| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Ponkochan
Site Admin
Joined: 03 Aug 2007
Posts: 2627
Location: Southeast
|
 Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 9:26 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
I use auctionsniper.com also. I have a "free account" which will not let you adjust your lead time to anything under 7 seconds. However, my brother does most of my bidding for me......and he has a subscription account through auctionsniper.com. With a paid acct., you can adjust your lead time to under 7 secs. if you want. He has his lead time set to 5 sec. and he rarely misses an auction that he wants. 
I had asked him why he chose this sniping service and one of the reasons was that they are located about 50 miles from ebay servers. Also asked him why he didn't set it to 3 sec., for example. He explained to me that because of server lag times, etc., they don't recommend anything under 5 secs. I went to the auctionsniper's FAQ's site and found the answers to these questions explained in more detail.
| Quote: | What is the ideal lead-time?
Lead-time is the number of seconds FROM the end of an auction that you would like Auction Sniper to place your bid. We recommend lead times between 5 and 12 seconds. Currently, Auction Sniper successfully places 99.9% of all snipes with 5-second lead times.
We don't recommend anything less than 5 seconds. Although we send the snipe on time, during peak times an eBay server may not process it in time. This is not the fault of eBay nor us; internet traffic is just heavier at certain times. And during peak periods the default 5 second lead-time, while adequate for most weekday situations, often isn‘t enough for evenings and weekends. Anything under 5-seconds is not recommended. We synchronize from an atomic clock, which calibrates our servers.
We snipe every auction multiple times, from multiple servers and locations. These servers adjust for eBay server lag according to how long their average server is taking. Remember that it‘s in our interests for you to win.
You should increase your lead-time to 7-12 seconds on auctions that close 5-11 p.m. Pacific (eBay) time, and on weekends, when eBay traffic is heavier.
|
Here's a little more interesting info from the FAQ's. It's about the potential snags that you might encounter and why.
| Quote: | Risks involved with Sniping
Auction Sniper does all that it can to make sure that your bid is placed, but due to uncontrollable factors we cannot 100% guarantee that we will be able to place your bid. Currently our statistics show that nearly 100% of all Auction Sniper bids have been placed successfully. You can be reassured by the fact that our server network is approximately 50 miles from eBay. This helps minimize the amount of traffic that would interfere with your snipe being processed.
We just want to make sure that you are aware of some things that can cause problems for our servers when they try to place your snipe:
Hardware difficulties: It is possible for equipment to unexpectedly malfunction due to hardware problems. We try to minimize the possibility of this by using only the most reliable high-end hardware, continuously monitoring the performance status of our servers, and providing sufficient backup power supplies.
eBay server problems: eBay's servers are not always reliable and predictable. Sometimes they are slow in recording bids and occasionally malfunction causing bids not to be processed. Sometimes eBay may appear to be functioning correctly, but key internal functions that our software needs to access don’t always work properly.
Internet congestion and unexpected latency: Basically Internet traffic is unpredictable. Network congestion can delay messages from our servers in reaching eBay. We try to minimize the chances of this happening by having multiple connections directly to a main Internet backbone, at access points close to eBay's servers.
Clock Synchronization: Auction Sniper synchronizes our clocks using on-time servers throughout the world. On very rare occasions they have been known to be inaccurate. These instances may disrupt your sniping service; occasionally not placing the snipe on time, or sometimes placing it earlier than expected.
The information provided on this page is just to give users an understanding of why a potential bid may not be placed. Almost all Auction Sniper bids are placed successfully, but it is important to understand that there are potential risks.
|
Good luck on your auction, Dan! Hope you win it!  |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
CATFISH
Joined: 05 Sep 2007
Posts: 488
Location: Montana
|
| Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 11:27 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Great info Lizzy. I still enjoy the old fashioned way, but it sounds like a cool "option". |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Rhonda
Joined: 07 Aug 2007
Posts: 100
Location: Earl Park, Indiana
|
| Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 5:01 am Post subject: |
|
|
Did they start making auctionsniper a pay service? Or are you talking about the $.25 it costs when you win an auction as "pay service"
Rhonda
_________________
The sooner you realize you don't know everything, the better off you'll be and the learning can begin.
