Slightly OT: Snipe issues on eBay
 

Has anyone else been hearing complaints on their snipes not going through tonight on eBay? I had one of my lowest selling weeks in some time bid and dollar wise, and when I just checked my email....I had messages from multiple bidders on different items saying that they placed a snipe and it did not go through? Anyone else experienced this tonight, as either buyer or seller?

I had snipes that didn't go through tonight.

Same here

Appears to be an a major issue.. Discussion about it over on the PSA boards too.

The glitch blocking bidders happened earlier this week, snipe services getting blocked at the end of it. Lot's of $$ left on the table for sellers this week without a heads up from eBay.

If I were a seller with auction listings ending I would be pretty pissed.

Wow, that really stinks. It already takes nerves of steel to run regular auctions on eBay having to wait until most of the action in the last few seconds, and then tonight...no action hardly at all at the end...I was expecting a little slow as it's a holiday weekend...so thank goodness I had a very very modest reserve on two large items, the reserve was only one third met on one and one half met on the other. I had assumed both reserves would easily be met. Multiple people not getting their snipes through on them. Just image If I hadn't put a reserve on those two and they had gone off at one third of a very low expected price. At this point I probably only left a few hundred on the table, but that is only according to those who contacted me about it.

I had one snipe not go through yesterday, but I won three cards tonight by sniping.

I had a card I paid $1,050 for recently with a VCP average of $1,200 sell last night for "only" $800. I had around 33 watchers at the time of closing, yet only one snipe appears to have went thru at the last seconds. The card was a rare card, appears to have been undergraded, and at the VERY LEAST should have been close to what I paid for it! This is NOT GOOD at all now that I found this out!

On top of the that, the winning bidder already paid! (I guess he paid quickly because he knew he got a steal on the card). I am torn as what to do. I think blocking snipes is a pretty shitty way for EBay to treat their customers! And yes, the sellers are really Ebay's customers, NOT the buyers.

I had 2 snipes set on Gavelsnipe that did not execute last night. In both instances I would have been the winner. I will be bidding manually from now on until I know it is fixed.

Why are you torn? The bidder won the auction based on the parameters you put forth. You should send the card. Most of my auctions at least start at the money I have into the item. That way I never lose money.
I am AGHAST that a winning bidder would pay immediately!!! How dare he!

WOW - I'm just glad I didn't have any snipes set this week. :eek:
Been using a couple different free services for 10-15 years now - never once had a snipe not go through. I've come to rely on them and never doubted the reliability.

I had a few last week

I also had snipe problems. I couldn't believe how low the prices were on some items I was sniping, just glad I wasn't selling anything and feel bad for those that were.

Yea...losing $330 is rough. And the poster above who slammed me is missing the point. When bidders arent allowed to get bids in, meaning they are blocked from bidding due to Ebays incompetence, well, that is just as bad as shill bidding. It is called bid rigging, and it is just as illegal as shill bidding. Should a seller be forced to make a sell when other bidders are blocked from participating?

Ebay never ceases to amaze me in its' incompetence. Just when I thought I had seen it all.....

This is concerning to me. Has anybody figured out if it's any particular sniping tool, or is it all of them across the board?

Wonder if Ebay has suddenly decided that auction sniping services pose a "security breach".

:rolleyes:

Yup, missed 1 last night and am pissed, as it was a piece I really would have loved to have :mad:

Please tell me it wasn't a 1954 Bowman Ted Williams card!!! :mad:

No worries, Bobby, it wasn't. The 1950's stuff is too new for my taste :D

My gavelsnipe bids worked fine last night. I didn't win but was under bidder on at least a few. It seems the snipes worked properly.

Does anyone know if it is an Ebay issue or sniping program issue? I use esnipe.com and had no problems the past few days.

I often bid on the Yahoo Japan auction site. The seller can list the item using an option that extends the auction. If there are no bids within the final 5 minutes the auction will keep extending so sniping is not an option. Most sellers use this feature.

