Premature snipe - why?

Please post the auction # so someone can look at it for you!

If you need the whole URL, it's:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&category=6708&item=2457570531

And here's the snipe record from My Snipes:
2457570531 US $ 888.88 11 5 2/6/2004 3:40:15 PM

BTW, I'm a newbie to the Forum, but have been using AS for a long time.

...How about a B.A.?

Jabbergah                                                    

The following table has been reorganized and sorted into date order.  First
bid placed is line #1.  That should make it easier to follow the auction.
Two additional columns have been added.  They are the current bid and high
bidder, as displayed on eBay after each bid is placed.              v2.1.03
* = Winning bid. (may be less than actual maximum entered.)
 
                     Max                        Current Winning
 #    BIDDER         Bid      Day & Time         Bid  &  Bidder
                    (US $)
  1   mechenlight   520.00   06-Feb  15:00:02   500.00   mechenlight  
  2   racerwad      600.00   06-Feb  15:13:29   530.00   racerwad     
  3   mechenlight   550.00   06-Feb  15:16:51   560.00   racerwad     
  4   mechenlight   600.00   06-Feb  15:17:47   600.00   racerwad     
  5   mechenlight   650.00   06-Feb  15:18:33   610.00   mechenlight  
  6   racerwad      666.00   06-Feb  15:20:37   660.00   racerwad     
  7   mechenlight   680.00   06-Feb  15:23:27   676.00   mechenlight  
  8   racerwad      701.00   06-Feb  15:25:19   690.00   racerwad     
  9   dixie-chicks  700.00   06-Feb  15:26:50   701.00   racerwad     
 10   dixie-chicks  725.00   06-Feb  15:26:59   711.00   dixie-chicks 
 11   racerwad      799.00   06-Feb  15:31:52   735.00   racerwad     
 12   carcentric    888.88   06-Feb  15:38:17   809.00   carcentric   
 13   racerwad      827.00   06-Feb  15:38:49   837.00   carcentric   
 14   dixie-chicks  847.00   06-Feb  15:39:15   857.00   carcentric   
 15   racerwad      877.77   06-Feb  15:39:20   887.77   carcentric   
 16   dixie-chicks  897.77   06-Feb  15:39:42   897.77   dixie-chicks 
 17   racerwad     *907.77   06-Feb  15:40:01   907.77   racerwad     

Does that answer why their snipe went in 2 minutes early?

Lexie

...you would have lost anyway. Dixie & racer were obviously monitoring the end of the auction. With or without your early bid, they would have gotten into their last minute bid war. If your snipe had fired at the time you specified, it's likely the current bid would have already been BEYOND your snipe and would have returned "Bid too low".

So do you wish you had sniped a higher amount?

Jabbergah                                                    

Earliest snipe I had heard of was about a minute early till now, unless AS was shutting down for some reason. Doesn't normally happen durring the day though, but they would send all snipes for that guess-tamated time frame just before the shutdown or reboot.

Well...Here I go...I will probably get flamed again...but whether a person is going to win or not is not the point...I beleive that the whole question is very simple...why...are some bids going in so early. Also if you look at the history...it took the other 2 bidders almost the whole 2 minutes to beat carcentrics bid. Had AS bid within the last 5 secs....He might have won.

This just my 2-cents worth and absolutely not meant to offend anyone...

Ahhh Boone, we wont flame ya Good question I reckon.

Lexie

...seems that the snipers that have the problems with early AS snipes are those that set their lead time to 5 seconds or less. Personally I've taken to setting my lead to 9 - 15 seconds and can't recall seeing the big time adjustments to my snipes that others have.

The idea was raised in a past thread that maybe AS should allow users to select whether to prioritize on getting the bid placed (adjust lead time as necessary) or to prioritize the TIME the bid is placed (minimal or NO adjustment of lead time i.e. bid might not be placed in time. I'm thinking that's looking like a good idea.

Another thing that could be a factor -- how does AS ACTUALLY submit snipes to ebay. Is it based on the actual lead time specified, or is it done in batches? If it's doing batches, maybe it's grouping all snipes together that are supposed to fire within 1 minute? within 2 minutes? That could explain why these off-quarter-hour-off-Sunday snipe lead times are adjusted so much.

Obviously AS folks aren't going to go into detail about the internal workings of the AS program since their competitors can access this forum like anyone else. It just may be an inprecise attribute of the AS service that we just have to accept, or do without AS.

No solutions or explanations, just some rambling thots....

Jabbergah                                                    

Jabbergah,

Great response...I especially like the priortize idea.

Gee Jab - your *mini* epic was a hit!!

Lexie

quote:

---

how does AS ACTUALLY submit snipes to ebay.

