Failed snipe

[Aewhistory]

I tried to use Gixen to bid on an Amplifier auction: 310417976818

I had a bid of about $141. With about 25 seconds to go in the auction I decided to raise my bid by ten dollars. It seemed to register, but at the end of the auction neither of my snipes went thru and I lost a very good deal! Why? given gave a message saying that my last snipe may have been too late, but did this cancel my original one as well? this seems odds that one would be too late to take effect, but soon enough to erase my active bid? either way it bothers me.

Thanks for any information.
Aaron

[Guest]

When you clicked edit, gixen must have been waiting for your new value, pausing itself, in effect, while you decided. Seems pretty reasonable, you may have been trying to lower your bid!

With 10 seconds to go, you shouldn't really be playing with a sniper, just handle the caution yourself!

[Aewhistory]

[quote="Anonymous"]When you clicked edit, gixen must have been waiting for your new value, pausing itself, in effect, while you decided. Seems pretty reasonable, you may have been trying to lower your bid!

With 10 seconds to go, you shouldn't really be playing with a sniper, just handle the caution yourself![/quote]

I can see this as a plausible outcome, but this seems, at best, like a bug to me. I had a value input into the sniper. it is in the last minute that most bidding takes place; in the case of the item I was bidding on the last minute contained ALL of the bidding. Consequently, there will be times when the price rises within seconds and you may need to adjust your snipe. I accept that my adjustment was too late, but the mere attempt to raise my bid erasing my current one is just silliness.

The whole point of a sniper is to make sure you register your bid in these last few seconds, not drive up the price, etc., so it shouldn't erase and existing bid until and edit is complete. look at the "edit" process. When you put in a bid it puts it under your list of snipes. Now you can 'edit' or 'cancel'. if you cancel it goes away, if you edit it brings up the info you originally put in at the bottom of the screen. here you can change the price. But you've also got another set of buttons: "modify" or "cancel". So cancel goes back to the original bid, modify puts in a new bid.... What happens when your actions result in neither? That should automatically result in a cancel and the placement of your original bid. Why? because if you intended to cancel your bid you could have hit cancel and stopped the process. So there is no logic to this implementation. Whether I raise or lower my bid, I AM trying to bid, so the system should not stop my bid unless I cancel it or it cannot implement it. I did not cancel and only my second bid, the change, was unable to be implemented. So this just makes no sense.

[mario]

Gixen doesn't know the reason or your intent when you do an edit. When you do it at the last moment, it does the following:

1) Tries to stop the existing bid from being placed.
2) Tries to place a new, revised bid.

When an edit is made this late, what often happen is that 1) succeeds, and 2) doesn't.

As for your comment that you need to adjust your snipe, that's exactly the behaviour sniping protects you from when other users do that. When using sniping, you should think hard what your true maximum bid is, schedule a snipe with that bid ahead of time, and never revise it again, especially not in the last few minutes.

[Gixen]

[Cupid]

[quote="Aewhistory"]it shouldn't erase and existing bid until and edit is complete.[/quote]

Because the process of sniping involves logging in to eBay before placing the bid (which is not instantaneous) and checking again after having done that whether your snipe value has changed would slow the process down to such an extent that many more snipes would fail it is not possible to implement a workable process that can do that in the last seconds of an auction.

On the whole it is a better outcome for users that change their bid in the last seconds to have the original snipe cancelled than to have it run and potentially win an auction at a price they are no longer willing to pay. It is not possible to have a different process for when you raise your bid to that used when you lower it... the process of checking whether the new value is higher or lower than the original, because it involves another check against the database, would slow the process once more to the extent that more snipes would fail to produce the desired result.

[quote="Aewhistory"]look at the "edit" process. When you put in a bid it puts it under your list of snipes. Now you can 'edit' or 'cancel'. if you cancel it goes away, if you edit it brings up the info you originally put in at the bottom of the screen. here you can change the price. But you've also got another set of buttons: "modify" or "cancel". So cancel goes back to the original bid, modify puts in a new bid.... What happens when your actions result in neither? That should automatically result in a cancel and the placement of your original bid. Why? because if you intended to cancel your bid you could have hit cancel and stopped the process. So there is no logic to this implementation. Whether I raise or lower my bid, I AM trying to bid, so the system should not stop my bid unless I cancel it or it cannot implement it. I did not cancel and only my second bid, the change, was unable to be implemented. So this just makes no sense.[/quote]

I'm not certain I understand this paragraph, but I suspect there is a misunderstanding of what currently happens that may be causing you to think the implementation is not logical.

The first 'Cancel' that you mention I think you mean 'Delete'? This removes the original snipe, so that no bid will be placed at all.

After you click 'Edit' you have two further options to 'Modify' or to 'Cancel'. The 'Cancel' just stops the editing process, so if you use that then the original snipe is left in place.... The 'Modify' button tries to alter the snipe that is currently being executed and to do that it has to try to stop the existing snipe and place a new one, in your case it managed to do the former but not the latter as Mario said.
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Mark