Problem with snipe timer??

quote:

Needless to say, had the snipe been properly placed, I would have won the item.

Oh, REALLY?!?!? Care to share the auction #?

Certainly. Kindly devote your full attention to the stated auction end time, the entry time of my bid by Auctionsniper, which was set for a 7 second lead, and the winning bid time. The number is 7512581212.

If you come to a different conclusion I would appreciate your reasoning. BTW I subsequently checked another snipe which was right on the button, further reinforcing my contention that the timer was off on this particular transaction.

quote:

7512581212.

ehcs ( 372) US $616.00 08-May-05 20:14:45 BST  
spydrxx ( 97) US $606.00 08-May-05 20:14:26 BST

Auction ended 08-May-05 20:14:49 BST so ehcs got his/her bid in 4 seconds from the end.

ehcs placed 4 bids so I guess he wasn't using sniper software (or if he was he's not too bright!). Thus he must have bid manually or been using sniping software as a last resort.

spydrxx's bid came in 23 secs from the end.

The BIG question is this: Did ehcs's bid get placed in response to spydrxx's bid? Could ehcs react that quickly to seeing themselves outbid?

Interestingly, he was able to place bids 19 seconds after spydrxx, both in the last minute of the auction...

Hmm - maybe an AS employee can shed some light on this...

R2

No way of knowing for sure what caused ehcs to bid the way he did, but it would appear that ehcs placed his last snipe in response to spydrxx’s snipe. Based on the bid history, ehcs was able to see and respond to spyrdrxx’s bid within 19 seconds (I’d hate to try to argue otherwise). Not all that difficult to do if one has the bid page opened in one window while refreshing the bid history in another window, and ebay’s response time is good. 19 seconds is a lot of time for someone that is use to placing manual snipes. Just take a stopwatch and see how long 19 seconds is (it’s probably a guy thing).

AS monitors ebay’s current response time (don’t ask how as they don’t/won’t tell us – trade secret and that sort). Now, if the response time before the close of an auction is longer then normal, then AS will pad the lead-time to compensate. Since response times fluctuate, it’s not always an accurate compensation/estimate.

AS feels that it is better to place a snipe early then to not get the snipe placed. I happen to agree with that, but not everyone does. It has been recommended that an option be added that would turn off padding lead times – which may or may not be a good idea.

A manual sniper doesn’t need to worry about adjusting lead times because of poor response times – they don’t need to worry about it because they can’t. They start banging out their snipes at a predetermined time, and keep banging away until they run out of time or money. What we never see in the bid history is “intention”. When a manual sniper intends to place a snipe, but the response time isn’t very good so their snipe isn’t place, there’s no record of that. In fact, I don’t even think there’s a forum they can go to and comment about it.

Those that use this service over time understand the drawbacks of a sniping service. Overall, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. After all, if they didn’t, AS wouldn’t have any customers, or they would all be stupid.

P.S. Sunday nights are when the response time fluctuates the most due to it being ebay’s prime time.

First, I want to thank Region2 & Rick for their insightful comments, many of which I agree with. Nevertheless, the question in my mind remains...if the snipe time is not going to be the number you have selected, does it make sense to shorten the time to 2-3 seconds to improve the likelihood of prevailing in an auction? Or, are there other significant considerations at this interval not already discussed in other threads? In any case, thanks to those providing constructive input.

The HIGHEST bid wins, not necessarily the last. One loses because someone else was willing to pay more. Just keep that in mind. Other comments noted.

quote:

Nevertheless, the question in my mind remains...if the snipe time is not going to be the number you have selected, does it make sense to shorten the time to 2-3 seconds to improve the likelihood of prevailing in an auction?

This is going to sound like Orwellian double-speak (see if anyone else tries to directly address your question instead of dancing around it), but what the hell.

If you use 2-3 seconds, you might reduce the time between snipe placement and auction ending, but you’ll probably also improve your chances of not having your snipe placed. That’s the other side of this coin. The majority of complaints about snipes NOT being placed come from those that used less than 5 seconds.

I realize that that last paragraph sounds inconsistent with other statements on this thread. After all, if AS takes a 7 second snipe and turns it into a 23 second snipe, why wouldn’t it take a 2 second snipe and turn it into a 18 second snipe? My answer: I don’t know.

