Does Heavy Bidding Traffic Affect my Snipe Time?

It depends on what you mean by "heavy." If you have in mind a rush of bids that would resemble a Sunday evening, then yes, by all means allow more lead time on your snipe. eBay's servers can handle most traffic and it's only the very busiest times that jam things up. AS's servers rarely if ever are overwhelmed so that's not a worry.

You can perform a simple test about 10 minutes before your auction closes by using eBay's search program to look for something, and then clicking on one item in the resulting list, noting all the while just how long it takes eBay to respond. That's just an indicator, but at least you'll have some idea of traffic on eBay at the the approximate closing time. Just remember that you cannot change or delete an AS snipe with 3 minutes or less left in the auction. AS is locked in at that point and accepts no revisions.

By the way, as a general rule of sniping you should not bid at all until your snipe comes due. You want to swoop in out of the blue.

Thank you!
I appreciate your advice. I typically never bid on an item until the last moment, but sometimes I get stung if there are a lot of bidders all trying to do the same thing. What ends up happening sometimes is even though I probably would have been the high bidder, my bid didn't get processed in time. Arrgh!!

Thanks again - this is a great service and a fun forum with very good response time!

Well, Steve, I like your 8 second advise. Always works for me..even on Sunday!

rsmiller40

Glad it works for you, and glad that bjt got some use out of my comments as well. I'm still a bit leery of 8 seconds on a Sunday evening, but then I do try to avoid auctions ending on a Sunday altogether as a general thing.

Lead time is only half the battle. You still have to bid more than anybody else.

PS -- three more posts and you'll be a full-fledged AS Sniper.

Yep, that is for sure. I bid the very most I will pay and generall y it ends lower. Always a nice surprise.

rsmiller40