Bid rigging? That would mean that eBay or other bidders INTENTIONALLY defrauded you by restricting the price of your item. To my knowledge, eBay itself does not have any sniping software. It is likely against their Terms of Service to use such a service.
My guess is that the sniping services all have disclaimers that say STTE "we are not liable in the case that your bid does not go through at the appropriate time." So I would guess they're off the hook.

Full disclosure: I don't use bid sniping services. If I want an auction item, I am there when it ends.

If I bid on a card for 800 dollars, paid, then had my winning bid cancelled because someone else's sniping software wasn't working, I would never ever buy another card from that seller. Ever.

Ebay warns sellers against ending their items early. They state that most bidders bid within the final seconds (which is true), and that you run the risk of alienating them should you choose to do so. If it is true that EBay is then restricting the software of these companies that place bids within the final seconds so a bid is never placed, then that is a problem. No seller likes to see their items sell for less than what it is worth. For the card in question that I had, it had a known commodity with a value that most people look at as the gospel (VCP). That value was $1,250 (as of last night - I am sure it is lower now thanks to my throttled auction). If the card sold low due to a fact that Ebay is restricting these sniping programs from placing bids, well that affects me as a seller. I no longer wish to run 99 cents auctions. I also feel I shouldnt be held responsible to negligence on Ebay's part. Ebay makes it so I can't do anything really about non-paying bidders. How about some seller protection for seller's who don't wish to give an item away?

If the auction were a "true" auction that had no issues, then of course I would have no problem shipping the card off at a $330 loss. However, when I hear from multiple people that EBay is not allowing their bids to go through, well, that is a problem. A big one.

If I won a card for $500 that was worth $1,000 because people couldn't bid, I too would be ecstatic! I realize I would have won the card from gaming the system though. Period.

http://www.gavelsnipe.com/faq.php?anchor=2#2

Quote: "My snipe failed to execute. What happened?

GavelSnipe may encounter problems on an auction site that can cause a snipe to fail to execute. Network delays and server timeouts can cause the sign in page or bidding page to not respond. GavelSnipe is designed to continue attempts to sign in and bid during the user-defined snipe buffer until a bid is placed or the auction ends.

eBay has security measures in place to detect weak passwords. This security measure can cause your snipe to fail because the eBay log in process is interrupted by the weak password notification. Click here for tips on creating a secure eBay password.

eBay randomly uses captcha verification codes. These codes require human intervention to proceed with the sign-in/bidding process. Captcha verification codes will cause a snipe to fail because GavelSnipe is unable to sign in and bid."

Ebay has to give permission, and a key to their back door for 3rd party developers like sniping services to even exist. Therefore they giving some sort of tacit approval for the service being offered.

The question is if the problem is on the sniping service end, or if Ebay is unnecessarily blocking some of these services due to yet another glitch or "enhancement" in their system.

You seem to be saying it's intentional, but have no proof. Based on the link I just posted, it could be the buyer's own faults that their bids didn't go through (either weak passwords or getting hit by a random captcha). If eBay approved the use of snipe bidding, they wouldn't be putting captchas into their system. eBay has every incentive for items to end at the highest value they can attain.
You're inventing a conspiracy theory which doesn't make sense. Next time list your items with higher starting bids. Then you'll never get snake-bit if it happens again.

Ok so I'm bidding on a card and right before the end the power goes out in the town of the guy I'm bidding against... Cancel the auction. Another bidder has an internet outage or lag ... Cancel the auction.... Another bidder has to change his newborn and misses a bid, cancel the auction... Look go ahead and cancel the bid if you want realist the card ( maybe with a reserve this time). Do whatever you need to, but I would really like ethics teachers opinion on this one.

I did some searches on ebay for "sniping services", "terms of service", and "sniping bids" in their Customer Service section, and got no true hits (some "community" questions popped up, but none were answered by official eBay personnel). Odd that eBay's help site has zero official word.

I never said I wasn't shipping the card. I am. But if people aren't allowed to snipe because Ebay has blocked certain people from bidding on my items, then yes, I have a sour taste in my mouth! A very bad one! A $330 one! To the point that I don't ever want to do 99 cent auctions again.

