Ebay Requires Account Verification

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

What I can't understand is that I have NEVER been asked for catchpa verification when I place a manual bid (and I place a lot) but it keeps happening when I use AS. All I can think of is that eBay is doing something with IP addresses.

Same exact issue twice in the last two weeks and I AM SO PISSED!!! I have spent, just like everyone else, loads of money on ebay sniping for the past 10+ years and now I missed 2 items that I was very interested on and there is no accountability or responsibility........there has got to be another sniping site that I can trust?? Help!!!

Yesterday (very early 13/04/2015 GMT) I had both my snipes fail with Ebay Requires Account Verification. I was able to place a manual bid at the time of the second failure. The bids were set for 7 seconds before auction end, so auctionsniper should have been able to make repeated attempts to place the bids.

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 , 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.

Wow, that is EXACTLY what I went through........the page never accepted their own code. Finally, I deleted my payment info and reentered it and (knock on wood) so far, it's worked.

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?

Same thing has been happening to me. I am changing to a different sniping program and quit relying on AuctionSniper or just go back to manually doing the auctions that I really care about. Tired of missing items

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. (

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

Well here it is on Sunday night and another auction lost due to A.S. showing ebay needing account verification. I thought these people got this fixed, but apparently NOT!!!!! People in charge FOR GOODNESS SAKE DO SOMETHING and fix this problem! People are pissed!

Same thing just happened to me and I lost a valuable auction! I called e-bay and they said NO they didn't need my account verification! I've been on Auction Sniper since day one. Never a problem. Now I feel that I can't trust it.

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!

Before the problems were just Sun. Afternoons like people said, but now it's completely broken. I tried other sniping sites and they can't even verify the ebay login. Looks like sniping services are dead. Ebay is losing a lot of money!

Same thing that everybody. I've been trusting AS for years and now I can't trust it. Yesterday I lost 5 of 5 item that I was interested in. I could won all of them but AS couldn't place the bid.

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.

I'm not buying this story that Auction Sniper is selling that it's eBay asking for verification. Over the course of 16 years on eBay I've bid on thousands of items and I've never once been asked to verify my account. This is purely an Auction Sniper problem. If it continues (and they have to realize this) they will go broke.

What makes me the maddest is that Auction Sniper has blamed it on eBay despite several people telling them that it was not an eBay issue.

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.

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

Look guys, clearly eBay is trying to defeat Snipe sites. This is a new reality. They probably developed some sort of rule-based code routine that checks IPs, time to auction end, and other fingerprints that differentiate a human user from a third party program. I believe a major parameter is a user's session length compared to when they place the snipe bid. Meaning that in that split second after the AS program logs in, it places a bid. Also the lead time for the bid may be being detected too. 4-5 seconds before auction end is clearly a marker for a Snipe bot so that also may trigger the verification. Maybe the user's history of bidding at the last minute is a factor.

I suppose eBay wants us all in front of the screen in the last 10 minutes of an auction to maximize the hammer price and consequently their profits. I know that automatic snipers and that whole are really not part of their business model, meaning they want to maximize eyes on the screen, also to drive up ad revenue, no. of clicks, add-on buys, etc. They've got teams of developers and analysts whose only purpose is to defeat Snipe sites and increase human clicks and page views. Most if not all online retailers or other sites that deal with the customer to get their online $ hate third-party automatic programs and bots which take the place of a human interaction with their site. The only good bot is *their* bot, as to what is allowed. eBay makes their money from humans who spend time on their site. Maximizing the time a customer is on eBay is not what a third party agent does so that's why now, as Snipe sites get a bigger share of the winning bids, they've declared war on us. And your bottom dollar that eBay has made sure that verification is never triggered when a human user bids, even at the last minute. So the assertion from AS that eBay does this from time to time is a lame excuse. I'd like to be treated a little more intelligently by AS Support, thank you.

So here's the deal. Auction Sniper knows very well this is an anti-snipe weapon. The fact is that it could be a business killer for them and it has been happening for some time tells me that they're either clueless or powerless to do something about it. By now they would have reasonably developed a counter fix to the verification check. I'm getting really fed up with the AS support, being unfriendly, clueless, and ineffective. This may well be their final straw.

Here's what I'm going to do in the short term.

For auctions of items that I definitely want to win no matter what, I will bid manually.

I have increased the lead time on one of my upcoming snipes up to 8 or 10 seconds, just to test if that makes a difference.

I am also going to log in and stay logged in to eBay within 15 minutes (min avg cookie session time) of auction end.

I am also going to start sniping with another AS account just to see if eBay is going after the hard core habitual offenders.

In the long term or sooner, if eBay continues this BS and AS doesn't find a fix, if the above ideas don't work, I'll drop AS like a ton of bricks and walk.

I'll let you know.

In any case the best solution hands down is a downloaded snipe program that we can install on our own PCs which snipes for us from the IP with which we logged in and stay logged through auction end. Letting a third party do this for us always was never a guarantee of getting the winning bid, thus with a high degree of risk because we're delegating to a third party agent. Now it seems that those chickens have come to roost.

This reminds me of those heady days of the Wild West Web of the mid to late 90s when search engines were constantly fighting web coders that modified web site pages to get higher search result placement. Most of you weren't even born yet (joke). It became so bad that search sites were even blocking the worst offending web sites and even server IPs from displayed results. There were young men and women "hired guns" ("search engine gurus") who represented that they had cracked the search engine's code and could achieve amazing results for web site business owners. Major money was spent, many late night hours burned. Some of the more astute guys even got sued by the search sites. No, really.

Anyway.., AS needs to fess up and come clean to their customers about what they know and don't know. Everything. I surmise that might not be very much and that's why they're playing the same old unprofessional, lame broken record to us: "It's eBay's fault".

This situation could very well completely change the AS business model to one that may fail the company unless they develop a solution quickly. Folks are not going to keep losing items with AS. Very soon we'll walk.

Thoughts?

-FU

I used to use AS all the time, but now i'm scared to use it for anything I want as I have lost 2 many things

The MOST annoying thing is that AS still won't acknowledge that this is a problem, they are still denying it and pretending it is some new ebay security and not a way of ebay cracking down on snipes.
GUYS - admit it and write some new code as suggested by Fed Up

By the way _ I always leave my computer on but this does not help in any way

AS removed my reply to Jacobsen AND my follow-up to my original post:

" Sniper Mike D.
posted June 02, 2015 10:11 AM
Hello FedUp,

This message is to inform you that we have removed one or more of your recent posts for mentioning competing sniping services, which is not allowed on our Community Forum.

Please consider this message a warning that similar posting in the future could compromise your ability to make use of our forum.

Thank you for your consideration in this matter,
Auction Sniper Forum Administrator "



This speak for itself. This is AS today. AS is clueless about keeping customers. Suppose they'll be working off of churn.

Screw this. I'm history.

-FU

Update: I just won an item with AS, without the verification holdup, but with the fol changes:

1. I upped my bid lead time to 11s.

2. I logged into eBay with my acct within 15 mins. of auction end.

3. I interacted with links on the listing up until hammer time.

Not sure what made the difference.

hmmn

Maybe just lucky?? I won one with AS last weekend, but then lost the next one….

something has come up that I really want now. It feels safer to me to write to the ebayer privately and try to get it for a fixed price. I have done this twice now and it has worked

Well, it won't work anymore to trust just setting the snipe and leave it to finish the auction any more ....ok ... understood the severity of the problem, is there any way for us to help AS work around the new eBay environment ?

What if the bidder also makes an initial bid, early on, just to establish their place in the bid process for the particular item ?

and what if they are logged into eBay at the time of the auction end ?

Would these two conditions ensure that eBay not defend against the bid placed by AuctionSniper at the end ?

Alx
I did that to one of my items, left an early bid through ebay, and then left my final bid with AS for £180
I item sold for £99

I had left my computer on and logged in to ebay -
I got the ebay requires verification blurb… so, no, that does not work, not if you really want something

ok, thanks for info ...

really nothing to do except proxy-bid thru eBay, planning if possible to be onsite near the end of the auction.

One thing to realize ... if other users of AS are becoming wary, there may not be any, or many, snipes from other bidders to worry about anymore ...

"Sniper in Training" huh ..... ok, we realize that if you have fewer than x posts in the message boards, you get this description - but really, after about 15 years and a thousand snipes, .....

Here is an idea I saw on a different thread in this board .... has it been explored yet ?

If you have a phone app that is logged into eBay all the time, as they are typically doing, and then AuctionSniper logs in to place your snipe, perhaps eBay's security measures are triggered by the double log-in situation.

