Snipe Did Not Happen, no explaination in sniper email

I am in the same situation.
My snipe was not placed.
Aug-21-03 12:03:11 PDT

C

I had the same thing happen to me.

Said my snipe was "Ready" but didn't happen.

Status Summary: Ready
Your snipe could not be placed because of the reason above
Click here to see eBay's response to your snipe

Suggestion: You might want to consider using Auction Sniper Bid Groups. With Bid Groups, you can bid on the same item from multiple sellers -- your bids will automatically be placed on each successive auction until you win one. This can help you avoid the disappointment of losing on an item you really want!

Folks tend to forget that it's only a computer with a limited number of messages to choose from that is trying to explain why your bid didn't get placed. From the wording you describe, it would appear that your lead time was insufficient and therefore eBay didn't get to your bids before the auctions closed. Since eBay won't accept a bid after the auction closes, AS sees your bid as still "Ready" even though the auction is over.

In some cases the cause might have been an eBay power outage last night. The eBay Systems Announcement board reads, in part, "This evening, eBay experienced a power outage at our primary hosting facility. Due to this power failure, all site functions, including the Announcement Board, were unavailable from 20:55 until 23:45. eBay worked with its hosting vendor to restore the site as quickly as possible."

Since those times are Pacific Daylight Time, you might want to "translate" them into your time zone to see whether that was the cause of your bid failure.

Steve I respect your post's point of view.

In my case today, the snipe I had placed (well in advance) was expected to be executed with 20 seconds lead time.
I was surprised when I saw the winning bid was lower than mine, and it was placed before my expected snipe would have been placed. My snipe would have won.

The time of day was roughly 12 noon PST today. not last night, so that doesn't match with the timing of ebay's stated difficulties.

In this case I had backed off my standard lead time to allow for slow processing or bandwidth issues on purpose! My assumption is that a 20 sec lead time is plenty for software response these days, and for ebay processing.

If response was typically slow one would expect to lose a lot of auctions with 5 sec snipe time chosen.That has NOT been the case for me in perhaps 25 bid snipes, excepting today.

That leads me to believe the problem was with Auction Sniper and their bid placement.
Maybe Auction Sniper had a problem.

Is this the place to be told by the company or to find out from others there has been a problem? I may be wrong, but with this forum it seems we'd learn of things when there is ANY issue.
That's why I even took the time to bring my issue to attention. Is this forum the right place?

I'm hoping to hear a plausible explanation.
So far, I don't think one's been posted.

I do expect Auction Sniper to be reliable. I will accept that it's not 100%, 100% of the time.

I'd just like to be told if it's known why my bid failed.

C

This happened to me also. Looks like a big problem for AS to solve

Catey, I'm just a sniper like you. I wasn't trying to give you a definitive answer, only to propose possible solutions to why your snipe wasn't placed. The only folks who can do more than that are the tech support people at AS. I suggest that you file a support claim with them; go to http://support.auctionsniper.com/ and drop them a line from there.

I had the same problem, several snipes set to go, and none were placed.

Fortunately for me, in a couple of them I had placed proxy bids (kind of low), and no one else bid so I still won. (Just lucky I guess)

But the others that were won by lower bids kind of burned me. Now I don't trust AS to place my bids, I watch and "snipe" it myself (bid last minute) when I really WANT the item.

It bothers me that I don't trust AS to perform anymore, it's so much more trouble to do it yourself.

Tired and shagged out after a long squawk....

Well, I don't know if it matters...but just thought that I would share the information that I had 3 snipes set up for this afternoon/evening eastern time. All of them went off perfectly. So, either the time of the problems is more isolated than that...or something else may have caused the problem.

Hopefully things have settled down now...but it would be nice to know what all has been going on between eBay and AS over the last 24 hours.

WarriorNun

"If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning"

Perhaps this is what affected our bids???
I saw this on a news site this morning:

"EBay Blacks Out for Three Hours


Email this Story

Aug 21, 5:56 PM (ET)


SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - A power outage at a Web hosting facility caused a three-hour shutdown of the Web site of eBay, the online auction company said Thursday.

The shutdown between 8:55 p.m. and 11:45 p.m. Wednesday was eBay's first complete blackout in about two years and affected an unknown number of bids, said company spokesman Kevin Pursglove.

The online giant handles about 7 million bids a day.

A roughly 10 minute-long power outage at a Qwest Communications facility in Santa Clara, one of several computing plants eBay uses to run its Web site, triggered the blackout. It forced eBay to reboot its systems, a process that usually takes about two hours, Pursglove said.