You state you never want to bid on someone's items that won't honor "throttled" bids, "Pennies on the dollar" bids, or whatever you want to call them. I don't think you have to worry about that, because that seller will be gone anyway, because he doesn't want to sell his items for peanuts. He is moving on elsewhere. Thanks Ebay! (note the sarcasm here)

You definitively do have a right to the sour taste. You also have the right to be pissed at ebay. No doubt there.

Totally agree John, if the problem wasn't on eBay's end then the rigged auction theory flies out the window. I think it sucks these sniping programs even exist (no offense to anyone), nothing like staying up late to bid on an auction only to be outbid by a pre-arranged snipe bid scheduled two days earlier. Guess I'm old-school that way.

I think Bobby's rightfully upset that a glitch in the system he was paying a generous fee to use, has dramatically affected the outcome of his auctions, costing him quite a bit of coin.

I don't see any signs he has actually pulled out of the transaction either. Let a guy vent. :)

I had a piece a couple weeks ago. If the final bidder had been blocked from sniping, if might have cost me over $1000 bucks on the item.

I don't know that's its been clearly established as an "ebay issue". It could as easily have been a sniping service issue.

Saw this on JustSnipe - the one I normally use. It was posted last night.

Starting from 17:00 Pacific Time, eBay servers experience problems with its servers and networks. The response page from eBay stated that it was timing out. The issue seems to be reduced at 18:00.

eBay has not yet announced the issue on the website.

Pleas use caution during this time.

JustSnipe Support

I doubt there are very many sellers that wouldn't honor their sales (maybe I am wrong?), I will of course...but what it will do is likely be an eye opener that running a straight auction without a high starting bid or reserve just might not be an option for higher dollar items as the risk for something like this to happen is just too high. I know folks will say don't do a 99 cent auction...the thing is, that is what bidders say they like to see (obviously), and for items that have a well established value, they often work better than a starting bid that's higher. It draws more eyes and also puts more eyes on other items that are up for sale at buy it now prices.

If accurate, that changes things a bit.

I'm sure ebay will credit it s valued sellers for bids not received.... Seriously tho a crappy situation for bobby and whoever said we all should've just let him vent is right.

Quite ironically (or not), Ebay has also recently adjusted it's terms of service to clearly state they will never extend auctions if there has been a "service interruption".

Not that they have done that in years anyways........but once upon a time.............

In my opinion, there is no way eBay will even consider compensating a seller for a bid that didn't get through...not a chance.

I think he was being facetious.

Yeah it was a poor attempt at sarcasm. Ebay won't do a thing.

Yes, now I see the sarcasm :-). I wonder what some of the real large eBay seller who run auctions and had any ending last night noticed? There could be some disappointed consignors, and if they are on big ticket items those prices could effect perceived value of Vcp on if it's a rare card.

Anyone get a snipe to work tonight?

My snipe didn't go through on this card ('54 Bowman Williams).. I'd have won it. I had several other (4-5) snipes that did not go through either, however my snipe in the early AM did.

I did have the Williams auction open on my phone at the end, but didn't pull trigger since I'd already made a couple purchases earlier in the day. I was surprised by the ending price and bummer for everyone that left money on the table

I hate I heard that Ian. Someone earlier stated that for high dollar items, just set a reserve or set the bid higher. I am taking this advice. There is absolutely no way I can lose this kind of money and stay in business long. For items that have been in my collection for so long that I don't care what I get for them, then 99 cent auctions can suffice. However, when I get a card for the sole purpose of flipping and basically just hand it out - well, that isn't going to fly. By the way, the winning bidder is a very famous dealer. He has bought from me before. I fully expect to see this card in his store, and sell for $1,200+. I was able to be robbed with the full help of Ebay. Never again.

There are just too many alternatives. Huggins and Scott, Goodwin and Co, Greg Bussineau all come to mind.

Lol. Your posts are too funny.

I'm glad peoples snipes didn't work. That's what they get for using them instead of ACTUALLY BIDDING!!!