Has this already been investigated ?

This problem has happened to me several times, too. It's very frustrating. I called eBay. They said all was fine with my account; verification was not required.

I've reset my passwords on both eBay and Auction Sniper. I deleted and reentered my credit card info on Auction Sniper. I went to my Auction Sniper account and clicked "Check Status," and got the following message:

Verified eBay login information
Your account has been verified and all snipes will be properly placed.

Still my snipes aren't recording!

Here's the communication thread with Auction Sniper:

Your Previous Comment: (submitted [Sunday, 6/7/2015 8:02 PM PDT])
My snipes are not recording. This has happened several times. I received the following email message after today's most recent snipe fail:

"Ebay Requires Account Verification
Your snipe did not win because of the reason above
Click here to see eBay's response to your snipe"

When I click the link, I get this message:

"Enter a verification code to continue

To keep eBay a safe place to buy and sell, we will occasionally ask you to enter a verification code. This helps us to block unauthorized users from entering our site. Please enter the verification code in the image below and click on the "Continue" button to enter our site. Learn more about our security policies.- opens in a new window or tab

Enter the verification code Click for help"

A six-digit number is displayed. When I enter the number, another six-digit number is displayed. This goes on and on. I tried listening to the number using several different browsers, but the audio does not play in any of the browsers.

I need your help to verify my account with eBay so that my snipes record.

Thank you for your help.


Reply (submitted [Sunday, 6/7/2015 8:24 PM PDT])

Hello,

Thanks for contacting us regarding this matter and I am sorry to hear the trouble you are facing.

I've reviewed your account and found that snipe for provided item # is showing up status message ‘Ebay Requires Account Verification’. The 'View Confirmation' (an eye shaped icon) located at the right of the snipe is displaying the message you received through the email.

The "View Confirmation" page is not an actual eBay page, but a snap shot/record of eBay's request when Sniper attempted to access your account to place the bid. You will not be able to access/verify your eBay account via this page. Please do not enter the number again and again on this page.

As we are unrelated to eBay, we have no control over what eBay may present at log in and eBay may present such a request at any time for any account. Sadly, our service is unable to complete such a request or otherwise work around it when eBay presents it, and so in those cases, Auction Sniper is unable to place your bid. I am not aware of any similar service that can work around such a request.

Typically, this situation resolves itself in a period of time and snipes are then set normally. Please be informed that our engineers make every effort to make adjustments on our end to reduce the likelihood of such occurring.

If you have any other questions or encounter further difficulties, please don't hesitate to ask!

Sincerely,
Auction Sniper Support

Basically, unreliable ....

Look, .... if eBay was not opposed to the sniping of auctions, they could easily provide their own sniping feature, just as well as the proxy bidding system. It would probably entirely replace regular proxy bidding, because once understood by their buying customers, who would want to have their bids appear before the end of the auction ? At least it might foster a different style of auction, like a sealed-bid auction. The snipe-able auction would be at the choice of the seller.

For now, eBay seems to have effectively undermined the reliability of sniping services, such that only those bidders who are not end-users would care to risk snipe bidding. Anyone who really wants that item, who is invested in getting it for themselves, should just use the eBay auction system as it is normally operated - with proxy bidding, or be present at the auction end with a manually-placed "snipe" bid.

This problem is not only happening here but the same problem is happening over at -- as well. I was told by ebay support that this is happening because ebay is tightening up security when auto bidding takes place. -- and -- seem to be working ok. and i have not tried my -- account yet. So good lick everybody i think times are changing.

I have been having this same problem with Auctionsniper for weeks. At first they tried to push it off on Ebay but Ebay states they have nothing to do with it. This is a glitch with Auctionsniper which they either cannot fix or refuse to acknowledge. Yesterday I confirmed my Ebay information on Auctionsniper one hour before an important auction was going to end and my snipe was still not placed. Dennis Nedry did not screw up the systems in Jurassic Park as bad as Auctionsniper is screwed up. They clearly did some sort of recent system upgrade which has corrupted the system. My complaint to Auctionsniper has not even been acknowledged so I have ended my snipes and switched to another system as I cannot depend on this site any more.

I lost 4 auctions tonight!!! Same response eBay requires account verification. I can**NOT** find anything on eBay on how to stop this. ASniper gives me **no** answer either. Same old canned response.. Not their fault. I can place bids manually with no trouble. I have to find another service this is getting ridiculous. I **********CAN'T***** always be at the PC to place bids. I work for a living and do sleep sometimes, so I am not 24/7 at the pc to place manual bids. I am soooo mad.

What is sad is that sellers are losing money too! Their items would have sold for more.

I lost an auction that I would have won, but for this problem - I've tried the AS "check my login" link which has previously been a reassuring double-check, even it says "we are unable to check" or words to the effect.

I have a support request with AS, but until that is answered - as many others have commented, I don't see as I can rely on AS currently.

Whether it's eBay or AS' problem is almost immaterial, as an end user I don't seem to have any choice but to vote with my feet after many years of good service. The next auction I am watching, is 4 days time.

I also lost a snipe due to Acct Verification problem. I have contacted the seller and told him he lost a lot of money because my high bid was much higher than what he actually got in the bidding process due to my bid being blocked. In some cases, he may lose the entire sale if the Acct Verification "feature" blocks the one and only actual bidder who happens to be using AS. I think the pressure has to come from the sellers.

I advise you to go somewhere else. I am using another company now and it is working just fine.

I asked, like all of you, to no avail, for help fixing this problem.

seems they don't mind losing all their customers

@jacobsen - Purely as a matter of interest, which other company are you using now? (If you reply and AS decide to delete the post, I can provide you with a direct email address instead)

Thanks

IIRC, some or all of the eBay replies to the problem are saying something to the effect that eBay is trying to block UNAUTHORIZED users on their site. Well, bingo, AS is not considered an authorized user, they are not a bona-fide eBay account holder, and they are using your and other members' info to log in. Sure it is according to your ( our ) wishes, but eBay obviously does not want that, and they have finally decided to hamper sniping. It's their site to control the way they decide, and I only wonder why they have waited for so long, but guess it is because they were not sure whether it was in their best interests. Now they have decided it is best not to allow sniping. Again, I suggest that sniping is actually alot like the action of sealed-bid auctions, which are common online, but just are not eBay's model.

Having used AS for more years than I can count. I am angry and saddened to have lost an auction because of this ridiculous Ebay Requires Account Verification nonsense.

What are AS doing about it?
I will stop using the service if this is not fixed. AS will lose their business entirely if they do not resolve this.

The only solution at this time is make an app that we can run on our local PCs that'll work with AS and place the bids from our own machines.

Ebay doesn't care about the lost business, they might even be trying to kill auctions completely and go to BIN. Ebay has never cared about what the users want.

So, what we need is an app, or program that will place snipe bids from our own machines .... 'doesn't need to be an AS application, or anything else but a program that could run on our computers.

Hello All,

Thanks for taking the time to let us know what you think.

I have forwarded the suggestion of a desktop application along to our product management team for their consideration and will reply back to this thread should more information regarding such an app become available.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts with us!

- Craig

The problem is not really with the sniper service it is with eBay itself. They want us to place a bid in the open early so that any margin can be used up by on line bidders testing limits.

I stopped selling on eBay after they terminated the Coin Watch Committee and all other expert volunteers that helped to stop fraud.

EBay makes the most money by stopping snipers and encouraging fraud. It is eBay that is the real rip off in this situation.

Sunday, June 21, 18:47:44, for the first time in many years as a user, bid blocked, lost item.
Same day, same seller, different item, 18:48:28, bid entered, but lost item because bid too low.

June 24-July 17, bids OK.

Sunday, July 19, bid blocked, lost item at 12:44:34.
Same day, same seller, different item, bid entered, won item at 12:56:15.

Don't know what all of this implies about the system, except that it's erratic and very, very annoying.

We all know why we snipe. We've probably all been burned by some newbie who doesn't understand proxy bidding and overbids himself as soon as he gets outbid. What I don't understand is why eBay wants to eliminate it? How can they benefit from eliminating sniping? For me, the alternative to sniping is to not bid at all. Are their analysts stupid enough to think we're all going to revert to manual sniping? And if they really want to eliminate sniping, the solution is very easy, and is what many other auction sites do: any bid made within ten minutes of auction end automatically extends the auction ten minutes. They don't need to pull this verification crap and pretend it has nothing to do with sniping. Between eBay's "who gives a damn about our users" and AS's sticking their fingers in their ears and going "la-la-la," I think I need to find a new sandbox to play in.