The company plans to credit listing fees for affected sellers. Bids that were scheduled to end at the time of the blackout have already been extended 24 hours, Pursglove said.

Shares of eBay rose $2.24 to close Thursday at $112.60 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

---

On the Net:

http://www.ebay.com "


The article said that the shut down happened Wednesday, but my auction that I was sniping ended on Thursday, August 21st, so I don't know if this affected anything or not...

(I do know that when I went back and checked the item on Ebay that I was sniping, that no bids had been placed at all on that particular item.)

quote:

---

Originally posted by WarHawks:
Shares of eBay rose $2.24 to close Thursday at $112.60 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

---

ebay has a blackout and their stock goes up.

Somehow I would imagine that the snipes that did not go through on Thursday, particularly early in the day, were related in some way to eBay's major meltdown, the first in two years.

We know that the power outage only lasted about 10 minutes. But eBay had to reboot its whole system, a procedure which at its best requires two hours or longer. Ebay says it was down from 20:55 PDT to 23:45 PDT on August 20, which is about 3 hours. Convert PDT to your own time zone to see whether the eBay outage could have caused your problem.

My auction (and snipe) were for:

Aug-21-03 12:02:47 PDT

This is approximate a half-day prior to the power outage... Maybe my snipe sensed the impending electrical failure and responded accordingly?

Now, I shall manually snipe just before the close of an auction.

Quoting neotheone, "Aug-21-03 12:02:47 PDT

This is approximate a half-day prior to the power outage... "

If the power outage occurred entirely on Aug. 20, how can anything on the 21st be prior to it? Your withering sarcasm is lost on me.

Whoops.

Okay then... half a day later..

So then the failure of your snipe was unrelated to the power outage. I suggest you file a support claim at http://support.auctionsniper.com/. If AS was at fault, at least you'll get some free snipes out of it by way of compensation.

The reason given by my AS notice was NOT IN TIME.

But this was days before the eBay meltdown, so I don't know what was going on between AS and eBay at the time.

On top of of this, my email provider had some major trouble (almost too coincidental) and I've lost ALL my email from Aug 20-21 , AND my computer's email program crashed this morning and wiped out a lot of my archived email no matter whether it was filed in it's own folder or wherever it was, whole folders (full of eBay correspondence) just disappeared.

I've had a REALLY BAD week so far.... (there should be a "crying gremlin")

Tired and shagged out after a long squawk....

"Not in time" means that AS submitted your bid, but eBay didn't accept it before time ran out in the auction. This, in turn, indicates that your lead time was insufficient. If the snipe took place on a Sunday, for example, or if the auction ended on an even hour, half-hour, or quarter-hour that could make your usual lead time too short.

Apparently, eBay and their auctionsniper are not in sync. If you change your eBay password for any reason (and you should do this regularly for security purposes), then you must also go to AuctionSniper and change your password from the old eBay one to the new eBay one, otherwise auction sniper cannot place your snipe.

It took me a few minutes to figure out how to do this, but it was worth it. Just click on Modify my Account at the top of the Auction Sniper page, and then change your password to the one you are currently using with eBay.

You don't need to be a brain surgeon to do this, just a desperate eBayer who does not want to miss out on any more snipes because of eBay's weird ways of operating



My snipe was not placed because eBay stated that my username and password were invalid.

"Either the User ID "Katriona5" is not a registered eBay user, or the Password is incorrect. Please go back and try again. Make sure you are not entering a blank space before, after, or inside the User ID or Password.
Remember your User ID but not your password? Access your Password Hint, if you have one, and create a new password.

If you are not a registered eBay user, you can proceed to our Free registration page to become a registered eBay user."

I have been an eBay member for several years,but a couple of days ago I changed my password (for security reasons, and apparently eBay and auctionsniper are not on the same page when it comes to this. I still do not know if auctionsniper will place my snipes sometime around midnight tonight, although it does say it is "Ready" to do so... which is exacly what it said about the "non-snipe" earlier this afternoon.
Does anyone have an answer to this problem? If so, I would be very grateful it you would share it with me.

[This message was edited by Katriona5 on August 24, 2003 at 01:27 PM.]

[This message was edited by Katriona5 on August 24, 2003 at 01:28 PM.]

Your eBay user id and password must match your AS user id and password exactly. When you changed your eBay password it was necessary to manually change your AS password as well...this is not an automatic function. Go to "Modify Account" on the main AS page, click on it, and change your password to agree with the one you use for eBay.

