Snipe not placed

I had the same problem as Bobby. I would have won the auction, but my snipe remained "Ready" ten minutes AFTER the auction ended. Nevada Jack

For the first time I noticed an unplaced snipe last night. I left a snipe with an 11 second lead time, which should have been the second highest bid. The winning bid only arrived 3 seconds before the end of the auction! Should I ask for a longer lead time? There is not much point in sniping if the snipe is early enough to provoke a counterbid.

This is worrying, because unreliable snipes undermine the advantage of snipes over high proxy bids. I was bidding for an item from a regular seller I buy from, so I would not want him to lose money when I miss an item.

PS My missed snipe was at 19.35 PDT 28 September 2003. (03.35 29/9/03 here in Scotland, which is why I would like to be able to rely on snipes!)

The general belief, and the experience of most, is that auctions which end on Sunday evenings require more lead time as they take longer to process.

While 8 seconds might be enough at any other time, Sunday evenings seem to require 15-20 seconds (or even more). While on the surface this might seem to allow too much time, one must consider that any counterbids will also take longer to process as well and that they most likely would miss the auction end deadline.

Another note: most folks offer the advice that any auction ending directly on the hour, half hour, or quarter hour will also require a longer lead time.

We've all been burned on occasion...either from a missed snipe, too low of a bid, or whatever...but I believe that most of us still believe strongly in using AS as we generally win the items we really want. Good luck.

WarriorNun

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

Just because a snipe still says ready doesnt mean we didnt snipe it. When there are a lot of snipes going off it takes us a while to figure out if you won or not and update the database.

Bobby: the only item I see a snipe for you for you won last night.

Nevada: yours was placed but just wasnt accepted by eBay. 7 seconds may not be enough of a lead time at peak hours on sunday. Try 10 seconds between about 6:30 and 8:15pm

Rosetsu: same as Nevada. We placed it, eBay just didnt do anything about. There isnt anything we can do about their reliablity. The only thing I could suggest is an even longer lead time.

Thank-you for the reply. I guess I shall have to raise the lead time to 15 sec for Sunday evenings, but I suppose that means the bid could easily be as early as 30 sec before auction end. I think that is beginning to make a reponsive bid possible. After all, the high bid in the auction I missed managed to arrive 3 seconds before auction end!

Remember, Rosestu--it's the highest bid that wins, not the last. We naturally try to bid late, but it is not necessary to tempt fate. I use 20 seconds on Sunday PM. Anything under 30 should be enough. If eBay is running slow, few people will be able to make successful bids that late.

When I was doing my own snipes before I joined AS, I never had a problem during the prime times. Could it be that AS has so many snipes going out at one time during these prime times that some AS snipes do not get placed?

I don't think this is the case, Nevada Jack. I personally, have never had one not placed and Sara has stated that the odds are tremendously low considering the snipes placed. You must remember, when we are placing our own by hand, it is just us in one auction. You just don't hear of the thousands of sucessful snipes that were placed.

rsmiller40

Well, I must be just unlucky, since I now have three AS snipes not placed in time within my 7 second lead time. On one of those occassions another bidder placed his winning bid which was less than mine in the last two seconds.

It was placed, Nevada Jack and that is all As can do. I never use that short of lead on Sunday.

rsmiller40

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Nevada Jack posted: I now have three AS snipes not placed in time within my 7 second lead time. On one of those occassions another bidder placed his winning bid which was less than mine in the last two seconds.

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However, there is no way of knowing whether that winning bidder just lucked out with a manual bid at the last second, or maybe he placed it at about 20 seconds and it took that long to go through. OR he might use a system, like AS, and perhaps his lead time was about 13 seconds but it took extra time to go through, thus showing up as though it were placed 2 seconds prior to the end of an auction.

I placed a manual snipe one night and thought that it would go through with about 7 to 12 seconds to spare...well, as luck would have it, it took forever to go through, my heart was racing, but I did win it. But when I looked at the bid history, I saw that my bid was accepted 1 second before the end of the auction. Sure, it was exciting, but not the kind of excitement I need!

I now use AS almost all the time and I have extended my lead times a little bit during peak times.

WarriorNun

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

If this is a common problem on peak hours, then maybe it would be a good idea for AS to place all snipes during those times with enough extra lead time to allow the snipe to be placed. If AS did this, then we would not have to guess how much extra lead time we should place on the snipe. That would allow us to keep our lead time consistant at 5 to 7 seconds. Just a suggestion to improve the already great service of Auction Sniper.