I said I was live on the auction. I saw my snipe didn't go through but decided not to bid in the last 2-3 seconds. When I have the time, I always bid live.

Bobby and I'm sure many others definitely left money on the table through no fault of their own and it sucks for them. I'm sure most all of them will honor their sales, since I don't really see an alternative.

I won a few items for what I thought were very good prices, however do wonder now if they were affected by this.

Ebay actually condones sniping. They tell you as a seller that all of the bids come in the final seconds. Trust me, as a seller it is nerve wracking. To see an item that is worth x amount be only a fraction of that with mere seconds to go. If anything, this will help speed up the death of the 99 cent auction for the small seller. The only two people that will be left will be Probstein and PWCC for 99 cent auctions. And both of those sellers have their own different problems that I won't get into here because they have been rehashed to death elsewhere.

I was trying to be a different type of seller than those two. By bringing back the 99 cent auction WITHOUT some of the issues that plague those two gentlemen. I'm going to do some soul searching to see if I want to go down that route.

Too many people complain about the lack of auctions and the overabundance appearance of overpriced BIN's that plague Ebay. Most sellers have had a little help, namely the ineffective bumbling by Ebay themselves, in regards to why the auctions are disappearing with bloated BINs in their wake.

Obviously there isn't much that can be done and I am not one to let things bother me for too long, but I agree in that for larger dollar items I don't think I will be doing straight auctions if at all, and I usually do quite a few a week. The chance of an outage, error, something else happening and preventing the last second or snipe bids is just too risky. For fun I am going to go through some of the high end items that ended on straight auctions last night and see what else was picked up for a good price.

As an aside from the snipe issue which is frustrating... I understand the frustration but I fail to see "death" of the 99 cent auction. Ebay receives more eyes from the public than any other auction site. Generally speaking a 99 cent auction that lasts 7 days should sell at close to a true market value. The fact that sellers want more is irrelevant. Sports cards have almost always been a margins collectible. If a seller feels that the auction prices that cards are realizing aren't enough, then either they need to find a new business venture or sell for above market BIN's that will likely languish for months/years. Either way, nobody wins.

That is all good and all, and I agree that a collectible should sell close to market value, but we have an issue here that needs to be addressed. ALOT of people snipe, especially on higher dollar, rarer cards. It hides two facets. #1 - It doesn't alert anyone that they are interested in the item until the very end. #2 - it allows them to win items on the cheap. When Ebay is restricting these snipes from coming through, then we have items selling a lot cheaper than they normally would.

If Ebay is "crashing", or doing something that is limiting these last second bids from coming through, then that is very much a problem for sellers/consignors. These items are selling for only a fraction of their market value. No different than stealing.

I agree that crashing and software issues need to be addressed. If the software (as in this case) doesn't work then the seller is getting hosed and I have no qualms with the seller being ticked off.

Having said that, it seems many sellers lately generally complain about low selling prices which just seems like sour grapes.

Personally, I think the selling prices for straight auction items...good items that attract a lot of attention, is still pretty strong. Some go a little less than expected, some a little more, but it evens it out in the long run and it guarantees a sale that week. The issue isn't with prices received in a straight, start at 99 cent auctions when bids are received, at least for me, it was having items end for lower than expected...and then getting messages from folks that their snipes did not go through and they would have bid significantly more. And yes, I did have a reserve on some larger items, but with the exception of snipes, reserve auctions typically do not generate the same amount of interest or bidders. The last minute snipes might be similar, but not usually the ongoing bidding...which one again is an issue if the snipes are rejected.

I don't understand the disgust directed at people that use a sniping service. I got tired of constantly being outbid by $1 at the last second and decided to try a free snipe service. I could just as easily set a maximum bid on ebay, and I wouldn't be sitting there punching buttons to bid. Whether I bid in person or via a snipe I AM BIDDING. So what's the problem?

Snipe bids can serve a good purpose (not allowing for shill bidding), but there is no difference to putting in a bid with five seconds to go at your maximum compared to setting a snipe. The main problem, IMO, is expecting a free third-party site to be 100% reliable when working with a huge engine like eBay.