I had this problem back in April. Seemed to "get fixed" now it is happening again! I don't care who's FAULT it is, I WANT IT FIXED or I will stop shopping ebay and not use auction sniper...then they will both lose....I could probably use to save the $$ anyway! Been using both since the 1990s....

Typical...they blame each other...sick of it!

Hello, I am so angry at this moment. Two Ebay auctions I have been patiently waiting for just ended and I should have won and instead it says EBAY requires account verification. BS - I have been using this service a long time. In reviewing the messages here, it seems no one cares whatsoever. The first time it happened was a little over a month ago. I did sent a message to CS and have never had any reply whatsoever. The first time it failed, I was bidding on two items with the same vendor at approximately the same time. Tonite, same thing. I am absolutely frustrated with this service. I was loving it and it is costing me items I want and it is costing EBAY vendors - or which I am one money. Is there no accountability for this rubbish?

I just don't get it. I bid $100 over what the auction closed for. Ebay just doesn't want the extra money. Just plain dumb. Ebay shoots itself in the foot again. They have such huge opportunities that they just squander. I'm sure the seller would have rather sold for $166 instead of $66...but they will never know how badly ebay ripped them off. Just SOP for that loser site. Again....

I have used Auction Sniper for the past several years with no problems. About 3 months ago I started experiencing what you have experienced, and just as randomly and intermittently.

Several calls to ebay and Auction Sniper got the same response as the rest of you, sometimes with an added comment from ebay that "OK, I've fixed it so you won't experience it again" - and then it happens again.

I think ebay is trying to put "auction sniping" services out of business - and the way they're doing it is to randomly reject bids by "third parties" (bid services) under the guise of "requiring account verification"...do this enough times, and the disgusted-at-poor-service-ebay bidder will cease to use these services.

I can think of no other reason...

Some of the prior replies show how angry we get when "something stupid" - like "Ebay Required Account Verification" - stops us from being the successful winner of an auction WE REALLY WANT TO WIN.

The reason I think ebay is after bidding services is that I have been on the phone 9 times with ebay about this (it started about 3 months back), and they say everything is OK with my account, tell me it's the auction service's fault - and then push me not to deal with a bidding service, but to use ebay "proxy bid" instead.

Yes, it's stupid. Maybe, with enough complaints, it'll get fixed.

It seems to happen most with the items you want most...Smiley Sad

Sellers need to be made aware when this happens - this cost them money. In one case I bid $100 more than the winning bidder - which means the seller potentially lost $100 on the auction - all because this 16-years-on-ebay-veteran's "account required verification". Give me a break!

Because of the "talking points" from ebay customer service which I now know by heart, and which, summed up, is "we're not going to fix the problem:, I have taken to letting buyers know what my bid would have been, when this stuff happens, and the item goes for less than I bid. Maybe enough sellers complaining might get it fixed - they are the ones really losing the money.

All of you!
I am using a different sniping company now and this does not happen with them!!!
You need to change

@Jacobsen
You have written that before, but did not say which company. I am not sure how we can rely on any third party bidder avoiding this problem, unless they have negotiated an arrangement with Ebay. Otherwise they are just in a tech race with Ebay.

This seems to be an intermittent problem. I had a series of bids blocked by a captcha filter a few months ago. This time it has been the more intrusive email/telephone mechanism. The solution seems to be for me to leave my computer on overnight and rely on a local app. Belt and braces would be to set both methods. Use a third party bidder as well as a local timed bid. Like disgustedrifleman I intend to inform sellers about bids blocked by Ebay.

quote:

Originally posted by Kenzan:
@Jacobsen
You have written that before, but did not say which company. I am not sure how we can rely on any third party bidder avoiding this problem, unless they have negotiated an arrangement with Ebay. Otherwise they are just in a tech race with Ebay.

This seems to be an intermittent problem. I had a series of bids blocked by a captcha filter a few months ago. This time it has been the more intrusive email/telephone mechanism. The solution seems to be for me to leave my computer on overnight and rely on a local app. Belt and braces would be to set both methods. Use a third party bidder as well as a local timed bid. Like disgustedrifleman I intend to inform sellers about bids blocked by Ebay.

No one can reply because any references to another service will either be blocked or removed.
From Google searches it seems that AS is a PRIMARY target of eBay. all anyone can do is TRY another service and see, or worse yet, set both to something we consider important possibly resulting in higher sniping fees.
Until many many sellers complain, nothing will change.
Unfortunately there is no real competition to eBay, so they can do what they please. The only way anything will change is with a HUGE reduction in sales.

I have been telling sellers each and every time it happens. I also tell them just how much they have lost. I figured if the sellers started complaining perhaps eBay might listen.

However, I also started an experiment. I found 75 items all ending in 7 days - all similar and of similar values under $50 each - all starting at under $1. I picked a snipe value that I would typically place and bid on 65 of the items using eBay (bidding in the open) on the last 10 I placed snipe bids. With one day to go the bids I placed in the open have been exceeded on 61 of 65 items. All 10 of the snipe bids are still viable. By placing the bids early I was setting a market price and allowing others to try to disclose my price. In nearly every case - my maximum has been exceeded by very little. The 4 where I am still high bidder within ONE BID INCREMENT.

So I guess I have proven that eBay may be correct - they want to expose the maximum bids as early as possible to allow them to be chipped away or raised. It is good business for both eBay and sellers to discourage sniping.

So it appears WE snipers are standing alone in this fight.

I intend to keep sniping and where possible to live snipe. They can not stop that if we use our own normal PCs.

Snipers: I think we are just talking to,ourselves or each other. Neither AS or ebay seem to listen to the Customer....what ever happened to the customer is right philosophy? Ebay is already losing lots of money because sellers are not selling like they used to...and there are limited buyers and watchers....out of listing 175 items I have sold only 2....I have read posts of sellers complaining how sales are so down or non existent or if an item sells it is for far less than the worth/value or price they paid for it....selling just to sell....others complain because of the lack of sales their ratings have suffered at ebay's hand. I would think that ebay would be happy if an item sells sniped or not....both companies lose out when they do this to snipers....it all sucks!

Forgive me for this long post but I just wanted to share my experience with Auctionsniper.com's customer 'support' after an 'Ebay verification' captcha error occurred to me yesterday (26/07/15)

This is a widespread and persistent problem, yet auctionsniper's report staff have admitted that they are unwilling to notify their customers because 'it affects a small percentage of our customers'. As this thread and others have shown, this is simply untrue and it's certainly not a small problem! Here is a transcript of my conversation with their support staff, perhaps it can be used as a warning to others trying to find answers via this channel- you will simply get a copy and pasted reply that won't answer your question. Absolutely farsical behaviour!

"Category: General Question Case Topic: 'Ebay Requires Verification' Error
m***********7@gmail.com
Customer

Posted Sunday, 7/26/2015 1:23 PM
To whom it may concern,

While attempting to place a snipe for item number 3**********6 on Ebay my snipe was unable to be placed due to an 'Ebay Requires Verification' error which prevented the bid.

After much research I have discovered that this is an ongoing problem faced by auction sniper.com, yet I was not made aware that this might be an issue. I fulfilled all the necessary steps required to place the snipe, and even double checked that my auction sniper account verified my ebay username and password, yet the snipe was still not placed. If I had been informed by auction sniper that this could potentially be an issue, especially on Sunday evenings that I have now learnt severely increases the chances of this error, I would have bypassed this website's processes entirely and placed the bid manually.

Both my auction sniper account, and my eBay account were in perfect order, yet the bid did not take place.

I am extremely frustrated and disappointed, and feel that auction sniper has breached it's contractual obligation towards me since I have handed over money for this specific service. Going forward I will no longer be using auction sniper.com, as I cannot even be sure that this senseless and unpreventable error will not occur in the future.

Sincerely,

Martin

Operating System: MacOS
Browser: Safari

Involved eBayItemNumbers: ***********

Kenneth Support

Posted Sunday, 7/26/2015 2:08 PM
Hello Martin,

Thank you for contacting us regarding this matter and I am sorry to hear the trouble you are facing. I certainly understand your point of view, however, while reviewing your account I found that snipe for the provided item number is showing up status message ‘Ebay Requires Account Verification’. The 'View Confirmation' (an eye shaped icon) located at the right of the snipe is displaying following message:

“Enter a verification code to continue

To keep eBay a safe place to buy and sell, we will occasionally ask you to enter a verification code. This helps us to block unauthorized users from entering our site. Please enter the verification code in the image below and click on the "Continue" button to enter our site. Learn more about our security policies.- opens in a new window or tab

Enter the verification code

Change the image | Listen to the numbers
Continue”

The "View Confirmation" page is not an actual eBay page, but a snap shot/record of eBay's request when Sniper attempted to access your account to place the bid. You will not be able to access/verify your eBay account via this page.

