CAPTCHA

miwlvrn

Anyone have any trouble with ebay's CAPTCHA today? I nearly always bid using snipe programs. Looks like today ebay had a CAPTCHA blocking most of them. I had bids set to win some items for a good amount of price higher than they sold for but ebay's snipe-blocker prevented them. Seems like a lot of people lose that way: sniping bidder doesn't win the auction; the seller sells his item for lower cost than he would have otherwise received; and, ebay gets less money because they take a percentage of the final sale price which were lower in these cases. I have heard that sellers are filing complaints with ebay over this issue since it is costing them money. From a non-sniping bidder's perspective, I suppose it is a good thing since they can win items they would otherwise have lost, and for lower cost than it should take to win them. Frustrating though IMO. First time I can remember having snipes fail.

LarkinCollector

Haven't tried today, but in the past eBay only does it after having 'network issues' that are later exposed as a hack that compromised users passwords.

byronscott4ever

I've heard eBay is blocking snipes now?

LOTSOS

I'm assuming that's only for the apps/ programs right? They aren't instituting something to prevent manual snipes ala big auction houses with their rolling bidding windows are they?

MrNearMint

I don't use snipe programs but I've had a little trouble manually sniping a few items recently. I put my max bid in with probably around 7 seconds left and the bid doesn't go through. Lost out on a few items I would have won.

aanewport

I had 5 of 7 snipes today with the result "bid blocked by eBay captcha" - not sure why 2 made it through - they were the first and last bids of the night

divecchia

Wow, that really stinks. I'm going to have to watch out for that.

It looks like I will manually snipe whenever possible.

Donato

bubblebathgirl

Interesting. I've never experienced this myself though I don't use AuctionSniper much anymore. I prefer manually sniping whenever possible.

I believe the CAPTCHA comes in to play when eBay sees one bidding from a peculiar IP. But if the user had to login to eBay to bid (via snipe service or manually) I don't see why CAPTCHA is necessary.

Sorry to hear you missed out on items because of this.

CollectorAtWork

I had this happen on Wednesday in the PWCC auctions. I'm pretty annoyed because one card that I really wanted went for $150 less than what my max bid in my snipe via Gavelsnipe was, but the snipe was blocked by ebay CAPTCHA, so it wasn't executed. The winner of that card got a complete steal. Even worse, I was sitting in front of my computer when the snipe was supposed to be executed, so I easily could have entered in manually. However, I was sitting there like an idiot refreshing my gavelsnipe screen to see if I won anything.

On Tuesday, for PWCC, I sniped something like 15-20 auctions via Gavelsnipe, and they all went through without problems. However, on Wednesday, for PWCC, the first 10 snipes went through fine, but the last 3 were all blocked by ebay CAPTCHA. One of them I would not have won anyway, but the other two, my max bid was higher than the winning bid. One of these, it was only 1-2 increments higher than the winning bid, so I could still have easily lost if the max bid was a little bit higher for the winning bidder. However, as mentioned, the other item, my max was a lot higher. From now on, from items that I really want, I'll have to try to execute the bid manually in addition to having the snipe there.

rexvos

Is this only occurring on high end auctions, or all? I exclusively use a sniping service. I had several auctions I am watching ending this weekend, and wondering if I should try manually sniping. I had a friend that's snipe did not go off as well on an auction this week, so I am wondering how widespread this is.

thesouthdoesitagain

I been hearing of stories like this, and its becoming more occurring. I recently used Gavelsnipe as a beginner in hopes to grab items, that I otherwise be sleeping on and cannot bid manually. This would piss me off.
And I would hate to put an early bid, and end up being shilled up to my max. Thus, I mainly use auction houses. But they are not fool proof as well.

CollectorAtWork

Yea, for me, I think I'll continue sniping because otherwise, there are times when I will just completely forget about the auction or get busy during the auction ending time, so it's still good to have the snipe there as insurance. However, for the few items that I REALLY want, I'll try to put a manual bid at the end also.

miwlvrn

Did gavelsnipe fail to place a bid for anyone else today? Works 99.99% of the time for me, but no good today for some unexplained reason.