Irony

Would you be so kind as to let us have the auction item number? I'd like to check it out, and I suspect that Rick would, too. Thanks.

Sure - it was auction # 2829816523.

Any comments, information, and/or feedback would be appreciated!

"There are no stupid questions, but there sure are a lot of curious idiots out there!" [And some days, I'm certainly one of them! ]

Probably a hiccup at eBay. These are somewhat rare. It was a pretty average Monday. No more or less misses than normal. It is also possible the internet itself was slow then, but since we snipe from more than 3 places that doesnt normally have any effect since we're coming into eBay from different freeways in effect.

I'd say that just normal misses are probably 15-20% of the misses and they always come in batches. As in all the snipes in small amount of time will miss. And since we're placing them since we get the not in time late messages I know we sniped them and did it on time. It's just that they dont get processed on eBay in time. Either due to slowness there, the internet, or along the way. Oh and sometimes eBays computers times are off a few seconds. But it would be weird for all of our remote bidders to all hit the same eBay machine so that wouldnt happen.

Probbly 80%+ of users bid at 5 seconds or less, and probably nearly all those bids still get sniped in time. For the average item 5 seconds is probably enough. For real rare stuff you might want to go a little more just for the added safety.

Somebody with the userid of "shoesandglasses" won the auction with a bid placed with 3 seconds to go. Was that you? 'Cause if it was, you won. If not, then I'm inclined to agree with Sara that it was a 2-second hiccup by eBay. It's a pity, but there'll be other hot skirts like that coming up.

Thanks for the replies!

I'm glad to know that it was a "normal miss" - it's not like I've never had THOSE while proxy bidding in the past....

"...a hiccup at eBay?" I'd never even thought of such a thing before, since MY ISP's so easy to blame! (And I've done THAT in the past, too!)

Steve - no, "shoesandglasses" wasn't me - and I'd not looked at the winning bid's time. Three seconds?! Wow - much closer than I'd ever been with proxy bidding - and not like I'm going back to that now!

But that does open up a question I'd wondered about in the past - that of "sniper battles." I wonder how often that two of "us" decide to go after the same item? I'm sure that it's happened before - and it looks like this could have been one of those situations if not for the hiccup.

I'm assuming that it's a matter of "high bid wins" if both land in the closing seconds - but is it?

[Sorry that my question's leading to other questions that are probably in the FAQ's! ]

From AS' faq on "Help" tab:

63. What if two or more people snipe the same items at the same time?

Although the probability of this happening is very small, we have developed our software to give bidders an equal chance of winning in all possible cases.

For example: If two bidders are sniping on the same item with the same max bid, and both choose to snipe with just 5 seconds left -- our bidding system will send eBay both bids at the same time.

The rest is up to eBay. The winner will be the bid that eBay received first. We do not have control over which eBay servers we send to, and therefore cannot pre-determine who will win.

Highest bid/snipe will win, as long as the last snipe reaches ebay's next bid increment, and, if a reserve auction, the reserve must be reached.

Sara can tell you horror stories about eBay hiccups, Merlin. She's usually the one who has to field the subsequent irate posts in the Forum that blame AS. Well, sometimes AS is at fault, and AS will openly admit it when that's the case. But usually it's a product of eBay's occasional gastric distress.

Hmmm - another auction, another winning bid (from the same person as before) ONE second after mine? And outbid by a penny? Whatever happened to those $1.00 minimum raises?

Oh well - I'm sure there's an explanation - and you're the people to ask! (Thanks in advance, too! )

It might help if I gave you all the auction ID like I MEANT to above, wouldn't it?

Auction ID: 2830366617

Sorry!

I think I have it, Merlin. Your snipe went in a second ahead of the winning snipe, but the winning snipe was accepted as a bid by eBay before yours was. That'd do it, and there's no way of controlling which of two bids that close together gets there first. That was just plain ol' bad luck. I'll bet you go for a loooong time before you see something like that again, if ever.