posted delay times

I want to know what is up with the delay time too!!! Lost one I wanted because Auction Sniper placed my bid 1m3s before the auction ended. (Had my delay at 6 sec!)

Can anyone help? How do I prevent this from happening. Feel I should get some free snipes or something.
Max

"Does ebay official time vary to encourage live sniping" - I doubt it...

AS adjusts the 'lead time' to ensure snipes get placed at busy times - some find this annoying. I don't as I always bid my max, I always use 8 seconds, I assume that no-one (with a life) can react to a bid/snipe in less than 30 seconds and I always add a few pence so that I'll win in a tie situation. I've read all about proxy bidding and bid increments and I never use AS for 'must-haves'. Ergo, it's a brilliant product...

R2

quote:

I assume that no-one (with a life)

Then the “withouts” are the ones to avoid. They’ll either increase the amount one pays, OR prevent one from paying anything.

When ebay forces snipers to past a life-detector, then the problem caused by premature snipes should go away.

Excluding maintenance periods, is 63 seconds a forum record for premature snipe-placement?!

R2

OK Fred. When we read that article you recommended that concludes by rating AuctionSniper as coming out on top of the others it reviewed, THEN what are we supposed to do? -- Pick something they rated inferior???

quote:

I want to know what is up with the delay time too!!! Lost one I wanted because Auction Sniper placed my bid 1m3s before the auction ended. (Had my delay at 6 sec!)

Interesting! As R2 mentioned, this may be the longest non-maintenance associated(?) adjusted lead time reported here. Care to share the item number so we can take a look ourselves?

quote:

Excluding maintenance periods, is 63 seconds a forum record for premature snipe-placement?!

This one might be the record: https://community.auctionsniper.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/385608021/m/8951069641

Unusual - the link to the auction still works and it's over a year old.

Here is the item # 230091165816
I got the 1 min 3 sec from clicking on confirm bid within A.S.
SEE:
Item you've bid on:
Stanley No. 5 1/4 Plane Type 13 1925-1928
Time left: 1 min 3 secs

Ebay says I bidded at 17:58:57 and the auction ended at 18:00:00

Cool do I win a prize for setting a record? (Just kidding)
I find sniping a very valuable way to win items at a lower cost. So I just want to understand the in's and outs and be able to trust the service.
Max

Here it is as link:

#230091165816

I reckon that even I could have reacted to that early snipe so get on the help tab and claim a few free snipes - after all, if AS thought the response times were slow how come others could bid/snipe so close to the line!



R2

Hey Max!

Thanks for posting the listing. As R2 mentioned, you might be able to get a few free snipes out of it, but I really doubt the outcome would have been different if your snipe had fired as scheduled. There were 5 interested bidders (including yourself) in about the last 1 minute of the auction. Had your snipe gone in as scheduled, the bid price MAY have already exceeded your max bid, in which case your bid wouldn't have even been accepted. Happens to me all the time! (Because I'm a bargain hunter)

Nevertheless, I commiserate with you for the loss and understand your desire to affix blame. Unfortunately, I think your blame is probably misplaced with AS early firing your bid. There just were others willing to bid more than you for the item and they most likely would have done so regardless if your bid went in at 1 minute or 1 sec from the auction end!

Thanks everyone.
Chatter, you got me laughing out loud
Max

Looks like fred's (fred_lincolnham) posts/threads were all deleted - there is a god, and she granted my wish.

Hi,

Brand new here, and I've also just had this problem. So far I've had 20 or so perfect snipes with a delay time of 3 secs. I do relaize that it will vary by a couple of seconds but my latest was with 57 seconds left. This actually resulted in me paying about $5 more for the item because the guy I would have beat put in another bid.

here's the linkItem number: 320084650415

This actually may have resulted in me paying about $5 more for the item because the guy I beat put in another bid but I have no way of knowing whether it was in reaction to mine or not...