I don't have a problem being outbid by a snipe bid, because it just means that someone else was willing to pay more than I was. If there's an auction I care about, I'm there when it ends (especially now that I have a smartphone with the eBay app).

I don't think there is anything wrong at all with the concept of sniping. In a lot of cases, it probably allows bids to come in that might otherwise be forgotten or if you didn't want to bid early and weren't able to be sitting right at the computer at auction. I don't personally use a snipe serice, but if I did there probably would have been a few more items I would win, and a better price for the sellers. But if a snipe service in not reliable then it can cause issues for both buyer and seller. Perhaps ebay is planning to put together an in house snipe feature.

+1!!!!

And to all those buyers in this thread that don't have any empathy or that don't understand what this means...if this isn't fixed or becomes the norm, many sellers will no longer use eBay for auctions and everything will be either a BIN or have reserves placed on them. eBay has allowed sniping programs for as long as I can remember and it has been an integral part of the auction process for both sellers and buyers.

Jeff

I guess a lot of us can't remember what it was like before sniping services. Before sniping, I would have evenings where my internet would slow down to a crawl, or go down completely. I still have those issues at times - I'm currently at a coffee shop because there is something wrong with my connection at home. With snipes, I am much more confident that my bid will occur. Sellers should like that.

I can remember ten years ago, having ebay members contact me the day after an auction and tell me that their computer crashed and they were unable to bid on my items. I'm sure I left a lot of money on the table because of things like that. Let my customers snipe away.

I receive ebay email notifications on items I am interested in. I usually miss bidding in the final moments of an auction because old cards & collectibles are not the #1 priority in my life. This thread prompted me to finally sign up with one of the snipe sights mentioned in this thread. This way when I get an alert I can set the bid and forget about it. Seems like a time saving efficency measure that makes sense for my limited time in following and bidding on items.
I fault ebay for a lot and have many issues with them but I don't believe they would intentionally have bids and higher prices not occur, unless their in house snipe feature is about to be unleashed.
In the past the more I bid long before an auction closes the greater the chance I don't win. When I only bid at the last moment my chances increase.
I'm 10 years behind signing up! I wonder what percent of folks here use a sniping service.

The vast majority but we will see....maybe I am wrong....- yeap, I was wrong. I am surprised :)

I can confirm Bobby left money on the table on his Williams. I had a snipe in at $850 that didn't fire off. I originally had it at $900, but lowered it in the last hour based on winning some elsewhere. I wasn't aggressively pursuing the Williams, but set my snipe at that amount because it would've been a really good deal at that price.. Especially knowing it had gone for about $1050 at JVAC weeks prior.

My specific snipe wouldn't have yielded a huge difference in end price, but I've gotta think there was a least one more person (maybe a few) that had higher snipe bids at the ready.

I do not think eBay would want to block these because that leaves money on the table actress the board. I agree with the other poster that said the problem lies with fully relying on a 3rd party service (hence I manually bid whenever I can). That said, looks to me like it was an eBay issue since Gavelsnipe was not the only one that couldn't get bids through on Sunday.

I also agree with Bobby in that I think this Sunday's low prices will have at least some effect on value. Given how commonly used CardTarget and VCP are, I think people will be more apt to wait to get an $800-$850 Williams as opposed to spending $1100+. I understand the concept of each bidder "paying what it's worth to them" but most/all worth is perceived and a large part of that perception is based on past sales history. Think this is especially true on cards that are pretty regularly available. For cards like these, people are more willing to wait until the next one comes along.

IMO these low prices were probably aberrations based on snipe issue, and will eventually correct themselves, but if you get even one bidder to back off a current auction and/or lower his max due to a lower recent sale price, the card is effectively worth less.

I don't use sniping services, they are frustrating though I am not against them as I both buy and sell. I don't use them because I would buy a lot more if I did. Being forced to make a decision at the end of an auction, or care enough to be there has kept me out of spending more, so if I'm there, it's because I really want the item.

