With 4-days to spare, I get a "Not in time?"

I can't say for certain, but it sounds to me like you made the cardinal error of setting a short lead time on a Sunday bid. As has been discussed many times in this Forum, it is inadvisable to set a lead time of less than 15 seconds for any auction ending on Sunday, or 20 seconds if that auction additionally ends on the even hour, half-hour, or quarter-hour (XX:00:00, XX:30:00, XX:15:00, or XX:45:00). This is because Sunday is eBay's busiest day and the eBay servers often cannot keep up with the flood of bids submitted late in auctions (only a few of which are made by snipers). Please consider clicking on the little "search" icon at the top of this page and looking up what has been said about Sunday. (You might also consider checking out the little "faq" icon as well because there's a lot of information there that may save you grief in the future.)

Steve, that answers my question on another thread as well. So you think 3 seconds on a Sunday night is a bit light, huh?

LOL, tucking that one away...

The heck of it is, HiddenOne, three seconds might just work. Like I said, it's the luck of the draw. I'm not a mathematician -- far from it -- but I'd say that the fewer seconds lead time you allow in any auction the greater your chances are that your bid won't make it on time. It's probably a geometric progression because the less time you allow the more bids will be bunched with yours, clamoring for recognition by eBay.

Glad you're a satisfied subscriber for the most part. So'm I, and have been for almost two years. But then, I always did like to do research and problem solving.

I can understand if several bids on the same item were all hitting the auction in the last few seconds, but my snipe was the only bid going toward this auction other than a previous standing opening bid. Are you saying all bids being processed in the entire eBay system would effect the time allowed for an unrelated auction?

EBay has many servers. The total load of bids being processed by any given server can have an impact on the processing of your bid if it, too, is being handled by that server. That's what makes it a sometime thing. It's possible to bid successfully with a 3-second lead time during eBay's busiest hours -- once in a while. Adding to your lead time just gives you a geometrically better chance of having your bid processed by eBay before the auction closes. It's really frustrating to get a "Bid not in time" notice from eBay because that means that although your bid got through the server, by the time it was processed the auction had just closed.