I am sorry but you did not find the problem - our password has not been changed.

We had a snipe for an item that was not placed tonight. Today, an earlier snipe was placed.

WE ARE MAD!! THE ITEM SOLD FOR $290 AND OUR SNIPE WAS $329. FUTHERMORE THE ITEM WAS WORTH AT LEAST $500. WE HAVE BEEN USING AUCTION SNIPER FOR MONTHS, AND IT HAS FAILED US AT A VERY BAD TIME. ANSWERS PLEASE? CAN WE TRUST AUCTIONSNIPER AGAIN?

The response about coordinating passwords wasn't intended for you. Your post overrode the one I was responding to before I could post my reply.

Getting mad won't help. It sounds like you didn't allow enough lead time for your snipe. Sunday evenings are eBay's busiest time and every daggone week we get complaints from new AS snipers who set their Sunday evening snipes for 5 or 8 second leads and then get mad when their snipes don't get through eBay in time. If you click on the little "search" icon above and search for "Sunday" you'll find a ton of warnings to allow extra time. Don't blame AS if eBay's servers are overwhelmed.

quote:

---

The Jones Boys (Harry & Jerry) posted:
WE ARE MAD!! THE ITEM SOLD FOR $290 AND OUR SNIPE WAS $329. FUTHERMORE THE ITEM WAS WORTH AT LEAST $500. WE HAVE BEEN USING AUCTION SNIPER FOR MONTHS, AND IT HAS FAILED US AT A VERY BAD TIME. ANSWERS PLEASE? CAN WE TRUST AUCTIONSNIPER AGAIN?

---

Umm...can you trust AS again? Well, only *you* can answer that for yourself; however, if you've been "using [AS] for months", I can only assume that it has served you well prior to this one glitch. Personally, I wouldn't allow one failed auction to end the relationship...but not everybody thinks like I do.

One way to look at it is this: you said that your max bid was $329, and it was worth more than $500, and the winning bid was $290?!? Well, maybe you would have lost it anyway as the winning bidder may have had a max bid of $350 or $400, or even more, on it!

Anyway, I would agree with the previously stated advice...use a longer lead time during peak times and always make sure you're putting in the max amount you can pay for your item.

May you find your answers...and calm down! Odds are in your favor that your item will come up again, and maybe even sell for less. Good luck.

WarriorNun

"If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning"

At least Harry and Jerry didn't use a "mad" icon. That's something.

Didn't have to...they wrote their displeasure in capital letters, which is the equivalent of shouting. Very impolite, particularly with strangers.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Steve:
Very impolite, particularly with strangers.

---

Well, if you have to be impolite (and caps letters is still fairly tame and I've seen a lot worst on this forum - A LOT WORST!), better to be impolite to strangers then to friends.

eBay and AuctionSniper are in no way connected with one another, so there is nothing for them to be "in sync" to. AS uses your eBay password to place bids for you, so of course when one's eBay password changes, one needs to change it here, asw ell.

Catey wrote:

"I do expect Auction Sniper to be reliable. I will accept that it's not 100%, 100% of the time.

I'd just like to be told if it's known why my bid failed."

I've been using AS successfully for months now, and have been very happy with it.

In the last 2 days, however, there have been 9 foiled AS snipes, doing nothing that I haven't done over previous months, with success.

Yesterday I had 5 snipes up of the same item. They were timed far enough apart that I could go in and cancel them if I won one. I didn't use bid groups because I was present to watch the auctions and cancel them if need be. I have done this many times with success.

But this time, a few minutes before the auction closing, I tried to cancel 4 snipes because I had won the item in the first auction. I got the message that the snipes couldn't be cancelled at this time. I continued trying to cancel the bids until the final auction had ended, without success. AS placed all the bids and I won 5 pairs of identical shoes.

Today I decided not to take any chances and put a different set of 5 identical items in one bid group with the option to keep 2, and 2 other identical items in another bid group with the option to keep 1.

Taking the usual precautions to see if the auctions closed during a heavy-traffic period in any time zone so as to allow additional time, I found that none of them did, so I set a 7-second lead time, which almost always translates into 9 seconds.

This time all the items in my 5-item bid group were returned with the message that the bid wasn't placed in time. I had set my max well above the final price of all these items, by the way.

In the bid group that had two items, I had a proxy outbid, and the other item went in with 7 seconds lead, bid results showed 9 seconds, but another sniper got in at 6 seconds and won the auction. Her winning bid was lower than the amount I had set. AS functioned properly in this case, but my 7-second lead time wasn't long enough.

