Been getting a few failed snipes recently. Never had this with previous versions of JBidWatcher. Starting to loose faith in the app :-(

The error log states;

Mon Feb 06 20:04:39 GMT 2012: 200707753232 (Mission M7C1 Center Channel Speaker) – Preparing snipe.
Mon Feb 06 20:06:39 GMT 2012: 200707753232 (Mission M7C1 Center Channel Speaker) – Firing actual snipe.
Mon Feb 06 20:06:40 GMT 2012: 200707753232 (Mission M7C1 Center Channel Speaker) – Snipe apparently failed, as the auction cannot be bid on anymore: Mission M7C1 Center Channel Speaker
Mon Feb 06 20:10:32 GMT 2012: Failed to get https://my.jbidwatcher.com/services/account: I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.

I set the snipe time to 1 second which has always served me well in the past.

Any ideas?

…same shit here

and stop saying shit now …

… ones it comes out it is in need of a description :-) .. just a bit dissapointed to face this failure two times in short time, one of the auctions I was missing because of it was an extremly rare unit and the price I was willing to pay was high enough ….

Yes, I understand your frustration. I posted on the other thread as today JBW won another 1 for me today on snipe, and that’s the only snipe I have set for today, and it works well for me. Look at the other post ….

Snipe time of 1 second is very aggressive. Even if you have a very fast connection, it would be safer to use 3-5 seconds. I used to use 3 seconds for a long time, but I would have a problem about 1 out of 100 times where the auction ended before the snipe, so I upped it to 5 seconds to be more sure.

Even at 5 seconds, there is very little time for anyone to react to the snipe.

I set my JBW @ 9 seconds to snipe, and I win all I want if I am not too cheap on the bid price :D

set to snipe for 2 items today, and I won both today as my bid price was reasonable. I think I won more from a surprise factor where there’s only an initial bid and no others till the last 9 seconds (me).

These wins are pretty good deals compared to what I have to pay at the store, about $49 @ store + sales tax, plus gas to drive to the store, and I won and only have to pay $12 (including shipping). Good deals for me you think?? :D

JBidwatcher (2.5-0-g8f10beb)
Mac OS X
steady Comcast.net internet fast connection

A bid time of 1 second is going to fail if there is even the slightest delay on the line.

3-5 seconds is a good time – you can probably increase to about 7 without much chance of warning the other bidder.

I used to run 10-12 seconds, and once lost to another bidder who I had sniped, and who then noticed it and got another manual bid back on with 1 second to spare. Ever since then I have varied between 5-8, and never had any comeback. At 9-10 seconds I think there is a slim chance of an alert manual bidder getting time to up a bid if they are monitoring closely. Below that they don’t really have a chance.

A more important point, which I have made before, is that you DON’T want to be the last bidder! You want to be the FIRST bidder who bids at a time when no comeback is possible.

Consider an item displayed at 20 (pounds/dollars/whathaveyou..). It actually has a max bid of 24.50 on it. You and one other bidder want it, and you each think that 25 is a reasonable price to pay. But you are both skilled Jbid snipers, and you know that an odd number is usually better. So you decide to bid 25.79, and he decides to bid 26.23. With these figures he should win.

Now you bid. You snipe at 6 seconds before time. You are now the high bidder, and the price is set at 25.50. Then he bids, at 3 seconds before time. His bid is rejected, since 26.50 is now the new minimum price. He loses, even though he was prepared to go higher than you were. If he had bid first he would have won…

I have had this happen to me once or twice. It happens when everybody knows pretty closely what an item is worth, and all the snipes are pretty close. Under these circumstances, you want to be FIRST in with your snipe, NOT last.

So there you have the Dodgy rule – snipe at the earliest point when the other side can’t come back. I generally find that to be about 7 seconds.

Sound good. Yes, I’d lost to other snipers before too at 9 second.

So, I will try 7 seconds and see how that will out smart other JBW snipers :D

Today – for the second or third time in the past few months (I don’t snipe that often), I had setup JBW with my price, to bid at 11 seconds to go in the auction.

However, as I’m watching the time run out and the auction ends, I see a date and time in the “Time left” column for that auction, in red type (not a good sign, I’m thinking). Then the auction disappears into the Completed tab. I switch to that and find that, although I had set a price of 39.99 for my max snipe, the price it went for was only 23 or 24 dollars and change – NO sign that JBW had put in any snipe at all(!)..This, as I said, is not the first time this happened for me with 2.5.3pre on the Mac. After the previous failure, I deleted the app and re-downloaded 2.5.3pre for Mac and installed it (keeping my preferences and other support files).

This is getting very frustrating, when it appears from the log that JBW didn’t even snipe at all. No entry that appears to be opening the snipe at/around the time of the auction’s end.

Well, even with over 1700 visits to this (and more to another failed snipe topic), after over a month, still no response or sign that JBidwatcher is having this problem fixed. Either Morgan is busy elsewhere, eBay has out-foxxed JBidwatcher, or maybe eBay bought him out(?).

Whatever happened to JBitwatcher, it no longer reliably works for me on my Mac (not even sure that it’s placing a bid at the end of the auction – I’ve tried changing the time when it bids to longer/shorter times – no observable improvement), and I have given up on JBidwatcher. It wasnice while it worked, anyway….

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

I am still on the old version:
JBidwatcher (2.5.3pre3-2-g03a9bc3)

iMac OS X 10.6.8
4GB

OS X 10.6.8 Runs well with my ability to play a couple of older games I like on my iMac (too cheap to buy new versions at this point, plus it’s only for entertainment value)…..

I was going to install a newer version beta JBW, but a couple of days after the release of that one, after seeing the posting, I decided to stay with this version, as it’s working, and why break anything that’s working?

But this version of JBW does a “Good” to “Very Good job” for me to get pretty much all the items I want so far…. I am still winning items I want (if I set the bid price realistically high enough to win)… or I just find luck sometimes with low low bid and I get pleasant surprises when no one else is bidding on this $0.99 starting bid item…

Anyhow, if you are giving up on JBW, what are you going to be using?

Yeah, JBW misses a few sometimes, but it might be due to internet congestion or my wireless router getting flaky due to high heat in my garage etc. etc… not sure, but I don’t have mission critical items, only good deals and I am happy coz I am getting items on a regular basis every week…. I just get the items I like posted in JBW and I set a bid price and not worry about it….

If I need an item right away, I will usually shop around and find the best deal and go with that purchase whether it’s from a local store or from an internet seller….

Let me know if you have any good solutions…. It’s going to be bumpy roads as eBay is making changes constantly and they have hundreds of programmers, and Morgan is just one soul and he has a family and job also….