posted on April 2, 2001 02:51:15 PM
I have recently been using Vrane to snipe auctions and as recently as yesterday...after Daylight Savings Time went into effect...my snipes were going through fine. Today however, two snipes that I had scheduled did not get placed. Both were to have been placed within the last couple of hours. (I know that it is not a problem that my bid was not high enough since one was on an auction with no other bids...and the other was on one where I had already entered an earlier bid and the Vrane bid was much higher than my earlier bid)
posted on April 2, 2001 04:24:27 PM
HI Ken: I tried to cancel a snipe this afternoon and kept getting an error message. I hope they get whatever is wrong fixed before my bid goes in, as I discovered the item was the wrong size to match the piece I have here.
posted on April 2, 2001 05:10:56 PM
Story of my life . . . Not 15 minutes ago, I decided to use vrane snipe for the first time. Not 5 minutes ago, I saw your message and tried to get into the auction to place my bid manually. It was too late, and of course, the snipe was not placed.
posted on April 2, 2001 05:20:03 PM
Well, after I left my first message, I went back and resubmitted all my pending snipes at Vrane. I just had an auction close and this time my snipe worked. By the way, Vrane is now reporting this problem on their site...blaming it on the eBay problem that arose yesterday. One suggestion they indeed make is for people to resubmit their snipes.
posted on April 3, 2001 06:11:58 AM
I had the same problem yesterday but only found out about it after the auction ended, the snipe didn't go through and I didn't get the item.... I was puzzled and after checking and noticing the time discrepancy on Vrane, sent them a polite e-mail to ask what the problem was. I have never been treated so rudely in my life, the guy who answered me was abusive, rude and told me I had no idea what I was talking about, that everything was working fine.
I answered with all the details, auction numbers and such and he answered me telling me I was stupid and should have checked e-Bay's answer boards. What a total jerk!!!
posted on April 3, 2001 07:28:39 AM
FWIW, esnipe was reporting the same problem. The explanation at the esnipe site is that Ebay had some hardware problems to do with the time change, and that auctions ending on Sunday were affected. Supposedly, ebay was blaming it on Microsoft.
posted on April 3, 2001 07:36:45 AM
KatyD -
The bug was in Microsoft's clock function. Unfortunately for eBay, the bug fix was released over a year ago, it's that eBay didn't bother to install it.
The real blame is with eBay and their failure to keep up with the bug reports and fixes.
posted on April 3, 2001 08:35:23 AM
Clearly this was a major problem at Vrane yesterday. Their 24 hour statistics show that over 36% of the snipe bids did not get placed...compared to a figure that is usually around 5% I think.
While it may indeed have been caused by eBay's situation...I am not certain that is the total explanation. Vrane's explanation at their site revolves around the fact that eBay was supposedly ending some auctions about an hour early due to this problem. Yet on both auctions that I had where the snipes did not get placed, they ended at the appropriately posted time. So I don't see how anything that eBay had done would have impacted Vrane. I wonder if Vrane had the same problem that eBay had and either did not (or still does not) know it or does not want to acknowledge it themselves.
