Alright Auction Sniper, You're Fired. Time to find a new company.

I can imagine losing a three dollar item must be 'horrifying' - we all know AS is not 100% perfect so why rely on it when you need to win 100% - see ya!

R2

You too !

I just sniped with a max of £465 and the item sold for £335 - thanks Auction Sniper, you just cost me about £1000.

The only reason given was "DID NOT WIN". I'm not surprised I didn't win if AS didn't place my bid. I now feel guilty about all the other eBay users I've referred to Auction Sniper.

eh? how does not winning cost you a thousand quid? Even when I win it only costs a few pence!

Perhaps if you guys were to log support calls (via the HELP tab) then AS might be able to explain what happened and/or fix the problem.

R2

Happened to me too - I logged a report and got the reply
"This is due to eBay changing their signin procedures on the back end. This caused us to miss snipes for about an hour or so.
We have fixed the problem."
They gave me a couple of free snipes, which is nice, but I would rather have had the item - I, also, had bid in excess of the amount it actually went for. If I had not won, at least I would have made the person who outbid me pay a lot...
Janette

In that case, AS has to alter its software so that it can bid for you using eBay's new format of login. This will take a finite time (I guess an hour in this case) so AS will appear broken until the fix is made. I'm sure if anyone has any idea how AS could predict the change then AS would be keen to know - otherwise you just have to accept the situation...

R2

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Originally posted by minicentre:
I just sniped with a max of £465 and the item sold for £335 - thanks Auction Sniper, you just cost me about £1000.

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Do you mean £100? I'm a little shaky on your math?

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Originally posted by region2:
eh? how does not winning cost you a thousand quid?

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I wondered that, too.

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I can imagine losing a three dollar item must be 'horrifying'

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LOL! Especially since the item was not a bid deal, the poster said. More importantly, he professes to be a long-time user--does he ever give up quickly!

Perhaps the poster meant that s/he lost the money because, like me, s/he is in business and lost profit. I am an antiques dealer and I lost 3 very important auctions last night for no reason ("Did not win"). I estimate that those cost me a couple hundred dollars profit in my business. Not too happy here.

Remember - any loss is not definite. You posted your max as a snipe, the winner also bid/sniped with their max but you only see the next increment that won. So, you may not have won. Or you may have won for a higher price that the actual winner.
Seems that eBay changed things, AS reacted as quickly as they could but things didn't work in that gap. It happened, get over it, move on, look forward...

R2

One cannot "lose profit" on an item that one does not own. The item was never the bidder's to begin with. It only belongs to the seller, then to the winning bidder after he has sent proper payment. Me thinks there is a bit of anticipatory thinking going on here.

And me thinks you are on the mark!

I can assure you... after checking out the changes eBay made (and is making for the next few days)... all sniping type services would have failed yesterday.. in fact while it appears that Auctionsniper is fully operational today and appears to have only missed snipes for a couple of hours yesterday... I would bet that their competitors are still struggling to adapt to the changes that eBay has made.

"Me thinks there is a bit of anticipatory thinking going on here"

Duh. Welcome to the world of auctions. Online and otherwise. That's the way the antiques business works. You bid on the item based on what your projected profit will be when you re-sell.

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Originally posted by Lizzie:

Duh. Welcome to the world of auctions. Online and otherwise. That's the way the antiques business works. You bid on the item based on what your projected profit will be when you re-sell.

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Duh yourself. Projected profit--which is present in all forms of resales, not just antiques--is quite different from actual loss. One may well anticipate a profit, but one has not incurred a loss until one has actually lost capital. Put another way, you cannot lose what you do not already own or have already paid for.

Emotionalism is no way to keep a business ledger.

Surely the disappointment of not being high bidder is a risk everyone takes in any auction? If you snipe there is always a risk that your bid will not be accepted. If you leave a high proxy bid you might drive someone else above your maximum. The OP does not know how high the winning bid was. It might have been over $50.

If you bid sensibly you should be second bidder at least as often as high bidder. Since I aim to be a sensible bidder, I reckon that the risk that a snipe fails is much lower than the risk that a proxy bid will drive another bidder over my maximum.

I am not a sniping purist, so in the OP's situation I would probably have bid manually to be the current highest bidder up to about $20. That would have helped me to be more philosophical when the snipe failed.

Good Luck in the future

Well said!

I liked this statement:

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Originally posted by Rosetsu:
If you bid sensibly you should be second bidder at least as often as high bidder.

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Yes,
I keep telling myself that as I wave good-bye to all those lovely items I can't afford

region2---I never said it had anything to do with the money; I only used Auction Sniper on this auction to ensure that someone else did not snipe me out at the last second and win the auction. I merely wanted to be certain that this would not happen, so as to guarantee that I would win. Ironically, I probably got my karma (by outbidding other people at the last second so many times...) Funny huh? It's not about the money; the $3 is irrelevant--the point was, that I was willing to pay 20X that amount, since I had been looking for the item for such a long time, and since I had been looking for it for such a long period of time, I wanted to try and guarantee I would win (or at least increase my chances); hence Auction Sniper. What did Auction Sniper do? Absolutely nothing--and it didn't even give me an explanation as to why.

Chatter---"Especially since the item was not a bid deal, the poster said. More importantly, he professes to be a long-time user--does he ever give up quickly!" I'm sure you're just trying to help, but I have no idea what that means. Did you mean "big deal?" It was a big deal--if it wasn't I wouldn't have used Auction Sniper in the first place. Read what I said. I used it to increase my chances of winning. Isn't that the point? This is the second time in a matter of weeks that Auction Sniper failed on me.