As we are unrelated to eBay, we have no control over what eBay may present at log in and eBay may present such a request at any time for any account. Sadly, our service is unable to complete such a re-quest or otherwise work around it when eBay presents it, and so in those cases, Auction Sniper is unable to place your bid. I am not aware of any similar service that can work around such a request. Typically, this situation resolves itself in a period of time and snipes are then set normally

If you have any other questions or encounter further difficulties, please don't hesitate to ask!

Sincerely,
Auction Sniper Support
m***********7@gmail.com

Customer

Posted Sunday, 7/26/2015 2:25 PM
Thank-you for this information. If I understand you correctly, you are not able to solve this problem. In that case why wasn't I made aware of this issue before I purchased the services of this website? It is clear to me that this issue undermines your services completely, and yet this was not communicated to me until after the fact? Why is this?

Sincerely,

Martin

Kenneth Support

Posted Sunday, 7/26/2015 3:13 PM
Hello,

Thank you for getting back to us regarding this matter and I certainly understand your point of view. I would like to inform you that Auction Sniper is an automated tool that places your snipes as per the max bid amount and lead time that you set. Once your snipe is placed on eBay it indicates that our system has performed its task.

However, the verification steps are RANDOMLY presented by eBay; in this situation there is no way we can inform you that this is going to occur for your future snipes or not. Typically such requests cease within a day or so and sniping resumes normally thereafter.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused and appreciate your understanding regarding the same. Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance to you.

Sincerely,
Auction Sniper Support

Customer

Posted Sunday, 7/26/2015 4:49 PM
Many thanks Kenneth for your apologies, however I still haven't received an answer to my original question of why this issue was not made clear to me BEFORE it became a problem, rather than after. If I had been appropriately warned by this website, I wouldn't have signed up and paid money for a service that might work 'RANDOMLY'. I was not told by auction sniper at any point during my purchase that this 'RANDOM' ebay error might occur.

Martin

Kenneth Support

Posted Sunday, 7/26/2015 5:13 PM
Hello,

You're very welcome!

As informed in my initial message, we are unrelated to eBay, we have no control over what eBay may present at log in and eBay may present such a request at any time for any account. Sadly, our service is unable to complete such a re-quest or otherwise work around it when eBay presents it, and so in those cases, Auction Sniper is unable to place your bid.

Also, there is no way we can inform you that this is going to occur for your already placed/future snipes or not. 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.

Sincerely,
Auction Sniper Support

m***********7@gmail.com

Customer

Posted Sunday, 7/26/2015 6:15 PM
Dear Kenneth,

Thank-you for evading my question for the third time. Without copying and pasting the same reply could you please listen to my question and answer it:

Why wasn't I warned beforehand by auction sniper.com that an 'Ebay Requires Account Verification' problem could occur?

If you are unable to answer my question could you please put me in contact with someone who can.

Many thanks,

Martin.

Alexis Support

Posted Sunday, 7/26/2015 7:15 PM
Hello Martin,

Sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Please note that we cannot inform users beforehand because it is not clear whether captcha will be presented for you or not. That verification page is only presented when systems tries to place your bid on eBay.

So, there is no way we can inform our users for verification code.

I hope you will find this response to be helpful.

Sincerely,
Auction Sniper Support

m***********7@gmail.com
Customer

Posted Sunday, 7/26/2015 7:24 PM
Hi Alexis,

Thank-you for you reply, however you are misunderstanding my question- I fully understand that you are not able to predict when a captcha will be presented, but that was not my question.

I'll try and ask my question for the fourth time:

Why wasn't I warned beforehand that this error even existed?

I did everything correctly yet my snipe was not placed.

Not once was I warned that there is a chance this could occur. Why?

Many thanks,

Martin

Alexis Support

Posted Sunday, 7/26/2015 9:21 PM
Hello Martin,

Thanks for following up with us. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Please note that this verification step is recently introduced by eBay to make eBay more secure. Earlier also this message was used to be presented but frequency was very low. Currently eBay is presenting this captcha randomly for random accounts and for a period some period of time.

I hope that you will find this response to be helpful. Please do let me know if I can be of any further assistance.

Sincerely,
Auction Sniper Support

m***********7@gmail.com
Customer

Posted Sunday, 7/26/2015 9:47 PM
Hi Alexis,

Thanks for your reply but you've just repeated yourself again. I must admit my patience is beginning to wear thin.

I fully understand the problem. Please stop repeating the problem back to me. Please stop explaining ebay's security captcha protocol, it is now fully understood, and does not need repeating.

I've now had five replies from auctionsniper's customer service and not once has my question been answered.

For the fifth and hopefully last time I ask:

Why wasn't I warned about this potential problem?

You said yourself that this issue has been occuring for some time now.
Why didn't an auctionsniper.com representative send out an email notification to warn its users about this potential issue?

If I had been told about it I would have taken extra steps to safeguard my bid, but I wasn't. I have been left in the dark and now it's too late to do anything about it.

Please answer my question or forward me to someone who is willing to.

Many thanks,

Martin.

Michelle Support

Posted Sunday, 7/26/2015 11:56 PM
Hello,

Please accept my deep apologies for the inconvenience caused you due to this.

We are trying our best to support you. You have not been informed about this because it is not 100% sure that you will get this captcha verification while placing your bid on eBay. We have hundreds of thousands of customers and they all are not facing this issue. So, we cannot just generalize this issue for everyone.

However, I can understand if there would be anyway to determine it beforehand, it would be very useful for our users.

Once again I apologies for the difficulties you are facing. Please note that our engineers are trying to resolve this issue as soon as possible.

Thanks for your patience on this matter.

Sincerely,
-Auction Sniper Support

m***********7@gmail.com
Customer

Posted Monday, 7/27/2015 4:54 AM
Auctionsniper.com and its support staff have shown themselves to be negligent in the extreme, and unwilling to inform its customers of potential problems that could severely and catastrophically effect their service simply because 'it affects a small percentage of our customers'. This is unacceptable and frankly borders on negligence. The conversations and actions of this company will be forwarded to the UK's trading standards, and I hope others in my position do the same. You cannot keep your customers in the dark like this. Utterly disgraceful.
Status: Closed "

Hi
I had replies like this constantly when I asked this same question.
I found it less stressful and much easier to simply pay a different sniping service. Auction Sniper has been worst hit by this new Ebay policy of trying to stop snipes and they don't seem willing to update their programme to evade this.
I googled the problem and read that AS was worst hit. I am now using another company and so far have had no problems. I am still getting email alerts from this noticeboard and am shocked that AS are not dealing with the situation.

Thanks for reply and info. I will try another service and go from there. I wonder how eBay is determining login in needs verification since I have never run into this when I log in my self. Is it possible they use the IP address being used to login versus the most frequent IP address used to login?

I am shocked at the ridiculous evasion by the AS representative to the simple question or complaint THAT AuctionSniper has not provided a warning to new users, and every user, that the verification problem MIGHT occur, and make their snipes fail to get placed.

Snipers and snipe-aware users are missing the point of why eBay does not want sniping.

Most of eBay's interest is in new and inexperienced users, the vast majority of their potential market out there .... These new users, the first-time bidders etc. become very discouraged at losing auctions, and complain of being blind-sided by snipers. They give up using eBay, and eBay doesn't like getting the reputation of failing to satisfy their new users. Sniping does not usually provide huge increases over the winning bids, only the next higher incremental bid.

I have also just lost out on 2 important items that I was bidding for, having received the message "EBAY REQUIRES ACCOUNT VERIFICATION". After reading the various comments about this in Auction Sniper's Community, this problem is obviously very widespread, although this is the first time that it has happened to me after many years of using Auction Sniper.

This problem with both Ebay and Auction Sniper passing the buck will almost certainly frighten their customers away. Sniping has a very useful purpose in providing the facility for buyers to bid during times when they might otherwise be unavailable to check up on bidding progress and to avoid much of the 'leapfrogging'. My recent maximum bids that Auction Sniper was prevented from placing for 2 items was about 4 times higher than the amount that they finally sold for. If the actual winning bidder's maximum bid was anything near to mine, then the seller only achieved a quarter of the amount that he would otherwise have received (for both items).

