Why Isn't Auction Sniper Working?

Hi Jag2jag,

Yes something is funky here that is for certain. You had 5 bids over 7 days at different times.

I clicked the confirmation link and eBays message when we submitted your bid was: "Unknown error"
I've seen this before on eBay Motors items.

Normally I'd say it was some sorta eBay system bug at the time we placed your bid, but there is a pattern here of the same error 5 times over a week period at different times of the day.

Since the person keeps listing this item over and over we're going to place some snipes on it ourselves and see if we can reproduce the errors.

Chatter,

Thanks for the support. No one has as yet accused me of being on AS's payroll; unfortunately. I think that only Steve has been given that repeated honor. But, I'll keep plugging away and hope my turn will come. If you're lucky, it may happen to you.

Seems my reply was removed - thanks AS...

oli & chatter,

There's a time and a place. This appears to have been neither. Your posts did not go unnoticed, nor unresponded.

Makes it harder to accuse any of us being on AS' payroll.

Why? Because we merely joked about the "secret" identities of others? I don't understand, because when Steve has really been accused of being an AS employeee, those posts have stood.

Perhaps it's because I don't go ballistic when someone says I'm an AS employee, Chatter. After all, even though I'm not and never have been, what earthly difference does it make? What if I were an AS employee? Would that make a difference to anybody in his or her right mind? Is there something stigmatizing about being an AS employee?

I'm not losing any sleep over it, even when I get called a shill, a troll, a stooge, or whatever. (Actually, I'm a troglodyte, but don't tell anybody.)

Chatter is OK. He didn't go ballistic. Actually, I was the only one to go "ballistic" (oli, "postal") on the "Steve conspiracy". My fault. I've created more tension than necessary. It bugged me when the "Steve conspiracy" came up. But, since it doesn't appear to insult the defendant, I'll be respectful and not let it bug me (God knows how much time I've spent on comebacks).

I had a couple of posts removed as well. I even sacrificed one of my quotes!

I was very tough on jag, but it looks like his criticism was justified. If I was in Sara's position, I'd like to think I'd do the same. Don't forget - we're users. Passionate users, yes, but still users. SARA IS ACTUALLY ON AS' PAYROLL. She's been accused of all kinds of things.

She censored us, and she did that because she felt that that was in AS' best interest. After all, isn't that why we come to AS' defense? Because we think it's in AS' best interest. I thought it was a mistake when she removed our posts (about the same time I left my last one), but in retrospect, I can understand why she did. If jag has a legitimate complaint (although his approach may have "ruffled my feathers"), which it appears he does, then he has pointed out something that will improve AS. Isn't that's what most of us want?

Sara made a call. A tough call: Alienate a user with a valid complaint (jag), or "potentially" alienate a few passionate users (us). She did the right thing. It would have been easier to just let us beat up jag, but she didn't. I'm impressed!


"And whoever wants to be a creator of good and evil, must first be an annihilator and break values. Thus, the highest evil, belongs to the greatest goodness; but this is being creative." - Friedrich Nietzsche

I removed them because in this case it appeared it could be something on our end.

The programmers have checked it out. The users auction had a lump of text which eBay also uses to signify the auction has ended.

Thus I believe some of our code thought the auciton was over. We did snipe, but not with all the info we'd need to place the snipe successfully it would appear.

They're making some changes so that we make sure the text in question is found to be eBays, and not in the sellers description.

We're still not sure that's it, but it's looking that way.

On the brite side this seller keeps listing this item over and over so Jag should be able to snipe again and hopefully win!

I lost a very nice auction because of "Unknown Error An unknown or unspecified error has occured. ".

I trusted AS! I know ebay changes pages a lot, but maybe AS could try placing 1cent ads and then bid on them to check for changes made by ebay ?

Okay this is off topic but I just loved the imagery the phrase brings to mind. Like you opened your computer panel and down in the bottom near the hard drive was this "lump of text" much like dust bunnies

I've been banging my head all night trying to get some writing done and so far you could pretty much sum up the evening's productivity as "a lump of text"

Good nite.

Hello, could someone help me. Why did AS not work on my last snipe. Status is "Did not win". My max. bid was $15.00 but the aution ended at $4.70

"Did not win" is usually the result of an error by eBay...often, because it didn't process the bid in time to register it before the auction ended. It would be helpful to AS Support if you could provide an item number, URL, or some way to let them look at the actual auction. You might also want to take a look at your snipe interval. Snipes entered with less than 5 seconds to go are more likely to cause this situation.

When I click on "Confirmation" I get this site:

http://www.auctionsniper.com/SnipeConfirmation.aspx?sid=3433006

It is blank. In the email I received from AS is says:

Status Summary: Ready
Your snipe could not be placed because of the reason above


The Item is 2809690759

The snipe interval is default (5)

There was a 5 minute eBay outtage last night, I suspect that is were most missed snipes from yesterday evening came from.