To merely say that Auction Sniper is not 100% and to just let it go is foolish. This is capitalist economy; there are numerous other auction sniping companies out there. If the one I am using is not up to my expectations, then why should I just 'deal with it?' I'll just use another company. If my Chevy broke down twice in three weeks, would anyone question why I might start looking at Fords, or vice versa? The Ford might turn out to break down just as much, but competition forces companies to improve their products. To say that Auction Sniper screws up some times and deal with it makes no sense; to say that Auction Sniper screwed up and it will be improving its product in the future--so as to prevent long time customers from turning towards the competition--is more of what I would expect.

If I had lost the bid because I was outbid by another bidder, that would be one thing. But to lose the bid with absolutely no explanation is ridiculous.

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Originally posted by Mr. Wumper:
I only used Auction Sniper on this auction to ensure that someone else did not snipe me out at the last second and win the auction.

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Then you don't 'get' it - someone will always beat you if their snipe/bid is higher than yours, even if their bid/snipe arrives first.

And I think if you look around the forum or logged a support call you would have seen that ebay's changes caused problems for AS (and all other similar software) - an unavoidable problem that you'll just have to accept will happen from time to time.

R2

Mr. Wumper,

I can understand being upset with AS because in three weeks one snipe was placed 40 minutes early and this one not at all. Not to down play this, but you’ve definitely had a run of bad luck. The 40-minute-early was caused by a problem that I haven’t seen before (AS was depending on another company to have a precise clock and AS found out the hard way that they couldn’t depend on them so AS fired them). The latest problem was due to a change that ebay made. Not trying to justify these problems, because ultimately AS is responsible for minimizing any problems, with the goal of eliminating them. But, timing is everything (and not only with sniping lead-times).

I think the following is a good food-for-thought post:
>> click here <<

Thank you for the help Rick.

And region2--I assure you, I am not a bafoon. I do "get it." Your response is in vain; for I never claimed that I expected to win an auction which I did not win; that makes no sense. I have been using eBay for half a decade now--I think I know how it works. You are not reading what I said. I KNOW that if someone put in a higher bid than me that they would win; I was trying to prevent someone from trying to "beat me" at the last second. They wouldn't have to "beat me" if my bid was placed with mere seconds until the auction was to end, since it would be too late for them to respond to me having outbid them. I also wasn't going to place a massive bid days or even hours before the auction ended either, because I did not want to run up my own costs with people trying to top my bid--but evidently, since Auction Sniper failed to ever even place a bid, then worrying about running up the price is futile, isn't it?

But really, isn't this why people use sniping software in the first place--to 1) win auctions and 2) save money? But enough has been said, and I have made my decision; I have found another company.

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Originally posted by Mr. Wumper:
I was trying to prevent someone from trying to "beat me" at the last second. They wouldn't have to "beat me" if my bid was placed with mere seconds until the auction was to end, since it would be too late for them to respond to me having outbid them.

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You are assuming the last-second bid was a counterbid to yours. It may well have been a planned snipe, just as yours was. The loss is still frustrating, I realize, but you may take consolation in knowing that the win may have been a planned snipe that was able to get through.

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Originally posted by Chatter:
You are assuming the last-second bid was a counterbid to yours. It may well have been a planned snipe, just as yours was. The loss is still frustrating, I realize, but you may take consolation in knowing that the win may have been a planned snipe that was able to get through.

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I’m a little turned around right now. I think Mr. Wumper’s problem was that the snipe didn’t get placed – at least that was the most recent problem.

Mr. Wumper,

Esnipe (the other guys) had this to say but you can only find it if you go to the server status page. I imagine they didn't find it until users started complainging so they could fix it. but the olny way you would find this is to check the server status, its not on their news page which seems to have a most recent article of 7-2003

December 13 - BID EXECUTION ALERT (Now Corrected!)
(15:18 PST) Starting at 15:06, eBay made a significant change in their login procedure that impacted eSnipe's ability to execute bids. At this time, our technical people are working on a fix for this problem. Meantime, all bids are failing with "eBay Connection Problem". Users are encouraged to place any pending bids by hand on eBay directly. We will update this notice as soon as we have the solution in place. UPDATE: (16:21 PST) As of 16:18, our technical people have put in a fix and bids are executing properly again. We apologize for the lost bids but since we get no advance warning of eBay changes, we can only do our best to react promptly.

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Originally posted by alanf51:
Mr. Wumper,

Esnipe (the other guys) had this to say but you can only find it if you go to the server status page. I imagine they didn't find it until users started complaining so they could fix it. but the olny way you would find this is to check the server status, its not on their news page which seems to have a most recent article of 7-2003

December 13 - BID EXECUTION ALERT (Now Corrected!)
(15:18 PST) Starting at 15:06, eBay made a significant change in their login procedure that impacted eSnipe's ability to execute bids. At this time, our technical people are working on a fix for this problem. Meantime, all bids are failing with "eBay Connection Problem". Users are encouraged to place any pending bids by hand on eBay directly. We will update this notice as soon as we have the solution in place. UPDATE: (16:21 PST) As of 16:18, our technical people have put in a fix and bids are executing properly again. We apologize for the lost bids but since we get no advance warning of eBay changes, we can only do our best to react promptly.

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