Where's my post from yesterday regarding no snipe being placed?

The problem with the switch was on Monday from 10am-1:45pm.

Your post probably got lost in the shuffle of this community board system getting moved to a new site.

While this is our community it's actually ran and administered by a company that specially writes the software for these message boards. Yesterday at 6pm they physically moved where on the internet their service is ran from.

It was supposed to be a smooth transistion that should not have been noticed but it looks like they had a little trouble and what probably happened is a few posts around the time of their move got lost.

Here is how you see why you've lost.

1.) use the "Show" drop down box to select "Items I've lost"

2.) Scroll through the list of lost items until you find the one you are intested in.

3.) Click the "Confirmation" button for that item.

In this case you'll see it's because your bid was not placed in time.

You had a 4 second lead time on an auction that ended at exactly 7:00:00 pm.

I've written at least a dozen posts here that expressly state that auctions that end on the hour or half hour should use at least a 30 second lead time.

Our computers do compensate and bid earlier than 4 seconds for you, but even that wasnt enough in this case.

The problem is eBays 10 cent feature for sellers listing items that lets the schedule their start time. It causes tens of thousands of listings to all end at exactly on the hour and half hour etc. eBay becomes clogged during those times. For all intents eBay is unavailable at those times. They are flooded by buyers resfreshing their screens to either snipe or see if they won, and by sellers to see how much their items sold for and so they can email the winners etc.

I do appologize, we did try and win that item, and we did bid much earlier than 4 seconds for you. Probably closer to 15 seconds, but it just wasnt enough. Sometimes the conjestion is so bad that an even greater leadtime is needed. That's why I'd suggest 30 seconds on such auctions.

Hi Sara B.,

Thank you for the detailed response.

I notice that the second highest bidder for this item did manage to lodge his bid with only 12 seconds to go; are you saying that he must have placed this bid beyond the 15 second lead time that my bid would have had?

My last question is: if it was simply a matter of congestion on ebay's site, why did I not receive any auctionsniper report for nearly an hour, yet they generally arrive within seconds after an auction ends? For example, I won an auction only five minutes before this fiasco and received several e-mails within seconds of the auction ending.

Thanks again for the comprehensive response. Although I don't think I'd ever bid with 30 seconds to go - that is WAY too long!

- David

Ya that person probably bid at 20-25 seconds and it took that long for eBay to handle it and it was entered at 12 seconds. But the closer to the hour things get the slower eBay starts to run. So maybe eBay is running at normal speed at 25 seconds, and half speed at 20 seconds, and 1/10 speed at 15 seconds, and then not available at all for 20 seconds, then they go back to normal just after the hour when people quit refreshing.

Are you refering to emails we send or eBay sends you at the end of the auction.

Ya 30 seconds is too long. People might see your bid and react and raise their own bid. We try to cut it as close as we can without missing the snipe and we do that pretty accurately even on these auctions ending at the hour and half hour, but we do miss a much higher percentage of these snipes then any of those ending at other odd times because of this conjestion on eBay. I'm hoping that eBay someday gets around to noticing this and starts spreading out their sellers scheduled listings by at least a few seconds/minutes so it doesnt happen.

Regarding e-mails, I was specifically referring to the ones you send, not ebay. Typically I receive sniper reports within seconds of the end of the auction. For the one I lost I did not receive anything at all - from auctionsniper - for nearly an hour. This was another reason that it looked to me like auctionsniper fumbled, rather than just couldn't place the bid in time.

quote:

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Originally posted by Sniper Sara B.:
The problem with the switch was on Monday from 10am-1:45pm.

Your post probably got lost in the shuffle of this community board system getting moved to a new site.

While this is our community it's actually ran and administered by a company that specially writes the software for these message boards. Yesterday at 6pm they physically moved where on the internet their service is ran from.

It was supposed to be a smooth transistion that should not have been noticed but it looks like they had a little trouble and what probably happened is a few posts around the time of their move got lost.

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I've noticed that this forum is running better. No slow periods (AM use to be bad) and the "search" has been so fast that I thought I was making a mistake.