The reply that I received from Auction Sniper to my complaint was virtually identical to those that others appear to have received, so they are just using a standard template with no intention of getting to the root of the problem.

I may well dispense with Auction Sniper's services if my current bids fail for the same reason. I'll certainly look for an alternative sniping provider or won't even bother spending my money at Ebay.

My reaction to those that have suggested using two sniping services for the same item in order to safeguard their bids, is that they may well leapfrog themselves so that they end up paying their maximum bid instead of a potentially much lower amount if a competing bidder's maximum was much lower. There's no point in competing against yourself!!

It's such a shame that this problem has reared its ugly head, when Ebay and Auction Sniper seemed to have co-existed for so long, satisfactorily. As it stands, the sellers will definitely be the ones to lose out.

Brian

tonybrams - as a former disgruntled consultant who worked for eBay - you are attacking the wrong target. The auction sniper boilerplate you agreed to day one indicates the service at times may not work. That is the AS disclaimer that protects them. That used to be necessary because of poor connections or maintenance. Now it is essential because eBay keeps changing the "type" of question, when it is asked and how often it happens. The latest in a whole string of issues is this account verification question.

The actual "problem" is eBay. The key (some say only) concern of the bay is profit. Their studies indicate that on average sniping reduces their profits at the bottom line. I know they would like to prohibit sniping all together but face potential litigation as a result. At one time, sellers could indicate that they would not accept snipes from people who did not bid previously in the auction. That was challenged and to avoid legal action by AS the practice was prohibited. Sellers (at least until the date I was terminated) could no longer prohibit sniping. They (eBay) fear litigation most of all. They will do the absolute MINIMUM to avoid a law-suit and there is essentially no concern whatsoever for the buyers and sellers. That is life with eBay.

I think the proof is contained in the fact that eBay does not offer a sniping service themselves. If the fees to be gained from sniping exceeded the impact sniping had on the bottom line eBay would do it themselves.

Complaints and our anger, if any, should be directed at eBay not elsewhere.

It's just business, and if we don't like eBay, we can go elsewhere. They are not a public utility, nor a non-profit corp. Of course they will cater to their maximum profit.

What we are looking for is a program that can be installed on our own computer, that will place the snipe emulating as if we were doing it manually. Not a big problem having a slightly slower connection, make it 10 seconds before the end, ok by me. It is really down to proxy against proxy, regardless of the snipe timing.

I went to another Sniper company and got on their forum. The same issue came up about "Account Verification Required". They only have two complaints. Only two and they are a company with a large number of subscribers. Their service people said all you need to do was change your Ebay password and it should fix the problem (and don't forget to change it in your sniping program too). Anyone try this?

If I have many snipes placed on AuctionSniper and I change the password on Ebay, do I need to delete all my snipes and resubmit them after the password is changed in AuctionSniper?

Looked at a second sniper comapany and they have zero complaints about "Account Verification Required". Seems to be AuctionSniper problem to me. And if it is as easy as a password change to fix the issue, then why haven't the service department alerted us to a simple change like this?

My account hasn't been able to verify, or snipe now for 3 hours, ironically right after AUction Sniper billed me.

quote:

Originally posted by Silverfox:
If I have many snipes placed on AuctionSniper and I change the password on Ebay, do I need to delete all my snipes and resubmit them after the password is changed in AuctionSniper?

Looked at a second sniper comapany and they have zero complaints about "Account Verification Required". Seems to be AuctionSniper problem to me. And if it is as easy as a password change to fix the issue, then why haven't the service department alerted us to a simple change like this?

I just tried this, doesn't work. Auction Sniper still broken.

5 Hours now, still no response from Auction Sniper, snipes still failing. No response to the support ticket either.

I've been quite happy with AS for many years - and I can totally understand not only why eBay is doing this, but why it's outside AS' control.

However, AS have and are handling it badly, although I'll miss some of AS' extra features (bid groups), I'm now using a rival service. They have a more usable mobile site, and - ultimately - work reliably so far.

So long AS, it was good while it lasted. If other posters want to know who this other service is, look at my post in the other forum for a big clue.

It worked for a few hours last night, but now Its needing verification again, and I lost more auctions.

General Notice
We are currently unable to verify your username and password. This could be a temporary connection problem to eBay from our website servers. Our sniping service has multiple server locations, so even if you cannot verify from the website at this time, your snipes should still be placed. If this problem persists, please contact support via the 'help' tab.

if you care about winning you need to go on another site. At the moment this site is not caring to do anything about it, but others still work. Until people start leaving AS aren't going to care it seems.

One of the attractions of auctionsniper for me has been that it costs me very little. Services with monthly subscriptions would certainly cost me more. That may mean that the profit available is not worth the trouble of dealing with Ebay's new security measures. At least that is the impression I am getting.

After a battle with Auctionsniper about this happening a month or so ago, it worked for a few bids. Now, it's not again. I just lost two items I would have won.

I am going to look for an alternative auction sniper, after using this site for probably 5 years. Sorry, I just can't keep losing from erratic programming.

Stupid me, I decided to use AS one more time on an auction closing this morning while also being logged in and active on eBay manually. A sunstantial incovenience. Same problem occurred, no bid was placed, and I lost the auction.

eBay is definetely targeting snipers, at least AS. And AS is clueless. I'm going to try with other web-based snipe programs, but AS no longer. AMF

And I'll be changing my eBay acct password.

Hi folks, new here, but using auction sniper for well over 5 years. I lost a VERY good pipe that I wanted... and it went WELL below what I was willing to pay. Contacted AuctionSniper... no response. I'm currently looking for another sniping site. Any suggestions?

I fail to understand the anger directed at Auction Sniper - the problem is with eBay not auction sniper.

lol, not exactly.
Ebay is trying to stop snipes to make more money, which is greedy, but what a big company does. Snipe companies are there to provide a service for the customer who doesn't want to end up in a bidding war with over inflated prices. It's a service they decided to provide (which we pay for) If their service is outdated then they need to update it, or at least be honest about it!!

I called the idiots at eBay and they first informed me that sniping is against eBay policy, and then told me that it is ok, but the error messages for account verification are not from eBay, but from the siping tool itself, and that they have been getting a lot of calls about it.

Lost another auction due to account verification! I've had it! This is unconscionable! It has gone on too long and Each company blames the other and both the bidder and seller get screwed! I'm looking into alternatives. Auction sniper...this could be the death of you if you don't do something! After all the years I have relied on you, you do nothing to help me...shameful!

quote:

Originally posted by StevieCL:
Lost another auction due to account verification! I've had it! This is unconscionable! It has gone on too long and Each company blames the other and both the bidder and seller get screwed! I'm looking into alternatives. Auction sniper...this could be the death of you if you don't do something! After all the years I have relied on you, you do nothing to help me...shameful!

This has spread to other sniper services as well is the problem. its not JUST Auction Sniper, though they appear to be the first, and their customer service lousy

quote:

Originally posted by cpushack:

quote:

Originally posted by StevieCL:
Lost another auction due to account verification! I've had it! This is unconscionable! It has gone on too long and Each company blames the other and both the bidder and seller get screwed! I'm looking into alternatives. Auction sniper...this could be the death of you if you don't do something! After all the years I have relied on you, you do nothing to help me...shameful!

This has spread to other sniper services as well is the problem. its not JUST Auction Sniper, though they appear to be the first, and their customer service lousy

Well it will not end up doing either company any good...if people cannot be available to bid and sniper sites don't work, those people won't get the bid in...how does that benefit the companys?

quote:

Originally posted by StevieCL:

quote:

Originally posted by cpushack:

quote:

Originally posted by StevieCL:
Lost another auction due to account verification! I've had it! This is unconscionable! It has gone on too long and Each company blames the other and both the bidder and seller get screwed! I'm looking into alternatives. Auction sniper...this could be the death of you if you don't do something! After all the years I have relied on you, you do nothing to help me...shameful!

This has spread to other sniper services as well is the problem. its not JUST Auction Sniper, though they appear to be the first, and their customer service lousy

Well it will not end up doing either company any good...if people cannot be available to bid and sniper sites don't work, those people won't get the bid in...how does that benefit the companys?

eBay wants more money, (new activist board is VERY focused on boosting short term profits) Sniping decreases the end price of some auctions (as it prevents bidding wars).

eBay wants you to bid early and bid often, so that they can make a bit more on fees, at the expense of pissing off some buyers.

Just lost an auction 5 minutes ago. Item was one-of-a-kind that I've never seen before. Please fix this!