I have to share Catey's and others' concerns about why some of these snipes are failing. If I were new to AS I would have written these 9 incidents over the last two days off as either an error on my part or simple net congestion, but I am not. Why did these 9 snipes fail in the last two days, having done nothing I haven't done with success in all the months prior?

Are there times when AS is down or experiencing technical difficulties that we are not being made aware of? Is there another explanation why none of the 5 snipes in a bid group were placed in time, and AS failed to cancel those 4 bids?


Thank you,
Lawren

[This message was edited by Lawren on August 27, 2003 at 08:02 PM.]

[This message was edited by Lawren on August 27, 2003 at 08:09 PM.]

Lawren, your post describes two different sets of circumstances, one involving cancelling individual snipes and the other involving bid group items. First, you say that you have been setting up individual snipes for similar items and then cancelling later ones when you have won the quantity desired. Then, following the same technique, you tried to cancel 4 out of 5 items because you won the first item, but you couldn't cancel out of the others. That's because AS "locks in" an item and queues it up for a bid with three minutes remaining in the auction. At that point, a snipe cannot be modified or cancelled. Evidently, the four snipes you wanted to cancel were within three minutes or less of closing, and so you weren't allowed to cancel your bids on them.

With respect to the bid group problem, AS asks that bid group items have closing times at least 30 seconds apart so that bids can be placed successfully. It's only a guess, but it appears that some or all of the items you selected for the bid group did not meet that criterion, and AS was unable to place your bids in time for them to be registered by eBay. The situation with the second bid group of two you described could happen at any time...one proxy outbid and the other outbid by another sniper. I'm positive that the other sniper was placing a bid independent of your snipe and that he or she was not reacting to your bid just because it went in 2 seconds earlier than you had set it for. In other words, you just plain got outbid on that one.

I can only suggest that, if you continue your practice of setting up individual snipes for similar items and cancelling those you no longer wish to bid on, you ensure you will have enough time to cancel them with 5 minutes or more left in the auctions. That will give you a margin of safety so that you don't wind up buying 5 similar items when you only want one. And apparently you were unaware of the 30-second criterion for bid groups, so that problem should not recur if you pay close attention to the closing times of the items in the bid group folder.

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Steve:
"Evidently, the four snipes you wanted to cancel were within three minutes or less of closing, and so you weren't allowed to cancel your bids on them."

Yes, that's what happened. I'm glad it wasn't because AS was down or having technical problems because I've come to depend on this program. Thanks.

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Steve:
"With respect to the bid group problem, AS asks that bid group items have closing times at least 30 seconds apart so that bids can be placed successfully."

Again, that's what happened. I'm glad there's an explanation for it. I reread the FAQ and see this mentioned down in question 28. Isn't this a pretty important thing to know about using bid groups? It would have saved me the grief of learning it the hard way if this bid group requirement had been included in the tutorial.

Anyway, thanks for responding so quickly, Steve. I've got two similar bid group auctions closing today, so the info will be put to immediate use.

Lawren

Glad I was right, Lawren. It's something of a gamble every time I diagnose somebody's problem.

I don't write the FAQs; if I did the spelling would be a lot better, for one thing. I agree that something as major as the interval between bid group snipes should be emphasized more than it apparently is. You could make that suggestion to AS Support.

Good luck on your upcoming snipes!

I also had a snipe that didn't work. I had found a miscatagorized item that was ridiculously cheap because hardly nobody else had found it. It was a Wednesday afternoon. I went off to work and when I got back I discovered that Auctionsniper did not submit my snipe because (supposedly) I had not submitted the right password. That's what the error report said. But I did not change my eBay password. And I didn't change my auctionsniper password because it let me sign in. So some other guy got the deal of the century. The real bummer is I was thinking of using auctionsniper a lot more in order to keep other bidders from wheezing on my list of items I'm bidding on, but now I don't know what to do.

Is your eBay password different from your AS password? They have to be the same in order for AS to work. If this is the case, go to "Modify Account" on the main AS snipe page and change your AS password to conform.

Same thing has happened to me twice now. Loved Auction Sniper before. Can't trust it now. Who has the answer?

Renalea Gray

The difficulty I was having was that when I set my eBay password "Check Status" kept telling me it was invalid.

The solution seemed to be to LOG OUT of AS and then log back in (it accepted my new password). Only then would it validate my eBay password.

No charge :-)