wrong lead time !?! Big promblem

I must save this explanation so that I can paste it in as and when...

When eBay is running slow (typically Sunday evenings) then AS will increase the lead time to ensure that your snipe is placed on time. So that's why your snipe was placed a bit early.

As for costing you € - not so. Remember, it's the highest bid and not the last bid that wins. It's not easy (ie. nigh on impossible!) to react to a snipe within the last minute of an Auction so chances are your competitor was also sniping the item and his bid arrived after yours. Either way, the item would have cost the same amount.

Can I humbly suggest that you read AS's FAQs and eBay's notes on Proxy Bids before using AS again.

R2

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I assume, that this malfunction just cost me 100 € extra.
Not happy at all.

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Eh? I thought you didn't win the item?
Or is it me?

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As for costing you € - not so. Remember, it's the highest bid and not the last bid that wins. It's not easy (ie. nigh on impossible!) to react to a snipe within the last minute of an Auction so chances are your competitor was also sniping the item and his bid arrived after yours. Either way, the item would have cost the same amount.

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I have to partially disagree. 25 seconds is plenty of time to react and submit a new bid. Before I found AuctionSniper, I routinely used to manually snipe within the last few seconds. I would be all set up with two browser windows...one of them reloading every 2-3 seconds to watch for competing bids, and the other pre-loaded with my ready-to-snipe bid. If I saw a competing bid within the last 10 seconds of an auction's close, I could almost always get my snipe in before the close.

So in the case cited by Alex13, if his competitor already had a the high bid and was waiting to manually snipe at auction's end only if necessary, the premature bid submitted by AS might have given him the time he needed to react with a higher bid. Remember, the whole point of sniping is to avoid a bidding war leading up to the close of the auction.

On the other hand, if Alex13 really wanted the item, he should be happy that he at least won, even though his bid was submitted early. On Sunday evening AS failed to get my bid in before the end of the auction, and I did not win the item I wanted

If things are running at normal speed then a manual sniper, with a large screen, could react fairly quickly but if things are a little slow down eBay way then think of the stages you have to go through... Enter amount high enough to beat the last bid and confirm, then confirm again. Even on ADS/broadband that could take 20 to 30 seconds at peak times and what if it took longer than the time allowed?! Try it on a Sunday night (USA time) and report the timings here!

R2

If it is true that AS modifies the snipe time from 5 seconds (which I just used) to apparently at least 14 seconds (which I note from the bidding history wheree I lost)...then it seems that AS loses much of its value. Shouldn't it be the bidder's risk that internet traffic, etc. is slow? After all, they warn us in their education that putting in a snipe time of less than 5 seconds is risky.

Now I find they are "estimating" what it takes to achieve my goal of 5 seconds. Seems wrong.

Different question anyone. Look at the bid history on 6944763711 wherein I tried to snipe and lost. the winning bid says it was placed both at 13:28:17 and by the same bidder at 17:09:13, yet their bid was not the lead bid until 8 seconds left in the auction. Why did their $20 bid not show on ebay as the lead bid as early as 13:28:17 PST?

Remember, it is the HIGHEST bid that wins, not necessarily the last. The high bid by Dgabe did show several hours before the end of the auction, but the $20 amount was not needed to win, only smaller amounts, until the other bids pushed it up tp $20. You still do not know the winning bidder's full amount, just that he only needed $20 to beat the second place bid of $19.50.

This auction is a perfect example of how nibbling drives up the price of an auction.

I too lost an auction just like this one.......I checked out the bidding times and a "phantom" bid came in that was posted like 6 hrs earlier, and won the auction, there was no record on this bid, and it was way out of poportion with the other times of the bids

I had a similar problem a while back, with my snipe being submitted too soon which drove the final bidding up. To avoid that, I reduced my lead time to 4 seconds, which worked well until last Sunday. An item I wanted (and would have gotten, as my max bid was WELL over the accepted bid) went to someone else because AS didn't get my bid in on time. The winning bid on the item was made 8 minutes before the bidding closed - see eBay #3778157347. So much for AS submitting bids far in advance of requested snipe times. Oh well - I guess I just wasn't supposed to have that incredibly awesome item...

One of the suggestions fired in a deliberate manner is to have an option that would prevent AS increasing lead times when AS “senses” unusually high traffic. The argument against such an option is that it would increase the likelihood of snipes not being placed (the nemesis of too early), and that it would add a level of complexity, which could be a turn off to new users.

Thethirstymoose, the bid that was placed six hours earlier was a proxy bid. You never know how much the current high bidder actually bid, and eBay will only show one increment above the next highest bid. Their bid was at least 1 increment higher than yours. The highest bid wins regardless of when it was placed.

4 seconds lead time on a Sunday is a recipe for disaster. Do a search for 'Sunday' on this forum and read the reason why...

R2

We get this type of question frequently, when new members come here, claiming that the winning bid did not appear until the last minute, with an earlier time listed. This is usually due to a misunderstanding of eBay's proxy bidding system.

Had one looked at the auction in question shortly after the winning bid's time stamp, one would have seen the eventual winning bidder's name listed as the high bidder, but WITH A LOWER high bid, because the amount shown is only what is needed to keep the winning bid one increment above the second place bidder. If bidder X is the second place bidder at $22, and bidder Y is the current high bidder, the latter's high bid will show as $23, no matter what his maximum bid was--even though he may well have bid $250. One dollar is the increment that Y needs to stay ahead of X at that price level, so that is all that shows. But at the last second, bidder Z, a sniper, comes along and bids $175. This causes Y's bid to use more of its proxy, and when the auction closes, he will be listed as the winner at $177.50, because the increment at that level is $2.50, and one increment above Z's snipe is all that is needed. Like yourself, Z wonders why Y's costly bid did not appear until the end of the auction, but in fact, it had been listed all along, but with a lower bid amount, because only the amount needed to win is shown. Remember, there is NO WAY, during or after the auction, to know what the high bidder's max was. You will always see only one increment above the second place bid.

Also, though the point about AS' adjustments for heavy traffic is well taken, please understand that when someone bids in the last minute--particularly when he had not previously bid during the auction--he is, by definition, a sniper. Whether he snipes manually, or through a sniping service, such as AS, he was planning to snipe, just as you were. He was not reacting to bids placed in the last minute, even though you might think he was. He understood that he only had one chance, and he bid his max at the last second. He was NOT responding to someone's else's snipe--even if he had time to do so--because he was simply bidding his max, which turned out to be higher than yours. Had his bid come in at ten seconds and yours at five, he still would have won, because he was the high bidder. It had nothing to do with your bid or its timing.

Nice explanation, Chatter! This thread should be referenced when questions of this sort arise again!

or added to the FAQs

R2