---

I don't work for AS so don't really have a clue... having said that, there have been some hints as to how things MIGHT work. Here's my guess. (note the word guess)

It's done by the second. AS knows which snipes need to be placed for each second. It looks into the future... lets say 2 minutes from NOW and counts the number of snipes it needs to place, checks turnaround time for eBay based on snipes currently being placed and calculates how early to start the bidding for that second. This calculation would also have to take into account how many snipes have already been processed and waiting to be placed. Suppose AS figures it will take 15 seconds... so bidding for those snipes start 1 minute 45 seconds from now. Those snipes are now added to the list already waiting to go.

one second passes...

AS again looks into the future 2 minutes and the process starts all over.



[This message was edited by Puppy Raiser on February 11, 2004 at 07:36 PM.]

...our theories, Puppy, you are saying that AS is processing a batch a snipes every second. IDEALLY that would be the way it is done, although I doubt it's done that frequently. But what if those batches were only being done every 5 or 10 seconds (acceptable in my mind), or 15 or 30 or 60(?!) seconds? That may explain some of these long adjusted leads for seemingly NO explanation, especially when there are multiple bids placed afterwards with seemingly no problems.

Jabbergah                                                    

Okay, MAYBE the posted assumptions address my first question: "Why would AS make this stupid error?"

I haven't heard anything yet, though, that comes close to answering my second question: "Under what conditions can I expect the same poor service in the future?"

If AS is placing bids prematurely because it anticipates a load at a certain time, is there a way I can lookup what AS predicts its load will be so I can tell in advance when it's going to ignore my instructions? I'd have been better off in this situation sniping manually! It's clear that the last two bidders did what they did IN RESPONSE TO my bid - properly executed (per instructions), Jabbergah, they wouldn't have had time to counter.

The impression I'm left with is that AS can't handle its own success - either its processes or its policies are inadequate given the number of people using it.

What other companies offer sniper services? I'd like to try a few others, perhaps initiating the same snipe amount from two or three service companies to see which one gets the bid entered correctly.

Do a search for other services, and you will find several. You will also find software you can run from your own PC.

The consensus here (of course being an AS forum) is this is the place to be for both reliability and cost.

quote:

---

is there a way I can lookup what AS predicts its load will be

---

No, testing AS/eBay loads are done in real time.

...the bid war between dixie & racer wouldn't have passed your snipe, even if placed as desired.

You posted:

quote:

---

"Under what conditions can I expect the same poor service in the future?"

If AS is placing bids prematurely because it anticipates a load at a certain time, is there a way I can lookup what AS predicts its load will be

---

Unpredictable. As it's been explained to us by AS folks is since AS is continually conversing with ebay, whenever there is a lag in response from the ebay computers, AS automatically begins padding scheduled snipes with an appropriate additional time. The current AS assumption is an EARLY snipe is better than risking NO bid being placed at all.

quote:

---

What other companies offer sniper services? I'd like to try a few others, perhaps initiating the same snipe amount from two or three service companies to see which one gets the bid entered correctly.

---

There are others, though I've never used them. There have been some posters to this forum that claimed they checked out other services and concluded AS was the best of the lot. I haven't experienced the problems other AS users have, so I'm pretty happy w/AS. RE: using multiple sniping services to all snipe the same item -- if you won, wouldn't you end up owing fees to ALL the services?

Jabbergah                                                    

quote:

---

Originally posted by carcentric:
It's clear that the last two bidders did what they did IN RESPONSE TO my bid - properly executed (per instructions), Jabbergah, they wouldn't have had time to counter.

---

I disagree totally. Look at the bid history again -- In the last 40 minutes of the auction, three bidders (other than you) placed a total of SIXTEEN bids, in a VERY hot bidding war.

I don't think they bid in response to you -- In fact, I don't think they even NOTICED you as they blew by!

Zoom!!!

We announced this in our News forum.

We had to change our network settings and thus we needed to snipe some listings early because our switch needed to be restarted which can take a couple minutes. So those snipes were placed early so that they'd make it while our network was down from the equipment restarting.

We had to do it while both a manager and network engineer at our colocation facility where all our servers are located were on site in case anything went wrong. Which it did and they needed to unplug something and plug it back in.
So that is why we make sure to do it when there are peole from our internet provider facility there to make sure things go well.

So that is why there were snipes placed that early on Friday.

Hmm, I just checked and we didnt have that in the news area. I suppose because we only had about a 5 minute warning from the provider on when they would be making the change. So we just reset the snipes that need to be and make the changes on our end to match up with them.

These types of things with our colo are maybe once every 6-12 months. Very few times in several years have we needed to do much in that area.

Sorry for the trouble. I've credited your account a couple free snipes.

quote:

---

Jabber:
what if those batches were only being done every 5 or 10 seconds (acceptable in my mind), or 15 or 30 or 60(?!) seconds?