R2

quote:

Originally posted by Cablejelly:
This actually resulted in me paying about $5 more for the item because the guy I would have beat put in another bid.

As hard as I try, I can’t come up with any other reason to explain the outcome of Cablejelly’s auction. AS’s premature snipe allowed the other sniper enough time to increase (final-seconds nibbling) the closing price. Fortunately the other sniper didn’t have yet another 31 seconds to retaliate with a third snipe.

I tried a bit too and worked this out:

traptfinch bid $18

cablejelly8 bid $27.65 (or more, who knows)which would have raised the high price to $19

one second later kao2230 bid $21.86 which would have raised the price to $22.86 in cablejelly8's favour

kao2230 then bid $26.65 which resulted in cablejelly8's winning price of $27.65

Surely if ka02230 was reacting to previous bids she/he would NOT have bid such an odd amount? However, a quick look at other winning bids by this person does show a history of last minute bids/snipes so perhaps they are using a sniping system/fast finger technique.

Still cablejelly8 won for less than or equal to their max so no reason to complain!

Suggestion: AS allows users to set a min and a max lead time.

R2

quote:

Surely if ka02230 was reacting to previous bids she/he would NOT have bid such an odd amount?

Perhaps kao has been following the advice of this forum to always bid odd amounts. Perhaps kao knew that with 56 seconds left in the auction, they had plenty of time to key in any amount they wanted (which may have delayed them enough to prevent them from placing a 3rd snipe). Perhaps in the heat of battle they made a typo.

If cable’s snipe had not been placed as early (or had been placed a few seconds later), then when kao’s $21.86 bid was placed, kao would have received a message stating they were the high bidder at $18.50 (trap’s $18 + $.50 increment). Instead, when kao’s bid was placed, they were immediately (like right away and they didn’t even have to have another window open refreshing like a crazy person “without a life”) told they were NOT the high bidder. SO, kao not being a particularly quick-witted person, AND not all that dexterous, AND perhaps with a slow Internet connection, took around 30 seconds to decide how much to bid and to key in the bid and then a handful of tic-tocks for the bid to be recorded by ebay.

quote:

Still cablejelly8 won for less than or equal to their max so no reason to complain!

To extend on that logic – why not just skip sniping and place a proxy bid? After all, as long as you win the auction for less than or equal to your nibbled-up proxy bid, then no reason to complain.

Let me try saying it differently – nibbling and/or a bidding war is still nibbling and/or a bidding war if it takes place 1 day, or 1 hour, or 1 minute before the end of the auction.

Just because one is willing to pay $x doesn’t mean one isn’t more willing to pay $x minus $y.

And, extending this “logic” a little further, why would one be concerned about a shill bidder? After all, all the shill bidder does is to give the winning bidder a better opportunity to realize their full potential.

quote:

If cable’s snipe had not been placed as early (or had been placed a few seconds later), then when kao’s $21.86 bid was placed, kao would have received a message stating they were the high bidder at $18.50 (trap’s $18 + $.50 increment). Instead, when kao’s bid was placed, they were immediately (like right away and they didn’t even have to have another window open refreshing like a crazy person “without a life”) told they were NOT the high bidder. SO, kao not being a particularly quick-witted person, AND not all that dexterous, AND perhaps with a slow Internet connection, took around 30 seconds to decide how much to bid and to key in the bid and then a handful of tic-tocks for the bid to be recorded by ebay.

This would be exactly what happened.

quote:

Still cablejelly8 won for less than or equal to their max so no reason to complain!

Gonna have to disagree with you there R2. Yes, I got the card for less than my max "what would have been a proxy" bid. That's just the point though. AS turned my snipe into a proxy bid when it fired 54 seconds earlier than scheduled (see above description). This isn't a huge complaint but here it is: "I paid roughly $5 more for this card PLUS the cost of the snipe." (cost could be either the monitary fee or getting burned on a free snipe. the point is it cost something to essentially place a proxy bid for me)

All true - I was just being devil's advocate...

R2