Selling on ebay sucks now and now you can't bid with sniping...so why bother?

If eBay tries to say they are NOT the cause they are lying. There is no time to answer the verification question unless you are sniping in person with more than a minute to go - in which case there is no snipe. The problem is caused by eBay - their new management team has changed a lot of things to get more money with less work. They started by taking apart trust and safety. They disbanded the watch committees that were stopping fraudulent auctions. Since then they have been retrenching more and more. Blame eBay - they made a change that no amount of programming by a sniping company can respond to. It takes a living person to reply to the security question with answers customers never give to the sniping services.

Add me to the list of those who have lost now 4 auctions due to "eBay Requires Account Verification." I tried changing username and password to no avail. FOr a while the "Check Staus" under "My Snipes, "Account" was saying that it could not verify my account. However, this morning and now it is saying my account is verified and all auctions should be placed properly. However, I just lost another one due to this same issue. It is starting to get very annoying. Auction Sniper help is of no help. I too have been a member for years, but if this continues, I will look for another program.

If it is eBay wanting more money, then they are kidding themselves. I lost 4 auctions that I would have won if Auction Sniper had placed my bids. eBay, Auction Sniper, and the seller would have all made more money, and I would have been happy to get my items. Now I am pissed along with the rest of you.

You are actually incorrect about eBay losing money but eliminating snipes. I completed a two part experiment recently (since I started writing in here). I placed 100 bids on low value coins. They were placed at two levels - one just UNDER retail - the other at full retail plus 10%. I expected that I would lose the low bids but win some or most of the over retail bids. However, I lost all but one.

Try it yourself - if you place a bid on an item when it appears - someone will chip away at your number until they find and exceed that bid. If there were no snipes - eBay would definitely increase their commissions and we would lose our savings.

So it is my belief that placing a bid that matches your snipe amount will cause you to lose the auction or pay the snipe amount in EVERY case. (The only exception are "buy" snipes where you bid a huge amount and there you will just pay a lot over retail.)

@swamperbob

The problem with your analysis is that you're assuming (or you're assuming that eBay is assuming) that as an alternative to sniping, we will all either manually snipe, or bid as you have. I for one will not. If I can't have a bot snipe for me, I simply will not bid, and instead will confine myself to BIN listings. And if other people feel the way I do, eBay definitely will lose money, as will their sellers.

Hello Community -

We have been looking into this issue and working towards a solution. Most recently, we have made some further adjustments on our end in this last week which were working towards a solution and have since seen significant indications that this work has brought improved results.

We are aware that the issue has not been resolved entirely - there are still instances of captcha's and other verifications occurring, however, significant progress has been made in this area and we continue to devote our resources toward a resolution.

I will update this thread again as more information becomes available.

Thank you for your patience and understanding in this matter.

- Craig

Having worked for eBay, I can only indicate that eBay has studied every angle for the potential of profit generation and they would not be making a move against the snipers unless they see a clear profit as a result.

They (eBay) studied the Coin Community Watch Group right out of existence as a result one of their studies.

I do know from discussions with others at eBay that "new" bidders were also seen as a profit area - retention of old bidders was a lower priority.

Also, which came as a surprise to me, the more technical bidding areas like coins and collectibles were seen as only marginal profit sources compared to other more market driven auctions (clothes jewels watches). At one point when they were being pressed by the ANA and politicians, eBay legal seriously considered ceasing auctions of coins because they were not worth it. They instead began the 6 year experiment with the Coin Watch Committee which tracked and eliminated fraud in the coins area. We terminated hundreds of frauds a week and the bottom line was a $1,000,000 loss on the eBay bottom line. Right after that new was published the committee was disbanded.

So I believe my assumptions fit the facts well. This is an orchestrated and very intentional move by eBay.

The only thing eBay actually fears is a law suit. This anti-competitive aspect of their behavior could be the basis for a class action law suit.

Swamperbob - I'm sure you're right that eBay has looked at this and decided that there is money to be made by eliminating sniping. Of course I don't agree, but mine is a focus group of one. If they believe that there's more money in newbie bidders at the expense of the tried-and-true, then this move makes sense, as new users are confused and frustrated when a sniper takes an auction away from them. It is analogous to Microsoft completely changing the Office interface to attract new users, at the expense of all of us who now have to learn a new user interface. It's sad, because I will end up more or less abandoning eBay. Your bidding experiment (and thanks for that, by the way) proved what we all know anecdotally: sniping is essential.

Your notion of a class action suit is intriguing. I've never been asked for verification; I suspect eBay would have a hard time explaining why they seem to require it only of sniper bots, or why they don't allow bots in the first place. Hopefully AS is pursuing this strategem.

I used to use AS quite a bit to get the items I was bidding on from eBay but I took some time off 'cause I was spending WAY too much money.

So, now I've started to bid on items again on eBay and low and behold, I've discovered that AS doesn't appear to work with eBay anymore: I received the same frustrating message that all of you have regarding "account verification" and have missed several auctions today because of it.

I've read through this forum and I'm of the belief that this issue is being generated by eBay on purpose.

I placed a manual bid on an item that I did not want the chance of losing and found it quite interesting that, after I confirmed my bid, I was presented with a "ad" to download the "eBay app" to stay on top of the auction and be able to rebid at a moment's notice.

I think eBay is trying to block out the snipping bots and force people to use the eBay app instead. Since most people have smart phones now, I can see eBay justifying this behavior by claiming that with the app, bidders can be involved in the auction process even when they're not in front of their computers. While claiming to give bidders "more access" this move, in my opinion, is to drive up final bid prices as many have speculated in this forum.

I would be interested in what a lawyer would have to say about a class action suit as, I suppose from a business aspect, that eBay is not required to allow 3rd party software to interact with their website regardless of what the user wants.

I think the whole topic would be new territory to explore from a legal and net neutrality point of view.

I've received this issue twice in the last few days and am unable to verify via the account area in auction sniper.

On both failures I had the response message from ebay is below.

quote:

Choose how you'd like to receive your confirmation code

We'll send a message to the option you select.
By Phone (voice or text)
By Email

I assume it's the same for the verify button although I have no way to know.

When I logged out and back in to ebay on my computer, I got the same message. On selecting the phone option, it confirmed my number then called me straight away with a code to enter.

I'm guessing that ebay keeps a list of computers that log into the account and that auction sniper servers that have not accessed it before are getting this issue.

I know that it may not be fixable in the last few seconds of an auction but using the verify account button it could select the phone or email option and have a way to enter the code into auction sniper for it to pass on. It may need to be done multiple times to get all the servers to access ebay but if that needs to be done for my AS account to work, then it needs to be done.

quote:

Originally posted by FedUp:
Look guys, clearly eBay is trying to defeat Snipe sites. This is a new reality. They probably developed some sort of rule-based code routine that checks IPs, time to auction end, and other fingerprints that differentiate a human user from a third party program. I believe a major parameter is a user's session length compared to when they place the snipe bid. Meaning that in that split second after the AS program logs in, it places a bid. Also the lead time for the bid may be being detected too. 4-5 seconds before auction end is clearly a marker for a Snipe bot so that also may trigger the verification. Maybe the user's history of bidding at the last minute is a factor.

I suppose eBay wants us all in front of the screen in the last 10 minutes of an auction to maximize the hammer price and consequently their profits. I know that automatic snipers and that whole are really not part of their business model, meaning they want to maximize eyes on the screen, also to drive up ad revenue, no. of clicks, add-on buys, etc. They've got teams of developers and analysts whose only purpose is to defeat Snipe sites and increase human clicks and page views. Most if not all online retailers or other sites that deal with the customer to get their online $ hate third-party automatic programs and bots which take the place of a human interaction with their site. The only good bot is *their* bot, as to what is allowed. eBay makes their money from humans who spend time on their site. Maximizing the time a customer is on eBay is not what a third party agent does so that's why now, as Snipe sites get a bigger share of the winning bids, they've declared war on us. And your bottom dollar that eBay has made sure that verification is never triggered when a human user bids, even at the last minute. So the assertion from AS that eBay does this from time to time is a lame excuse. I'd like to be treated a little more intelligently by AS Support, thank you.

So here's the deal. Auction Sniper knows very well this is an anti-snipe weapon. The fact is that it could be a business killer for them and it has been happening for some time tells me that they're either clueless or powerless to do something about it. By now they would have reasonably developed a counter fix to the verification check. I'm getting really fed up with the AS support, being unfriendly, clueless, and ineffective. This may well be their final straw.

Here's what I'm going to do in the short term.