>>Bobby: the only item I see a snipe for you for you won last night.<<

Hi there, I got the e-mail a day later saying I won the item you speak of, however there was another one a week ago that remained 'ready', I got an e-mail from AS saying the bid could not be placed because of "the reasons stated above" but there was no explaination. There was also a link in the mail that said "click here for e-bay's response to your bid" but the link only took me to the ebay page, no explaination. I did loose that auction and would have been high bidder but I assume I had an insufficient lead time because I have read so much about lead times. I am going to increase my lead times for peak hours and hope for the best!
bobby

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Could it be that AS has so many snipes going out at one time during these prime times that some AS snipes do not get placed?

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No.

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When I was doing my own snipes before I joined AS, I never had a problem during the prime times.

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And you're basing this on just how many snipes? Exactly. Leaving the sniping to the experts, us. If you think were being dishonest fine enough, you can go back to manual sniping. However, I know we're the best and if you keep trying to do it yourself you're gonna lose a lot more often over time than if you did use us. But you are free to find that out the hard way by losing one on your own eventually.

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I got an e-mail from AS saying the bid could not be placed because of "the reasons stated above" but there was no explaination.

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That's actually one of our most annoying things the programmers havent fixed. That email is a big misleading because we did place the snipe. It should say something along the lines of that your snipe was placed but for unknown reasons was not entered on eBay. The normal reason for that would be a problem at eBay. i.e. those are mostly eBay problems in not accepting the bid and such. Remember that we snipe from 3 places. If the bid could get to eBay and be accepted it would be. So when it doesnt there is usually only 1 person to blame, eBay. But how the hell can we prove it when there isnt any reply. You cant. It's like how do you prove a website is down when it's down? You go there, the page doesnt come up. But how do you record that? You cant really, you just know it. Well when we place 3 snipes to eBay from 3 different servers in 3 different locations, with 3 different lines into eBay and then the snipe doesnt get entered on eBay it's the same thing. We cant prove it's them but all availalbe evidence would point to the fact that it's 99% probably something on their end.

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If this is a common problem on peak hours, then maybe it would be a good idea for AS to place all snipes during those times with enough extra lead time to allow the snipe to be placed

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That is a good idea. Our system already does something along those lines. Just adding X seconds to every snipe though wont work, and will make a lot of people mad when their 5 second snipe goes off at 15 or 20 seconds etc. So it's a tough balancing act and we try our best. Less than 1/2% were late on Sunday which is eBays peak day and the was the busiest day all year for us and eBay. And that 1/2% includes all the 1,2, and 3 second snipes. So I'm sure many of the 1/2% were those.

Since the stuff I bid on is rarely sniped and not often "hot," I'm probably not the best person to make suggestions. However, 5 seconds just seems too darn risky to me for any time of the day. I just can't see many people beating out a 10 second or even 15 second snipe. But again, not many people are waiting to get the stuff I'm bidding on anyway... there is RARELY that level of competition.

So... I go with the logic some of the fine people beat into my head when I first signed on here. And that is ALWAYS bid my max (and sometimes a few dollars more), and leave sufficient lead time for the snipe to get thru. ALL my snipes are set at 15... so far not a single one has failed to get thru. Most arrive between 16-19 seconds before auction close. I rarely adjust that 15 second lead time. I SUPPOSE if someone was sitting at their computer hitting the refresh button over and over, they could outbid me within that 16-19 second time-frame... and possibly that IS happening on those hot hot hot auctions that I rarely bid on.

So what we are looking at here, is not allowing enough time for a lurking sniper (or other sniper program) to get in there before the auction closes AND with a bid higher than yours! BOTH those things have to happen for you to lose.

I guess I'm willing to risk losing an auction by getting outbid by a faster sniper who ALSO has a higher max than me. It just seems the odds are low that will happen enough times to make me want to quit sniping altogether or to risk not getting my snipe placed by have a short lead time!

I personally feel anything under 8-10 seconds these days is a BIG RISK. Ebay is making a LOT of huge changes and it is going to continue for a while - at least a year. They are NOT going to post notices every time they are running upgrades that will slow down response time.

For those of you that don't know, eBay is getting rid of Half.com by summer 2004 and integrating a lot of their functionally into eBay. That's a lot of programming folks, and I doubt they are considering how their ongoing work is affecting people's ability to snipe.

This week they implemented combined shipping. Now Turbo Lister isn't working right. Goodness knows what is next, but they have PLANS! Things to build, things to integrate, things to break and then fix. Lots of them! lol

So decide? Keep a low lead time and risk your bid NEVER being placed, or have a higher lead time and risk someone will snipe you AND beat out your max?

diva (aka Dag)