HI EVERYONE, PLEASE FORGIVE ME IF I AM IN THE WRONG PLACE, IM NOT TOO FORUM SAVVY. IVE BEEN USING MY AUCTION SNIPE FOR A COUPLE OF YEARS. TONIGHT I PLACED A BID, WATCHED FOR IT ON EBAY APP, ONLY TO FIND WHEN AUCTION ENDED, ITEM WENT FOR 20.00 LESS THAN MY SNIPE. WHEN I CHECKED, IT SAID EBAY REQUIRES VERIFICATION CODE. MY EBAY ACCOUNT IS VERIFIED,IT WASNT A RESTRICTED ITEM CATAGORY. SELLER HAD SECOND EXACT SAME ITEM ENDING A MINUTE LATER, SO TRIED TO BID ON FULL EBAY SITE FOR THAT ONE,BUT EBAY WOULDNT ACCEPT MY BID. IT WAS MORE THAN THE CURRENT BID, AND NO ITEM HADNT ENDED. CONTACTED EBAY. THEY DIDNT HAVE A CLUE,TOLD THEY WILL PASS IT ON TO TECH TEAM. NOW IM WONDERING IF I CAN RELY ON THIS APP AGAIN. BOTH ITEMS WENT CHEAP, AND BOTH TIMES MY BID WAS HIGHER. SORRY FOR LONG MESSAGE. ANY ADVICE OR HELP APRECIATED,THANK YOU.

It seems like there was a short issue on eBay's side which affected it.
If you tried to bid on a full eBay site with the issue, that means the sniper has nothing to do with it.
It looks good now, but I keep monitoring for it just in case.

I'm sorry your snipe was affected too.

Just a friendly suggestion: please avoid using caps lock in the future. That's a big challenge to read such messages and it's usually considered impolite to write like this.

Hi Sashka,

I had this issue last Sunday around 8:15PM CET and again today around 10PM CET. Because of last week's issue I've placed my bid manually in parallel. Manual placement worked fine, won the auction However, checking my snipe told be "eBay requires verification code" again.
Hence temporary ebay performance issues seem to be unlikely to me.

Hi and thank you for your reply,but I'd already had the problem with the snipe BEFORE I tried using the full eBay site, and on a different item. Sorry about using capital letters, I don't have my glasses to hand and wanted to see what I was typing,not a question of being rude OR wanting to offend anyone,so my apologise. This isn't the first time my sniper app has let me down though. I bet the seller wouldn't be too pleased,she could EE got a lot more for her item. And I would of hot a great deal. Think I will do what someone suggested,put manual bid on AND use app as back up. Many thanks for the advise.

I had the same problem today on 2 auctions. Luckily I saw it happen on the first one and did a manual bid just incase it would happen again.

It happened at:
Aug 31, 2014 18:10:07 PDT and Aug 31, 2014 18:30:38 PDT

this seems like a big problem, please look into fixing this.

jrr6415sun,
Unfortunately, I have no control over issues on eBay's side. We just need to wait and hope it will be as fast as they usually do.

I have also had the same issues using the sniper on Sunday and also again last night. Let's hope eBay sort this out soon!

I made another work-around to make things easier. It's getting better on eBay's side too.
I know eBay is good at resolving issues like this, so I hope it will be gone completely soon.

I have experienced the same issue; I have missed a purchase with what should have been a winning snipe and instead got the "eBay requires verification code" error message. This occurred on 07 Sep, 2014 at 20:08:09 BST.

Could the issue be that eBay are trying to deter automated bidding and so have introduced a captcha for bids that they consider likely to have been automated?

mgoodw,
I don't think eBay is trying to block all snipers. They would've done it long time ago and in a more efficient way.

eBay benefits from snipers in any case -- more bidders are involved into bidding, higher prices, higher seller's fees.
Also, I noticed that snipers have a much lower non-payer rates.

eBay had some security issues in the past. eBay requested all users to update their password, but I guess many did not follow up so eBay is trying to be pro-active about it and strengthen their security this way.
The captcha is a side-effect of it since snipers show higher activity compared to regular users.

This happened to me for the first time yesterday, causing me to lose a very important item. I have been using this site for several years, but will not use it again until the issue is sorted out. I do believe it must be deliberate on ebay's part if all of us have used this site without any problems until now. I'll continue to monitor this forum to see if it's resolved.

Guest,
Please check the forums. It mentioned in different threads that the eBay's issue appears to be resolved by them.
As you said, you used the sniper for several years with no problems, so you know this is not the sniper's fault.
Outages like this happen and eBay is usually quick on resolving them.

Update:

I used myibay today and it worked!

Hello everybody, i have an error
My Status: Your account needs extra confirmation by eBay. Could you help me with my problem?
I verified my credit card on paypal and verified my e-mail address after that error, but nothing change.

NellyLucky,
It may be related to the issue described above, but I also noticed some minor changes on eBay's side which may trigger that.
I made a change to reflect that. It looks good now.

I just wrote to my sniper that I have used for over a decade. This is the first time it has happened to me and, as you can see, it is now 04-18-15! So the problem has not been solved entirely. This is the first time it has happened to me and of course I lost something I know I would have won, just like everyone else here.
Are others noticing an uptick in this problem again? I just updated my Apple system update. While I was able to perform a Buy It Now this afternoon, this was a huge surprise tonight. Any information would be helpful.

Missyoly,
Please describe what exactly happened to you. If this is item specific question, please don't forget to include the item number as well.

Hi,
Hope this helps. I'm going to try to recreate situation next Monday. I'll let you know.

Apr 27, 2015, 5:21PM won 4 items below. All items from same seller in adult category.
171764067205
151658259931
171764066830
171764066713

Then from 5:22PM to 5:26PM received "eBay requires verification code" on 20 items below, again all items from same seller in adult category.
171764070443
161681668384
171764069525
151658267082
171764069237
151658266106
151658265966
171764068602
151658263430
161681667271
161681666991
171764067962
151658261716
161681666731
171764067619
151658260681
151658260660
171764067457
161681666463
161681666389

At 5:45PM received "Your snipe was too low due to eBay's bid increment system" on 1 item below, again item from same seller in adult category. This was my final bid 4-27.
171764082076

---

Last edited on Tue Apr 28, 2015 06:22 PM.

Thank you for the provided information. It helps a lot to obtain and combine information properly.
I checked the logs and it appears this is related to the old eBay issue when they start to ask to enter captcha on each step.

The captcha happens during some short period of time (usually a few minutes) and then it disappears. It affects several accounts (but not all), so this is not something specific for your account.
It used to be pretty bad before, but it's getting more rare these days so it seems like eBay is doing something to improve it.

I implemented a few things to mitigate it, but that does not resolve it completely since this is something on eBay's side. But it mitigates the issue as much as possible.

I'm sorry for the affected snipes.

The "bid increment system" message is because sniper could not get the correct final price of the listing upon ending so it assumed so. It does not affect the actual snipe in this case.

Got same problem - your ebay account needs extra confirmation.
161760975902

But my bid was much higher than the final price