Now, all this talk about padding lead-times usually applies to only Sunday nights. There are some suggestions about lead-times in the FAQ’s which provides about the best advice there is. But, like most things, it’s not absolute.

We don’t know how many snipes AS places daily (again, trade secret and that sort), but AS has said “thousands”. That could be anywhere from 2,000 to 19,999. Even if it were only 2,000 daily snipes (on average), I think there would be a whole lot of very upset people complaining on this forum if what you experienced was the norm.

Maybe someone from AS will pop in and explain this conundrum. Maybe it’s just me.

Hope this helps,
George Orwell

Sara has always maintained that AS pads the auction bid times to compensate for slow responses from eBay's servers. The problem is that they often 'over pad', sometimes by a considerable amount. I'm in the group that would rather the bid go in early than not at all, but ....

I REALLY wish AS would take THIS off their main page:

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

Since you've said you pad bid times the above is very misleading, especially to new AS members. Why not simply remove the 'exactly when you want' out and leave it like that? It would save lord knows how many of these, 'My Bid Was Early' posts and probably quite a few of your support requests.

I still vote for a setup option allowing us to opt-out of padding.

quote:

I still vote for a setup option allowing us to opt-out of padding.

me too!
R2

OPT OUT OF PADDING!!!!

YES, YES, YES!

ME TOO, ME TOO, ME TOO!

I will gladly pay you Tuesday to be "OPTED OUT OF PADDING" today!

I think an opt-out of lead time wouldcertainly end a lot of hate and discontent!
I just saw where my losing snipe went in a full TWELVE seconds early! This is unacceptable.
If I say 5 seconds, I MEAN 5 seconds. If lag time affects the process, then I am willing to take that chance. THAT'S WHY I SET IT FOR 5 SECONDS! I am an adult. I can tell time. I understand the process and I am willing to take the risk. Please allow me to.
^#&^$@&^$%@($*^@_!!!

It could be worse. AS placed for me a losing bid OVER 2 MINUTES before the end of the auction (of course that was over 2 years ago). Their answer at the time was that the bid I had set was lower than the current bid, so they placed it when they could.

Someone else recognised that what I was complaining about was their time-padding, which should be an opt-out. Of course their other explanations were that the auction ended up at a bad time for AS (on the hour, 15 after, 30 after, 45 after) and on a weekend.

However, I also noticed that after I complained about the time situation that I LOST all the free snipes I had EARNED for signing up new people. Go figure.

So now I get an email from AS wondering where I've been. I agreed to come back and retry their service on my terms. If I really dont care if I get it or lose it, I'll use AS. Otherwise, I have a cable hookup which WILL get me on in the last seconds.


BTW....whatever happened to truth in advertising? If they say they can give you last-second bidding and they dont and you lose the item due to the snipe not being placed when they said it would be, shouldn't AS give us free snipes?

Send your suggestion to suggestions@auctionsniper.com - if everybody did that then maybe they'd listen!


R2

Send a support case. To think we took your free snipes because of something you said. That is just crazy. In fact, I'll investigate it and if it's true I'll give you 50 free snipes. I just can't believe anyone here would do that. I've never heard of such a thing.

quote:

Originally posted by SgtJim:
I think an opt-out of lead time wouldcertainly end a lot of hate and discontent!
I just saw where my losing snipe went in a full TWELVE seconds early! This is unacceptable.
If I say 5 seconds, I MEAN 5 seconds. If lag time affects the process, then I am willing to take that chance. THAT'S WHY I SET IT FOR 5 SECONDS! I am an adult. I can tell time. I understand the process and I am willing to take the risk. Please allow me to.
^#&^$@&^$%@($*^@_!!!

Yes, that was a really adult-sounding post.

There will NEVER be an end to debate on this subject. People will complain and whine, no matter what. That is the nature of the beast.

quote:

People will complain and whine, no matter what. That is the nature of the beast.

YES, tis true!

Well, I see new members aren't being treated any differently. Kind of makes "our forum" inaccurate - or maybe not.

quote:

Originally posted by Sniper Sara B.:
Send a support case. To think we took your free snipes because of something you said. That is just crazy. In fact, I'll investigate it and if it's true I'll give you 50 free snipes. I just can't believe anyone here would do that. I've never heard of such a thing.

If in fact you award the 50 free snipes...perhaps I should get 25 free snipes for the mental duress of reading of their delimma?