannot control or does not wish to find a solution for with Ebay. I feel safe to say this and it is hard to, that I myself will be forced to look elsewhere to find what I need. A service that can do the job that this site used to be able to provide to me. The chance to buy items on Ebay while at work. I will not stop collecting what I collect because this site cannot or will not do something to solve a problem. I am tired of seeing the same answer by Craig that ths site cannot control anything that Ebay does. Ebay says they are doing nothing too create this problem. SOMEONE find a solution before you no longer have a website to run. It is not hard to figure out no customers means no buisness and no money. Ebay wants everyone to sit by your computer and bid. If that cannot be done they do not care as someone will win the auction. Tell them they would get more money final value fees by another bid coming in higher than what they got and they do not care as they make so much anyway and charge more all the time. All buisness's need to remember to work with your customers or you do not have a buisness to run any longer. Craig try calling Ebay and find a workable solution before you have no website to run. Sorry for ranting but in the end this website and it's workers will lose out, not Ebay or the customers who use this site for the intended startup reason to provide customers with the opertunity to bid on items while not at home or have the chance to do so!
I never Had to verify my account when I bid. I watched the auction I lost on this site. The seconds were ticking down correctly then I looked at the end date that Auction Sniper had and it was 24 hours later????????. I opened the ebay auction, saw that it had ended with no snipe. When I went back to the auction sniper site, the incorrect date was gone and Ebay Requires Account Verification was posted. Why???
Many of the people in this thread seem to think that AS is causing this problem and needs to fix it. They can't. It's eBay that's decided to arbitrarily require authentication in order to bid, and AS can't do anything about it. eBay is deliberately trying (and succeeding) to render sniper bots ineffective because newbies complain about sniping. If you've ever tried to deal with eBay, you know that they're arrogant enough to ignore whatever AS says. Of course, the fact that AS can't fix it means that regardless of whose fault it is, AS is now useless. But all of you ranting that AS needs to fix it or you'll go somewhere else need to understand that anywhere else will have the exact same problem.

NOTE TO CRAIG AT AS: You have the data to calculate how many bids you failed to make because of this. You can calculate how many of those auctions ended with no bids. (Yes, that might take some time, but pretty soon you'll have a bunch of employees with nothing to do.) Therefore you can calculate how much money eBay has lost because of this idiotic policy of theirs. Maybe if you put a $ in front of them they'd listen.
AuctionSniper is a dead issue now, for me.

... eBay of course does not want auctions to be sniped, they never did want sniping, and they have apparently now found a way to put snipers at great risk of losing auctions. From a 99.+% reliability factor, AuctionSniper is now an unknown risk, for losing important auctions, to me.
There is one auction site that uses a 15 minute rule, for ending auctions. IF any bids occur in the last 15 minutes on GB's auction site, the auction is extended another 15 minutes, to allow bidders to keep bidding up on their auctions.
This means it works like a REAL auction, without an artificially imposed ending time. I think eBay ought to do the same, if bid-sniping is no longer a viable way of winning auctions, due to their lately occurring unreliability.
From the "support team"

"Please note that this verification page was presented by eBay's security system that our system could not workaround so could not sign into your eBay account and could not place your snipe.

Sadly, at this time, there is nothing we can suggest that would prevent these possibilities from occurring sometimes. Typically such requests cease within a day or so and sniping resumes normally thereafter.

Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance to you."

Has - anyone - actually seen this page they keep referring to? In over 16 years on eBay, I've never seen it. It's a virtual boogeyman in my opinion.

Whatever though, if the issue isn't corrected, the company is out of business.
Hello Entirely Peeved -

you can typically see the request that eBay has made on the confirmation page of a snipe record. This page is located by clicking the button on the extreme right of the title bar for a snipe record. The button has an icon like an eye on it and records the last communication between eBay and Auction Sniper in relation to your bid where possible.

Please note that the confirmation page from any snipe record is a snapshot. It is a record of the last communication between eBay and Auction Sniper at the time our service attempts to place your bid - it is not an actual eBay page and is not intended for any purpose other than letting you know what occurred at the time Auction Sniper tried to place your bid; it is not a functional page.

Our engineers make consistent adjustments on our end to reduce the likelihood of this type of request occurring from eBay.

- Craig
I've lost 5 snipes in the last 24 hours due to "Ebay requires account verification". I won' go in to how angry I am. This is the first time in 15 years I've had a problem with Auctionsniper. Yes, it is a problem with Auctionsniper, not eBay. Your product does not work for me anymore - for whatever reason. If eBay has found a way to block snipebots then you guys at AS need to find a way round this. NOW! Your very business is at stake! Do you developers at AS know that it takes only one such failed snipe for a customer to completely lose faith in your product? And no, the fact that there is no fee from AS is really no compensation for a lost snipe. I don't know where to go from here other than to go back to manual bidding (ugh) and look for an alternative to AS.
I have read people saying they talked to people at Ebay who confirmed this was intentional on their side. It could be - the bigger companies get, the more they can push through their own policies. Could be that Ebay has grown too big....Since it also happened to me a number of times I will try some other way of sniping. But if that does not work out, I foresee I will be bidding on less auctions. Good for my money, less good for Ebay.
Although it matters not for the solution of the present dilemma, the blame is to be placed on the wimpy complaints of bidders who have lost auctions to snipers. I say wimpy, because even with sniping, the highest proxy bid wins, but the losers feel they have been "blind-sided" because they were not aware of the coming snipe bids. For us, that is the point, to avoid a bidding war, to avoid prematurely driving up the price, and the exact reason eBay does not want sniping. eBay favors the bidders over the sellers, and now the ignorant "newby" bidders over the experienced ones.
Last edited by alx
It is a point of question, whether the seller would gain higher bids in the long run, if eBay prevents sniping from being reliable. On the one hand, if all bids are regular proxy, bidding wars will occur, driving up the bids as the auction proceeds along. On the other hand, if snipes are being placed, higher bidders without sniper service will tend to be complacent that their bids are high enough, as long as they can see no-one beating them. The added amount of snipe wins does increase the bids at the end of course. But I believe the bean counters at eBay have weighed this issue carefully and decided that overall, sniping results in ended auctions with lower average winning bids, for those auctions that have sniped bids, compared to similar items' auctions where no snipe bids are placed.

eBay would rather level the playing field for beginner and unsophisticated bidders, and reduce the advantages that expert bidders have previously enjoyed.
Twice during the past 2 days my bid was not placed due to "e-bay requires account verification" on what would have been a winning bid. Bids were placed and won both before and after both by SNIPE and "manually" without a problem. Ebay don't know anything about an "account verification problem" on my account. I did receive a "session expired" notice from SNIPE which I have NEVER seen before.

What gives? If I can't bid reliably with SNIPE I may have to do something else.

RSVP

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