For auctions of items that I definitely want to win no matter what, I will bid manually.

I have increased the lead time on one of my upcoming snipes up to 8 or 10 seconds, just to test if that makes a difference.

I am also going to log in and stay logged in to eBay within 15 minutes (min avg cookie session time) of auction end.

I am also going to start sniping with another AS account just to see if eBay is going after the hard core habitual offenders.

In the long term or sooner, if eBay continues this BS and AS doesn't find a fix, if the above ideas don't work, I'll drop AS like a ton of bricks and walk.

I'll let you know.

In any case the best solution hands down is a downloaded snipe program that we can install on our own PCs which snipes for us from the IP with which we logged in and stay logged through auction end. Letting a third party do this for us always was never a guarantee of getting the winning bid, thus with a high degree of risk because we're delegating to a third party agent. Now it seems that those chickens have come to roost.

This reminds me of those heady days of the Wild West Web of the mid to late 90s when search engines were constantly fighting web coders that modified web site pages to get higher search result placement. Most of you weren't even born yet (joke). It became so bad that search sites were even blocking the worst offending web sites and even server IPs from displayed results. There were young men and women "hired guns" ("search engine gurus") who represented that they had cracked the search engine's code and could achieve amazing results for web site business owners. Major money was spent, many late night hours burned. Some of the more astute guys even got sued by the search sites. No, really.

Anyway.., AS needs to fess up and come clean to their customers about what they know and don't know. Everything. I surmise that might not be very much and that's why they're playing the same old unprofessional, lame broken record to us: "It's eBay's fault".

This situation could very well completely change the AS business model to one that may fail the company unless they develop a solution quickly. Folks are not going to keep losing items with AS. Very soon we'll walk.

Thoughts?

-FU

This has happened to me also - twice now. First error message was 'Ebay requires account verification' and today it was 'Sign-in blocked by eBay security image'

I've sent a message to support - but I'm not hopeful. looks like AS days are numbered.

Are there any other snipers that are reliable or have a way of working around this?

Every time AS tries to come up with a work around to allow snipes to get through eBay changes their requirements. Sound familiar. I still believe the problem is entirely due to actions by eBay NOT AS.

Swamperbob that is complete rubbish. There are other snipers that have successfully navigated around the issues. I use -- -- now that has placed every one of my bids successfully - oh and it's completely free! Bye Auction Sniper.

Yet again I have been let down by both Auction Sniper and Ebay, having just lost out on an important bid, where I should potentially have been the winner. My maximum bid for the item was £31.80 but the item sold for £16.50 (a loss of £15.30 to the seller). On this occasion the email that I received from Auction Sniper just said "Did not win", no explanation. Obviously my bid was not placed. I had earlier placed a manual bid for £15.80, hoping that my maximum bid through Auction Sniper of £31.80 would be accepted. As there seems to be no sign of any resolution to this problem, I will no longer rely on Auction Sniper or use their 'services', and will be forced to place all my bids manually, which is a bit of a pain having to be available and watch the bidding towards the end of bidding time. So, goodbye Auction Sniper - let me know if you ever succeed in placing bids with Ebay, which I doubt. Yours highly dissatisfied, Brian.

Brian A - read my other posts. I am in the UK and have had all the same issues with Auction Sniper. I have contacted them several times - and quite honestly they don't seem to give a damn. All they do is roll out scripted responses and don;t appear to be working on a solution.

So I looked for alternatives. I'm really pleased to say -- -- is working! It has placed all my bids successfully. What is more it is completely free! Wish I had found it earlier :-//

I have been with Auction Sniper for years - and have given them every opportunity to get it sorted before trying elsewhere. Bye bye Auction Sniper!

I have also experience the same problem yesterday losing 7 items due to AS not being able to place bids
everyone my snipe bid would have been above the winning bids
The AS reports simply say ''bid did not win''
well AS we know that because you where not able to place the bid for me

Hi Guys
I have today been using AS without any problems, snipes have been placed with some items being won with them.
This problems seems to be occurring on a Sundays when peak usage is accurring.
Does anyone know of any pattern to occurances?
Do we have to stop using AS on a sundays??
Can anyone recall having this problem on any other days of the week?

quote:

Originally posted by machineage:
...I'm really pleased to say -- -- is working! It has placed all my bids successfully. What is more it is completely free! Wish I had found it earlier :-//

I find it regrettable that machineage's post was edited to remove the 'other' sniping website that seems to work just fine. The website is: goofbid.com and others can read more about it in his thread entitled Alternatives to AS that work…

Hi adwade,

As you can see on the Goofbid site they also struggled with the same problems Auction Sniper faced back in August with ebay account verification and captcha blocking.

https://www.goofbid.com/blog/update-p4465/

Auction Sniper has been working well for a while now and we have mobile apps that make it even easier to snipe, you should give them a try.

-Stephanie

WOW! I am pleased to see so many people finally getting onto this chat thread to share your own experiences RE: "Ebay Requires Account Verification" missed snipes. When I started this conversation .. ages ago .. everyone was pretty darn clueless as to what the problem was, what it meant, why it was happening, etc.

It took many messages and phone calls from me to EBay to find out what "third party sniping" really was (heck, I signed up initially on Auction Sniper because a friend told me I no longer had to sit in front of the computer, glued to my chair, for hours at a time just to bid on items I wanted for a collection ... and the first 3 snipes were free, and then I was addicted); and why, it seems, that EBay has a "random" smack down on us for using third party sniping services.

To those of you who are leaving names of other third party sniping services/sites, well, good for you for attempting. Obviously, "Auction Sniper" is going to remove that info as soon as they find it, because you are using THEIR CHAT BOARDS to solicit business for another sniping service! OK, so you cannot blame them for that. BUT, there is some very serious disconnect with the folks (or is this site run by just one person??) at Auction Sniper because they are so slow to react, return messages, keep up-to-date, etc. It feels as if there truly is just one computer nerd behind this site!

It boils down to this (in my opinion): PEOPLE WILL CONTINUE TO BID, FURIOUSLY, IN THE FINAL SECONDS OF AN AUCTION, BECAUSE NO ONE WANTS TO LOSE WHAT IT IS THEY ARE BIDDING ON, for whatever reason. The higher the price, the higher EBay's cut. When you using a third party sniping service, you put in the highest amount of money you are willing to part with, and walk away. When you revisit EBay, or your Auction Sniper account, you will see later whether you won or lost the item(s) bid on.

The market for just about everything being sold on EBay right now is down. Prices are low. Folks are pulling back severely on spending because the economy continues to free-fall, school has begun again, the holidays are coming, and people are being laid off into the thousands in agriculture, construction, oil (ESPECIALLY OIL), retail (anyone noticed the number of businesses closing around the U.S.?), vehicles, on and on. I'm watching items sell in my category of collectible dolls (Barbie, in particular), for such low prices right now, it makes me want to cry, because the downwards trend has hit our household particularly hard ... husband lost his job last March, Unemployment benefits have expired, and we've gone from making $8500 per month, to $1631 (my sole retirement benefit). The only thing we're sure of right now, is that I have enough money to cover our mortgage ... everything else has been pared back, shut down, or shut off!

Sooooo, while I understand why the frustration is high for everyone when losing items because of this push-pull fiasco we've been unfortunate to find ourselves in, while using Auction Sniper to make our bids for us, EBay is (sadly, but I can understand why ...) blaming a robo-system of denying bids because the world is pulling back its money. We, the little people, are what they NEED -- MUST HAVE -- sitting at our computers, driving prices up in the last seconds to snatch the collectibles (or ? whatever it is you want/need), to get the biggest piece of the pie possible! Third party sniping services do NOT help in that effort.

I've looked at this from every angle; sent the messages/waited on the replies; asked around; looked at other sniping services; and finally, made the personal phone calls to EBay to hear what they had to say. You can bet, I got the "canned answer" I expected. Blame it on last minute traffic, more popular days of the week (Sundays seem to be the toughest), etc. I did a spreadsheet that included Auction Sniper users from my Barbie circle, 18 people in all, for the last five months. (Yes, I loved Statistics courses in college ... most people HATE those classes because polling can never be an exact science. But, I was good at it, so I did my own survey. )

I found that it is RANDOM. Their "robo/computer" (no "real" person involved, so they say) is to blame, and there's nothing that can be done about it?

BARF up the true story.

It is NOT on the highest traffic times, or days. So, EBay lied to me.

Do I believe they have a way of shutting down third party sniping services, here and there, so that it is completely believable that it has everything to do with their ("computer systems'") inability to verify our user names/info while using a third party sniping service, when asking to place our bids just seconds before auctions end?

