Is it normal for snipe-times to vary?

hmm
this hasnt happened to me.
my last auction was set for 7 seconds.
i just checked the ebay record. exactly 7 seconds.

Renate999,

Welcome! So you've had a chance to enjoy the benefits of Auction Sniper, hehe?

I just briefly reviewed about 30 of my previous snipes. All but five of them were right on the nose. Three of them were one second less, two of them three seconds less.

You should still have the snipe records under My Snipes for those two auctions. Do they still show the requested lead time?

Check what is set for lead time in your account preferences. Be certain that is what you intended it to be. Also, when you do set a snipe, take note of the lead time in the pop-up window to confirm it is as you've set in your preferences.

I know when I first started, I requested a lead time of two seconds (awfully close, don't you think?), but when I would start to set up a snipe, the pop-up window would automatically have inserted five seconds instead. Never figured that out. But I modified the lead time under my preferences and haven't seen a problem yet.

Neva

The government server that we sync our time against was not functioning
correctly this weekend and we would like to apologize for snipes that were
not placed the exact moment that they should have been. We have made
preparations so that this will not happen again. Our time is now perfectly
synced with eBay to a fraction of a second, as you can see:

time offset -0.0024633 sec

Thanx for the response, people!
I must admit, that the varying snipe times didn't stop me using AS - this is just such a cool service (I just won 2 more auctions!)
Now i'm just struggling with one more issue: do I keep my 'discovery' to myself, or do I tell my friends about AS, and risk losing an auction to one of them? ;-)

renate999 asked, "Now i'm just struggling with one more issue: do I keep my 'discovery' to myself, or do I tell my friends about AS, and risk losing an auction to one of them?"

By all means tell your friends! You'll only lose an auction to one of them if (a) your friend(s)collect the same things you do AND (b) they have a higher bid amount than you do. I have found it wise to always use the highest amount I'm willing to pay for an item in setting up my snipe. That way, if I'm outbid, at least the item goes for more than I wanted to pay anyhow.

And don't forget you get free snipes when your friends sign up!