----------------------------------------------------------
http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/marble-mistress |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
vince
Joined: 05 Aug 2007
Posts: 58
Location: Springfield, Ohio
|
| Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:35 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Excellent info, Lizzy! Thanks a bunch. I think I'm going to change my lead time to 10 seconds - just to be sure.
Dan |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
BR549
Joined: 13 Sep 2007
Posts: 20
|
| Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 8:44 am Post subject: |
|
|
Auction sentry works great! It is a one time pay and can be set to your preferences easily once you have it downloaded. I bought my copy for $10 on Ebay, years ago and haven't paid a penny since. They have advanced versions out now but the basic version works well. It is kept up to date with Ebay changes by the administrator. I've only had a problem once or twice in 6 years of use.
Br5 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Al Oregon
Joined: 04 Aug 2007
Posts: 261
Location: Oregon
|
| Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 3:43 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Obviously you want your bid to be made near the end of the auction but I see no difference between 3 or 5 or 7 or maybe even 10 seconds since by the time the bid is posted and someone sees they are no longer high bidder, they won't have time to respond. In fact, if your high bid and my high bid, through a sniping service, are both for $50.00 and mine bids at 7 seconds and yours bids at 5 seconds, I win!! My bid was first. I'm curious, is there a reson why 5 is better than 7 is better than 10 seconds? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kraut
Joined: 05 Sep 2007
Posts: 210
|
| Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 4:00 pm Post subject: |
|
|
My thoughts:
Bid as early as you can, but late enough so someone can't see that you've bid and outibd you. If you bid $27 with 12 seconds left and someone else bids $27 with 11 seconds left - you win. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ponkochan
Site Admin
Joined: 03 Aug 2007
Posts: 2627
Location: Southeast
|
| Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 1:11 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Rhonda wrote: | Did they start making auctionsniper a pay service? Or are you talking about the $.25 it costs when you win an auction as "pay service"
Rhonda |
Rhonda, apparently they've changed it a bit since we started using them a few years ago. I went to their forums tonite and it looks like they've been changing and tweaking their program all along.
They use to give you 3 free snipes a week and if you needed more than that, you'd pay for a subscription. (I believe that it was like $45 a year or something like that.) For wins over $25.00, you pay 1% of the bottom line..........up to $9.95. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ponkochan
Site Admin
Joined: 03 Aug 2007
Posts: 2627
Location: Southeast
|
| Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 1:50 am Post subject: |
|
|
Al, the reason given by almost all snipe software for not using less than 5 seconds is that it can cause missing snipes due to slow response time on ebay and network traffic.
As for the difference in 5-7 seconds is probably a toss-up...........maybe 10 also, although that might be a little too long.
Here's what AuctionSniper says about it.
| Quote: | UNDERSTAND AUCTION SNIPER LEAD TIMES.
We never recommend less than 5 second lead times on auctions. Less time than that and eBay can take too long to process it, or even respond with the wrong message. My personal recommendation is 7 seconds, and a little more during peak time: hard for anyone to manually counter a snipe in under 7 seconds.
BE FAMILIAR WITH SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE.
eBay undergoes scheduled maintenance every Thursday nights from 11:00pm to 1:00am PST. We will snipe any auctions early if they fall during that time to ensure your snipe bid goes through. http://www2.ebay.com/aw/announce.shtml |
They say that if you have your snipe software set to 5-7 seconds, there's very little chance that a manual bidder will have enough time to see it and then place a bid to beat yours.
Also, remember if you are using the manual snipe system, you're at the mercy of your internet connection server/speeds and the distance that you are to the ebay servers.
_________________
Lizzy
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Rhonda
Joined: 07 Aug 2007
Posts: 100
Location: Earl Park, Indiana
|
| Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 4:20 am Post subject: |
|
|
All I have ever paid is .25 per win. If I don't win I don't pay. I guess maybe I got in on it before they did all the changes? I think I've spent a whole $4.00 on sniper wins in the last year.
Rhonda
_________________
The sooner you realize you don't know everything, the better off you'll be and the learning can begin.
----------------------------------------------------------
http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/marble-mistress |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
