What's going on / really annoyed

quote:

Originally posted by region2:
In fairness you only pay when you win - it costs nothing when you don't...

It cost me not getting the item I need/want.
It cost me because now I have to wait for another item to come up.
It cost me if I have to pay more to get the next one that comes alone.

In the case in point, while there are many items like what I was bidding on, 99% are in terrible condition. This one was in excellent condition and the sellers starting bid was pretty high for the item, thus I figured all the bids would come at the end. So I used AS. Only for no one to bid on the item, including AS and now I have to find another one. (no the seller has not relisted it.)

this happened on a tuesday 9pm.

As the forums keep saying - never use AS for 'must haves' - it's never going to be as reliable as 'you'.

And have you asked the seller if s/he's going to relist?

Let's see how long your list of competitors lasts before AS staff wake up and remove it...

And it still costs nothing (in money paid to AS) if you don't win. Obviously your time and effort are valuable to you but I reckon AS won't refund that!!!

R2

quote:

Let's see how long your list of competitors lasts before AS staff wake up and remove it...

If AS removes my list from this post, I will immediately close my account and NEVER use them again. If they have to resort to censorship to cover their lack of support, they deserve the wrath of the internet community.

What they need to do is wake up and put their energy into fixing the problem that's causing the discourse, not sweep it under the rug and pretend it's not happening.

As I said, I'm a very long time user of AS and have always been very satisfied with their service. But that good will can only last so long. In a free market, good will is no replacement for quality or reliability when there are plenty of competitors nipping at your heals.

quote:

Originally posted by hazmat:
If they have to resort to censorship . . .

“Censorship”? It’s NOW considered “censorship” if a business doesn’t provide the resources to give their competitors free advertising? Hazmat and I definitely have different ideas as to what constitutes “censorship” – especially in a “free market” (assuming our definitions of “free market” aren’t as inconsistent as “censorship”).

quote:

Originally posted by Rick:

quote:

Originally posted by hazmat:
If they have to resort to censorship . . .

(assuming our definitions of “free market” aren’t as inconsistent as “censorship”).

censorship:

counterintelligence achieved by banning or deleting any information of value to the enemy

to censor:
to examine (as a publication or film) in order to suppress or delete any contents considered objectionable

The definition of censorship is correct as is my use of the word.

In regards to what is a "free market" a free market means one not influenced by outside sources. In this case if AS decided to remove the comments, that would be w/in their control and w/in the market. However, doing so would only add credence to the claim that they can't compete in the marketplace based on the performance of their product.

Like I said, if they decide that they product cannot meet the needs of the community based on it's performance and thus they need to try to hide the competition, that tells me it's a company I don't want to support anymore.

BTW, it'd be pretty stupid for them to try to hide the competition because it's only one window away. It'd be much better if they just fixed the product. Until they do, they need to remove the claim of "Ultra-reliability through state-of-the-art technology!" on the front page.

quote:

Originally posted by hazmat:
censorship:

counterintelligence achieved by banning or deleting any information of value to the enemy

“The enemy”?

Tonight lost two more auctions because AS didn't place the bid. Got a msg:

Status Summary: Invalid eBay Email
Your snipe did not win because of the reason above

Nothing has changed at ebay with my email address.

...and what did you see when you clicked on 'Click here to see eBay's response to your snipe' on the email AS sent you?

R2

Look down this list - I love the way AS haven't bothered translating most of the error messages!

http://fr.auctionsniper.com/SnipeStatus.aspx

quote:

Your snipe could not be placed because your Ebay email address is invalid and action must be taken before proceeding. Please either update or confirm your eBay email address before placing another snipe.

R2

hazmat,

Sounds like there’s something wrong with your account (either ebay or AS). If AS was experiencing a bug, it’s likely several users would have mentioned this problem on this forum - no one else has.

Here are the possibilities:

1. File a support request with AS: http://support.auctionsniper.com/. The support staff rarely makes appearances on the forum, so if you’re waiting for them to answer your posts, you might have a long, and frustrating, wait.
   
   
2. Place a manual bid and see what response you get from ebay. At least that will determine whether it’s something to address with ebay or AS.
   
   
3. Do nothing and continue to lose auctions.
   
   
4. Start using another service.

I did find this in ebay’s help, but it doesn’t provide much help:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/identity-invalid-email.html

You are right Rick, there is something strange going on. Ebay is telling me my email address is no good. However, I'm getting my daily lists of watched items from ebay everyday. I get my outbid notices from ebay everyday. I get my notices from AS forum (which I use the same email address) all the time. IOW, I'm still getting email on this email address, but for some reason ebay thinks I am not. In fact, they even have that "confirm your email address" function, which I did, and they sent the confirmation no. to the same email address I have always used for ebay and I enter the code and it confirms it, only for it to take me to another screen that says I have to confirm my address.

This is a real problem, unrelated to AS, however, this just started yesterday. My problems with AS started about a week or 10 days ago. (I think it was the 8th or 9th the first auction I didn't get due to AS.)

You are right, time to quit using AS. It's too bad, I liked the service, but if they don't answer my email, and the service doesn't work... not much else I can do.

quote:

but if they don't answer my email

Hazmat - Not sure what email you’re talking about, but your best bet (always) is to file a support request. Of course, “time to quit” is always an option.

My opened bug report led to a dialog with support that had to be escalated past the first line of support. After a lot of boilerplate nonsense about timing failures, there was finally a description of the failure that caused my snipe to not get executed and for it to remain in the Active list.

quote:

However, in this particular case, a technical error on our end was the culprit. The reason "Ready" status was displayed on this snipe after the auction‘s end, which is also the reason your snipe on this item was not placed, is because the bidder server that this snipe was allocated to was not responding and the auction ended before it was brought to our attention, and we were able to get in running again.

I pushed back asking how we as users could alert AS that a biddder server had gone down, with the idea that we are paying attention and could squawk if that would help lower the total number of missed snipes before a server is fixed and working again. My point was that my report of the symptom was not immediately understood as a clear indicator of a bidding server being down or having been down. Would reporting the same symptom in the future alert anyone that a bidding server was down?

Answer:

quote:

To correct this problem moving forward, we have begun monitoring out status statisitics around the clock so, when such a problem arises, it should not go un-noticed for an extended period of time. Through the use of this system, we will also be able to rely less on support requests to detect when things are amiss. Regardless, we will still appreciate your input whenever you believe the system may not be performing properly.

What we are seeing is system failures that prevent AS from keeping up with the backlog of bids in the queue. Some number of snipes are not executed when this happens.

I'm not happy that the margin between system capacity and the sniping queue is so small. I'd prefer that there was enough headroom so that a machine could go down and the remaining machines could keep up with the queue.

Bottom line is that if you see the symptom of a snipe still in your Active list after an auction ends, open up a bug report with support immediately. The automatic system they have planned might work but it might not.

quote:

Let's see how long your list of competitors lasts before AS staff wake up and remove it...

Wakened.

I havent had too many problems with AS but I am having a problem with a seller because I used AS. He relisted the item that I had won then hours later took my paypal payment.He says he wants his listing fees, ebay selling fees and postage from me before he will return money.

on what grounds?! complain to ebay!
and how did he know you used AS?

R2

quote:

He says he wants his listing fees, ebay selling fees and postage from me before he will return money.

Refund postage on an unshipped item? Either a very ballsy seller, or his parents have the same parents.

He doesnt know I used AS he just wants me to pay more because he doesnt beleive that you can bid so close to the end.

I have sent his emails to ebay so just hope they do something before he does this to next buyer. The postage he wants is for him to send my left over money back after he has taken his costs!!!