YES. I believe they certainly CAN program their computers to do so ... leaving third party sniping services to leave us messages that our accounts could NOT be verified by EBay, instead of giving us successful auction wins.

Do I think Auction Sniper folks are able to do anything about it? NO. How could they, possibly? I mean, in the end, couldn't EBay block third party sniping -- in total -- if they want to? Of course they can! I think they will!

Maybe then the lawyers (they would most certainly hire) from these third party sniping companies might actually attempt to sue EBay for shutting down their bread-and-butter, put-food-on-the-table websites.

All of the info I've given here is from my own third party sniping losses, phone calls, messages back and forth, and talking with others, and don't forget ... my own unscientific poll. Do with the information what you will.

I suggest -- if you want, what you want on EBay, that you go back to sitting in front of your computer, with price in mind and do your own sniping in the last few seconds if you really want what you want. It's not the fault of the third party sniping services. It is EBay's fault. KING EBAY, all hail the KING.

Not only am I looking for another sniping service -- but only because the folks at Auction Sniper just don't seem to care, or are so understaffed that by the time that someone gets our messages, the time to reply/take care of the problem has already passed (since we are all obviously adept at reading each others' comments, on their own site).

And, I most definitely would LOVE TO FIND ANOTHER MARKET FOR BUYING AND SELLING ITEMS. EBay is about the money. I've been buying/selling on EBay since 1999, and they have become so anti-seller that it's beyond pathetic!

WITHOUT SELLERS, THERE IS NO EBAY! They cannot seem to be able to get that through their thick skulls while they continue to clamp down upon us harder than ever before! I will probably always buy from their site ... but I wish, oooh, how do I wish, there was another site as popular. They'd have my business in a nano-second.

Again, I'm glad to see that more people are looking for answers, here, amongst the chatty, for the "EBay Requires Account Verification" problem (amongst about five "reasons" given for Auction Sniper not making our bids for us, successfully). Keep sharing. And, SIT AT YOUR COMPUTER TO MAKE THOSE LAST SECOND BIDS! Don't give money to Auction Sniper if they're not going to offer decent customer service, and if you want what you want, then do the last minute thing YOURSELF, to get it! That way you no longer live in a frustrating mode ... it's just not worth the aggravation, because there is NOTHING THAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT! THAT IS THE BOTTOM LINE!

Good luck, and hugs to all! Kat )

Hi Kat,

It's true that all sniping services are at the mercy of eBay to some degree, but we have been working hard on our service to achieve the best results. Over the past few months we've made significant progress on "Ebay Requires Account Verification" as well as many other areas. I hope you've been seeing much better results in your sniping these past several weeks.

That said, the past two weeks and especially the past few days have been particularly difficult on the eBay front. They've had a number of system issues which have affected buyers and sellers in several ways. This can also be seen on independent sites such as Down Detector. This resulted in some lost snipes last week but we've put additional safeguards in place and have managed to work around the issues since then.

Regards,
Todd

Hi - sorry but that is rubbish with regards other snipers. I spoke to eBay myself regarding the issue. They were quite clear they had no intention of blocking snipers - in the main because it would drive shoppers elsewhere.

I had a sequence of failed snipes using AS - with the occasional odd one or two being placed. It got to a 90% fail rate - i.e. totally unreliable. IMMEDIATELY I switched to the other sniper (which by the way is completely free) every single one of my (over 100 now) bids was placed successfully. I reiterate: NOT ONE SINGLE FAILED BID PLACEMENT.

So I don't buy it is an across the board problem for all sniping companies. It most definitely is a problem for AS though.

There customer service is woeful and when I did get a reply it was just a scripted response with no answers to the questions posed. They did little to nothing to sort the problem out - and you have to pay for their service when the sniper I use is free and so far 100% proficient.

I would never go back to them now - I mean why would I?

Hi machineage,

Back in the July/August timeframe we were seeing failures, especially on peak Sunday evening hours and especially in the UK -- nowhere near the percentage you quote, but still too high. After all, we want our users to win as many snipes as possible!

Since that time we have added to our team and renewed our focus, with several improvements in place already and more to come. Our results now are looking quite good, dramatically better than the past results you describe, even while facing new errors on the eBay side this past week.

Snipe on!

Regards,
Todd

** EDIT ** I did some research to better understand what sort of troubles you had encountered, but our database shows only two verification failures for your account within hundreds of snipes over the years. The errors were both in mid August, when we were experiencing the most troubles. Does that sound correct, or are there other accounts that I missed?

quote:

posted November 04, 2015 10:46 AM Hide Post
Hi machineage,

Back in the July/August timeframe we were seeing failures, especially on peak Sunday evening hours and especially in the UK -- nowhere near the percentage you quote, but still too high. After all, we want our users to win as many snipes as possible!

Since that time we have added to our team and renewed our focus, with several improvements in place already and more to come. Our results now are looking quite good, dramatically better than the past results you describe, even while facing new errors on the eBay side this past week.

Snipe on!

Regards,
Todd

** EDIT ** I did some research to better understand what sort of troubles you had encountered, but our database shows only two verification failures for your account within hundreds of snipes over the years. The errors were both in mid August, when we were experiencing the most troubles. Does that sound correct, or are there other accounts that I missed?

I hate to say virtually the same thing twice, but it seemed rotten having the false-reassurance as the very last post in this thread that makes people think you've fixed anything when clearly you have not.

Less frustrating, and possibly more effective than using Auction Sniper, is to simply to write all of your snipes down and then feed them through a paper shredder.

Hi lastditcheffort,

Seems you are having troubles and are frustrated, if you provide us with further information we'd be happy to assist you.

This thread relates to our system (like many other sniping tools) having problems with ebay's security features that resulted in account verifications or captcha blocking when we tried to place snipes on your behalf. This problem has not existed since August.

I reviewed your account and it appears that your Auction Sniper user/password don't match that of your ebay credentials. It is required that they match otherwise we are not able to place snipes on your behalf.

If you are having other issues please let us know. Otherwise simply updating your sniper credentials to match ebay should fix your issues.

-Stephanie

I just wanted to add my voice to the situation about account verification. I still don't understand why the requirement for verification isn't a part of the process you go through when you set up a snipe. Why in the world does AS give the appearance that it's working when it's not? I lost a rare item that went for cheap because the seller set it up to end in the middle of the night. So upsetting!

Hi ichiricki,

We have not experienced issues with account verification since August. When it was a problem for us there were two types of validations eBay would throw at us… the first and most common was captcha blocking. If you are not familiar, captcha block is where you are shown digits and/or alpha characters in an image and asked to enter them in a field in order to continue. This was not something we could anticipate or guess, therefore we could not make it part of the process when setting up a snipe. The second issue was user account verification… If we were placing bids from the same single IP address for all of our customers we could have solved this issue pretty easily, however, because our system is highly redundant using one of hundreds of possible IP addresses to place bids on your behalf the problem was not easily worked around.

Not sure what you mean when you say AS gives the appearance that it’s working when it’s not. If our customers max bid is high enough we win 90% of the time. I feel this is a pretty good win percentage but still we are always trying to improve it. We charge 1% of the auction price (up to $9.99) but only if you win the auction, otherwise we get nothing… we want nothing more then for you to win auctions.

I reviewed your account and see you’ve won 22 items using AS and lost 10, the reason for 9 of your losses were because you did not bid enough and the last one indicates it was blocked by the seller which I believe means the seller closed the auction before it ended. I do not see that user verification or captcha block ever impacted you.

-Stephanie

Hi ichiricki,

I apologize and stand corrected. I missed your most recent snipe that appears to have failed due to captcha block on your eBay account. We also determined that your Auction Sniper password does not match with your eBay password.

In order to correct this two things need to happen. First you'll need to update your password for AS to match your eBay password. Second you'll need to login to eBay and clear the captcha block. Once these two things are done you'll be able to place snipes.

Again, I apologize for your troubles. We've credited your account with free snipes as a result.

-Stephanie

What good are free snipes if they are as unreliable as they currently are?

Hi ginettag12p,

I responded to your other post here:

http://community.auctionsniper...5608021/m/7657028976

-Stephanie

So how do I validate my ebay acct. when I sign in it doesn't ask for anything

Hi Mike@home,

As you may have noticed, this is a case where eBay is asking for manual verification in order to log in from our servers. Since they aren't requiring this verification from other locations, there is nothing you can do directly. I'll follow up now with a private message so we can pursue a solution together.

Regards,
Todd