my first experience--horrible failure. ):

Guest

very very sad! I used to use goofbay and had no issues, but since today it was an item I REALLY really wanted, I decided to google up the 'best' auto-snipe site and found gixen. so, not wanting to leave anything to chance, decided to use what I thought was the best.

here is a screencap of the fail:

can anyone tell me why it failed? ): I can't believe my bad luck! so many people use gixen without problems, and my first time--utter failure. I'm so sad since I would've *gladly* paid much more than what it went for!

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 7241

Gixen was late for this one, true. The status was reported as OUTBID as you had previous manual bid.

I don't want to make you feel worse, but using any sniping service, including Gixen (without mirror), you hardly "not leave anything to chance", as snipes do fail, and timeouts do happen. You were quite unlucky though that this happened on your very first snipe.

Guest · Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2011 10:47 pm Post subject:

I know, but I had some plans that made it impossible for me to be at the computer at that time. otherwise I would've bid manually. is there any reason that this failed though? I'm wondering if there's anything on my part that I could've changed, so that gixen would've worked. I didn't see any options to customize (regarding seconds left/etc), so I'm at a loss.

I'd already placed a goofbay snipe, but removed it since I didn't want the two to conflict. would it be wise to use 2 sniping sites next time, or would they just get confused with each other?

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 7241

You did nothing wrong really, it was just bad luck - statistically 1 in 300 snipes will fail / be late. Mirror would have helped. Another sniping service can have the same effect as Mirror (if they do things right), or it can be detrimental by making ebay think your account has been hijacked. I have seen both happen.

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Guest · Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2011 10:59 pm Post subject:

well, thanks for the info. I know it's a free service and I'm sure it works for plenty of people. I'll only be using snipe for items I don't really care about from now on, lesson learned! oh well, could be worse.

happy holidays and thanks again for clearing it up!

william_smith · Guest

I think by using the mirror feature w/ Gixen, one gets a similar advantage to using two snipping sites. Actually better I would think, as eBay can get "confused" pretty easily at times. I would be happy to pay for a snipping service which works well, however to date I have not found one which gets better user-reviews than Gixen, so I'm going with what appears to be the best- which in this case just happens to cost a measly $6 a year for "premium" service.
Try asking a question or posting an issue on other snipping sites and see how long it takes to get a reply. Very Happy

For me, if there's somethign I feel I must have and I'm willing to pay x amount of $$ for it, I just bid that amount as close to the end of the auction as is possible, and am pretty much guaranteed to have my bid considered. If it's something I simply must have and it may not be available again soon, if at all, I'm not trying to save a few dollars by coming in at the last minute, but wanting to make sure that I am firmly in the running. Does this artifically run up the closing price? Most likely. ...but if I really want it, I'm most likely to be bidding more than others interested in having item X. ...and am willing to pay more for it based on this interest. I often get what I pay for, even if I pay more than folks may think it's worth. I go to the store to by new stuff. I use eBay to get items which are not at "the store" in my neck of the woods. I have found that the price of a fairly unique item is contingent on the mood of the buyer and seller at the time of the transaction. I don't pay much attention to "price guides" to get that last item which complete a series of collectables....The value is not dictated by comprable sales, but simply based on how badly I want the item.
A "fail rate" of 1 in 300, in light of all the variables which can result in this failure, is fantastic as far as I'm concerned. I bet the fail rate for those using both the free site and mirror feature is significantly lower than for those using only the single-server version.

Cupid · Joined: 09 Aug 2007 Posts: 7920 Location: Bristol, UK

Thank you william_smith,

I agree with your post, many factors affect the price you are willing to pay and the strategy that you use, many would find my strategy perverse at times but it makes perfect sense to me.

You are also correct in your guess that using Mirror dramatically reduces the failure rate, roughly you can multiply the failure rate of a single server to get the probability of a two server failure so 1 in 300x300 = 90,000, in practice if you ignore failures at the eBay end (which neither server or any sniping utility can do anything about) it is quite likely even better than that.
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Mark