jdbrcb,
I personally have never received the status message "Unknown" although I have read a couple of posts here about that.
As I mentioned in another post to Pattie today, I've set
many snipes and all have been successfully placed. Some auctions were lost, but most won.
The status "Unknown" doesn't appear to be prevalent here. And certainly if I got one of those once in a while, I'd still be better off than trying to snipe on my own.
I don't think we can expect there will never be a glitch somewhere, sometime. I've had some strange things happend to me on eBay that prevented my winning an item, but there is no reasonable explanation to be had.
Your best bet, IMHO, would be to correspond with Customer Support.
Neva
(very happy with my AS)