---

I'll stick with my one second guess, 5 at the very most. That's a very long time in a well indexed data base. Either way the same amount of data has to be moved and sorted. Taking bigger chunks of data may save SOME time, but not much.

No way is it 60! You would have to attach a timer to each individual snipe, otherwise 50% of ALL snipes would get placed 30-60 seconds early. Add to that padding for busy times...

The only bids I have lost this year (2) were because the bid went beyond what I wanted to pay.
And Thank Heaven AS dropped me out -- If I had been watching I would have made emotional bids far beyond what the items were worth. mory

Same here Mory!

This is, in general, a good site, it is still very buggy, so DON'T rely on it for something you absolutely need to buy.

Having said that, I think the general implementation is as good as you're going to find right now for sniping sites and *hopefully* they will work out the bugs.

What worries me more than the current bugs is the unresponsiveness of the staff to bug reports. They could use a *lot* of improvement on that. Until they recognize their bugs and start reacting to them better or even just admitting that they are there, it would be wise to continue evaluating other sites and software.

Again: The site is not stable or mature enough to rely on for something very important that you absolutely need to buy.

quote:

---

it is still very buggy, so DON'T rely on it for something you absolutely need to buy

---

Uh, no not it's not. You'd rather rely on a human that is about 50x as likely to miss a snipe?

Today was another great day as usual. Fewer than 1 in 1000 snipes were late, and as usual that wasnt our fault, it was due to eBay. So in my book that's 100% success. A manual sniper would be lucky to miss 50 for every 1 we miss. And that's probably on a good day.

quote:

---

Again: The site is not stable or mature enough to rely on for something very important that you absolutely need to buy.

---

Ha ha, you dont have a clue. You are basing that on what? Nobody but employees know how many we miss or dont. Thus you dont know, and I do. Thus you are wrong, way wrong.

Please present a list of these so called bugs.

Sara -

AS's policy on placing bids is a little more than confusing, especially to new users. Let me give you a few examples (emphasis added):

AS Home page: [bullet point under 'Features']

quote:

---

Place your bid exactly when you want … seconds before the auction closes!

---

AS Help --> AS FAQ page --> 'What is the ideal time to use[r] for a snipe':

quote:

---

Lead time is the number of seconds from the end of an auction that you would like AuctionSniper to bid for you. We recommend lead times between 5 and 10 seconds, although we've seen times as low as 2 and 3 seconds work just fine. Currently, Auction Sniper successfully places 99.9% of all snipes with 5 second lead times.

We don't recommend anything less than 5 seconds Although we send the snipe on time, during peak times an eBay server may not process it in time. This is not the fault of eBay or us; internet traffic is just heavier at certain times. And during peak periods, you might consider adding 2-4 seconds more since their servers seem to be taking quite a hit during that time (5-10 p.m. PST), and on weekends.

---

AS Help --> AS FAQ page --> 'I sniped at the right time! What happened to my snipe?':

quote:

---

If you look at a snipe confirmation, you might see as an example:

Lead Time 5
Snipe Time 02/10/2002 17:13:50 -5 sec
Actual Snipe 02/10/2002 17:13:50 0 sec

Auction Sniper will send your bid to eBay exactly when we agree to, on the right date at exactly the right time with a 5 second lead time. After we send your bid, it can encounter internet traffic and not reach eBay in time. In addition, eBay may not be able to process your bid in time during peak hours: you might want using slightly higher lead times between 6 and 10pm PST.

---

quote:

---

AS Home Page --> how Auction Sniper helps you win auctions --> 'Note: Please read about the risks involved with sniping by clicking here': (Several good reasons why bids may not be placed, including internet congestion. No mention of AS padding bid times)

---

Unless a new user happens upon the forums and reads the topics relating to bid timing they can only go by what AS has stated in the aforementioned references. I scanned every link I could find on the AS website and could find no reference to AS padding bid times in response to internet congestion/eBay slow response time.

As I've previously stated - I like AS. I use AS. I will continue to use this service until such time as it no longer 'works' for me.

I am disapointed, however, that when people complain that AS doesn't appear to be functioning as they thought (and granted, they could be a little more diplomatic with their wording) you would respond with 'Ha ha, you don't have a clue'; or, 'You are sadly mistaken'. Is this the message that you really want AS users to get from a representative for AS?

Mother Mary Says, 'HONESTLY! you're just ruint!'

Well said! I have thought the same thing. Support should be - well, supportive.

I had to plow through a lot of extraneous (albeit generally interesting, of course!)forum chat to get the real scoop. It seems to me that oft recurring topics and topics that stir a lot of ire ought to be addressed officially and up front to new members.

Still, I am happy with AS.