Missed hundreds of dollars in bid today with bidding scheduler. Is there a fix?

I am not positive but have been reading about it more today. It appears it may be be an issue with the serice trying to log in to ebay to bid with a password that is not deemed strong enough...perhaps if you have a password that is rather simple for ebay, to change it to something more complicated and then update it. Worth a try.

If this issue is still ongoing, it has to make sellers seriously reconsider how you sell on eBay. Or perhaps you just go elsewhere.

Generally speaking, eBay takes 10% and Paypal is another 2.9%. Depending on what you are selling, I have to believe a lot of auction houses can beat that price.

eBay should just do this in house as an added feature.

Adding- that being said, bidding would probably devolve into 10-15 last second snipes... Though I expect it will eventually do so anyway, as more people discover sniping services. There have gotta be other combos that can help keep auctions alive, like the Japanese example given, or AH type extended bidding, possibly larger bid increments that would incentivize locking in the price you want early.

I'm calling Ebay tonight about it. So far, to my knowledge, they haven't acknowledged any outage.

Hold time has been around one hour now.

Well...that was interesting. Not sure what to make of that. I do hope that Ebay has their glitch fixed, and will allow the snipers to start bidding again. I know several members hate them, but I for one, welcome them with open arms!

Hi Bobby, would be curious to hear if eBay had any comments about this when you spoke to them. I would assume it is just security/password related, but I have learned not to assume too much regarding that. I can't imagine they would intentionally not want bids to come in, as it takes money out of their pocket as well...unless like I mentioned earlier it has something to do with an upcoming, in house snipe service of some kind.

Well...Ebay recommended that I just give the guy his money back, and get my FVF's back. They said he can't neg me cause he will have been refunded. Seems odd to me.

Here is a story with a moral related to this incident:

Along time ago, I used to hang with a pretty interesting crowd. Bookies and gamblers. If you have ever seen the movie A Bronx Tale, that is really close to the crowd. We even had our own version of Eddie Mush. You could have made a small fortune just betting against the man.

Anyway, one of the gamblers was named Big Frank. Not because of his size of his stature, but the size of his bets. He would routinely play between $500-$2,000 per game, and bet the games he did. A lot. He didn't just pick one or two. He would bet the board. Maybe skip a game here or there, but it was not unusual for him to be 30-50 games per day.

One day Frank bet a total on a baseball game. For those of you who don't know about sports betting, not only can you pick which side to win, you can also pick whether the total runs score will be over or under a certain total. For this particular game, the total was 11. Big Frank bet the over for a dime or more. I don't remember the exact number, but it was big.

The score was tied 4-4 in extra innings, with the home team batting. I believe if the home team won, they were in the wildcard game for the playoffs. Anyway, the bases were loaded, two outs, bottom of the 13th or so. The guy at the plate hits a grand slam!!!! Game over. Big Frank wins the over, 8-4 with a total of 12. Or so he thought. Fans jumped onto the field to give the players hive fives and pat their backs as they were rounding the bases. The ump made a ruling. Players out. Instead of the home team winning 8-4, the final official score was 5-4. They only let the batters run count. Big Frank was livid!

When it came time to settle up, Big Frank told the bookie "I won this bet. I don't care what the ruling is. I am not going to pay you, you are going to pay me!" The bookie paid Big Frank that amount that was wagered on that game.

This incident about the failed snipes made me think of that story.

Not only is that odd, but it is completely inaccurate, at least as far as anything "automatic" that would happen. I suppose an eBay rep could divinely intervene to make those events come about, but that is definitely not standard operating procedure.

Standard would be you refund his payment, submit to have the transaction cancelled (to get the FVF's back), he denies the request saying he still wants the card, and then whether you complete the transaction or not, he leaves you a neg.

Yeah, I wouldn't believe a word that CS operator, or just about any Ebay CS person at this point.

That whole outfit is drowning in their own stupidity right about now.

I hate to ask, but curiosity is getting the better of me: Did you cancel the transaction?
Thanks
Paul C.