Snipes being placed to early

Mine too, I have had it happen in the past, it is quite nerve wracking giving the key peckers a shot at my bid, luckily the other sniper was using this service and my bid was higher. If I am sitting at the 'puter a 34 second lead will still get me another bid if needed from my broadband connection.

My Auction was #3261624856

to our forum!

I agree with both of you. I understand during busy times why AS might be sending snipes a little early, but I don't understand it in any of these auctions! What about it Sara?

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Originally posted by Mrs.M:
What about it Sara?

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I think Sara will get around to it when she can. Don't you?

Yes, I know she will, Rick. Just want to leave this one in her hands.

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Originally posted by Mrs.M:
Just want to leave this one in her hands.

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That's nice. But she knows. She was here before either one of us, and she'll be here after us. She reads all the posts, even the private ones. Anything that we don't address, like this post, she always takes care of. Do you agree, or maybe I'm wrong?

Of course I agree. I know that Rick...was just a (I thought) polite way of letting them know she would look into it for them!!!

Very cool, hopea techie takes a peek Mine was at 3 PM EST ...not a Sunday night with Ebay going nuts, most citizens were at work and I have used this service for quite some time but just never had a need to inquire..just paid my dues and sniped away but with this lag, I can do better pecking.

impinche & lightingup,

I have to apologize. Mrs. M and I are in the holiday spirit, or have had too much spirit. Neither one of us spent much time in researching your issues. Hopefully someone will spend more time on this then we did.

Happy Holidays.

Geez, Rick, I guess you have had! LOL! Yes, I did take some time to research them and could find no reason for the snipes going off early. None.

Same to you! Have a safe and happy one!

wrong red face, that's for the problem, not the user on the forum......thanks for taking the time to look into it, I buy a lot and need a stable bidding platform...its not only bidding, it's my business...

I know Sara will figure out what happened. I just could not see anything that would trigger an early snipe like that. Bummer! It certainly is not the norm for AS.

I have a snipe coming up on item # 3261299852 it will be interesting to see what happens, goes off in 34 minutes..here's hoping!! LOL

Of course, it is on the half hour, but it still should not be sniped that early.

I just wanted to add that this is not a normal thing that has been happening. AS places thousands of snipes and to have this occure is probably in the 1% range or less is my guess.

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Originally posted by Mrs.M:
Geez, Rick, I guess you have had!

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mrs.M:
What about it Sara?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mrs.M:
was just a (I thought) polite way of letting them know she would look into it for them!!!

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Have a good nite, Mrs. M. See ya tom.

Well that one went of at 10 seconds and I won the lite fixture...and that was on the half hour..

Guess the machine took a nap this afternoon!!

Nite all, I'll check the posts tomorrow, time for a nerve calming ciggie! Still gets my adrenelin rushing even when I let AS do my bidding!

Have a great day tomorrow!

Just to add another example of the "Bug du Jour", earlier today I also had a snipe placed about 30 seconds too soon:

Auction endtime was 17:12:33,
I entered a snipe with a 7 second lead time, so in theory it should have been placed at 17:12:26.

Instead, bid was placed at 17:11:57.
Someone else placed a bid at 17:12:22 and won the item.

In the absence of Sara...

Normally AS adjusts the time depending on the speed of eBay servers, connections etc so that may explain why snipes were placed earlier than expected.

Bid history for #2773823728
impinche(23) US $78.00 23-Dec-03 23:00:01 GMT
hockeydjb(65) US $77.00 23-Dec-03 23:00:33 GMT
hockeydjb(65) US $75.00 23-Dec-03 23:00:20 GMT
hockeydjb(65) US $65.00 23-Dec-03 23:00:12 GMT

I have to say that it does look like hockeydjb is using software (or a very complex arrangement of manual snipes) to react to impinche's bid at 1 second past the hour with his/her 3rd attempt arriving 2 seconds before the close. Obviously they were having no problems with connection/server speeds!

Annoying, but you did win for an amount less than or equal to the max you wanted to pay but I do understand your frustration! I reckon an email to hockeydjb is called for, asking for his/her 'secret'!

R2

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I agree with both of you. I understand during busy times why AS might be sending snipes a little early, but I don't understand it in any of these auctions! What about it Sara?

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The only reason snipes at non peak half hours and hours are placed early is because eBay is running slow.

Our computers monitor how long bids are taking to be accepted by eBay and compensate. So in these cases eBay was taking upwards of 20 seconds to respond to snipes we sent immediately preceding your snipes.

This was a low snipe time, on a very slow day. No other reason.

Well, there is one other reason. The computer program that keeps us synced up with the naval atomic clock can be off.

That was the case. There was a power outtage here, then after the power came back on that program wasnt running on one bid server. So the time on our clock got ahead on that server.

Sorry about that. A programmer started it on the 1 computer that it wasnt running on this afternoon so as of then everything is bidding on time again.

We'll be slow answering things till Sunday because most of us are out of town for the holiday.

Thank you Sara and have a