eBay and Gavel Snipe?

[BruceinGa]

Anyone know what's going on with eBay and Gavel snipe? This is the message at the top of the Gavel Snipe page:
IMPORTANT: We are aware of the issues with eBay sniping, and it appears eBay is blocking snipes from GavelSnipe. As we look into resolving these issues, it is recommended GavelSnipe NOT be used for important eBay bids. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

I sure am glad none of my bids are "important"!

[Cozumeleno]

I was really disappointed with a lot I missed out on a couple of weeks ago for some relatively tough boxing cards because my snipe didn't go through. Gavelsnipe has been dependable and a lot of the stuff I bid on isn't super critical. For the important stuff, I try to observe live to make sure it goes through. But my snipe was set at a little more than double what the cards ultimately sold for and I was driving at the time. Tough pill to swallow.

To add, I have zero idea why eBay would be blocking these snipes, anyway, since it can lead to lower final prices. In my case, a seller lost out on potentially as much as twice his money and they lost out on additional fees.

I can appreciate that they want bidders placing earlier bids to drive prices up and encourage more bidding -- I'm guessing that's what this is about? But so much of the population doesn't bid that way and waits until the end, anyway. Many of the early bids with traditional auction houses seem to be placed as token bids in the start simply to allow people to be able to bid on the auction on the final day. Just seems like a dumb approach on eBay's part if you consider the entire picture.

[swarmee]

eBay sometimes requires logon "captchas" to confirm that you're not a bot. Because while sniping bots can be used for good, bots can also be used for online theft or market manipulation.

I know in previous times when eBay would throttle the sniping websites, sometimes it was also due to passwords that weren't strong enough/ones that could easily be cracked because they didn't have enough variance. A couple of years ago, there would be one of these threads every couple of months because on some random Sunday nights, they would check whether the passwords being used were of strong enough quality.

They shouldn't be doing it so spottily. If they require a stronger password (like 16 char, 2 caps, 2 numbers, 2 characters), they should just require it for every login and force every account to log back in and change their password, maybe even annually.

[Stonepony]

Gavelsnipe has been working fine for me, as recently as 3 days ago.

[icurnmedic]

Try Gixen, in 8 years has never let me down.

[perezfan]

Originally Posted by icurnmedic

Try Gixen, in 8 years has never let me down.

I've had 2 failures on Gixen over the last 8 years or so. But that's statistically nothing, as there have been well over 1,000 bids that have been executed without any issues (win or lose).

[darwinbulldog]

Originally Posted by perezfan

I've had 2 failures on Gixen over the last 8 years or so. But that's statistically nothing, as there have been well over 1,000 bids that have been executed without any issues (win or lose).

Just failed for me in the past hour.

[perezfan]

Crap, that's disheartening...

I wonder if there is recent eBay action that's affecting Gixen as well as Gavelsnipe. Seems too coincidental to be anything else.

[BruceinGa]

In the past 30 minutes I had 5 out of 5 snipes execute properly. They weren't "important" so of course there wasn't a problem .

[deadballera]

Gavel Snipe did not work for me yesterday.

Had to manually place bids on more important stuff later in the day.

[TanksAndSpartans]

A few years ago Gixen made a change such that you have to authorize their service via your eBay account so "captchas" aren't an issue for them - doesn't mean they won't fail, but at least eBay shouldn't suddenly start blocking them.

[sb1]

Gavel snipe is still not working for me....

[BruceinGa]

12 out of 13 worked for me last in the last couple of days. The one that didn't was the highest amount of all.

[egri]

Gavelsnipe did not work for me just now. Fortunately I was watching the auction and was able to manually enter my bid.