what time do I use?

This might help.

so am I right in saying that the busy time for me here in England is between 10am-1pm ?? and so I should increase lead time to 7-12 secs ?
I have it at 5 secs at the moment.
and what time should I have put in when I registered, pacific or GMT ??
sorry to still not be clear!

Good question. It isn’t very clear.

Unless someone else comes along with better input, I’ll guess that “10am-1pm Europe prime hours” means 10 AM – 1 PM Pacific time, that would mean 6PM – 9 PM GMT, which seems like that would be prime time in England. Again, that’s a guess.

But, if in doubt, using 7 to 12 seconds even during non-prime time would unlikely cause a problem. Lots of people use 8 seconds as a standard, even during non-peak hours. And, even with 12 seconds, its unlikely that someone would/could place a snipe during those 12 seconds that wasn’t already planning on sniping.

The only people who should panic about peak times are those die-hards who insist on 2 second lead times due to paranoia that someone might react to their snipe if it arrives any more than 10 seconds before the auction ends. I set mine to 8 and buy in UK and USA and have never been too late...

The peak time in the USA is going to be late Sunday, early monday in the UK - just bid your max, set to 8 seconds (by default!) and retire to watch Heartbeat - all should be fine!

R2

just to say thanks for your replys. I have not sniped yet, but think I will take your advice & set it to 8 lead time.

I think the secret is to remember that there is the time difference, and Bay and Snipe are in Pacific San Jose time, therefore calculate your end time, I currently have a bid that will end UK 08.15 and therefor 01.15 AM in Pacific, therefore the servers should not be stressed etc, think i will leave Lead at 5