Hello Skakeel,
I typed out a long response and then didn't click SEND. Here is an example that should answer all of your questions.
In summary, the high bid does not always win, due to the minimum bid increment. So the order of bids matters, and the cost of the item factors in as well.
In the example, you use BidSlammer, that fires 2 or more snipes at the same time. And given is that all clocks involved are perfectly sync'd, but one of those snipes will hit eBay first, even if it's a matter of milliseconds.
You and another sniper bid $1,000 on an auction. Yours is set to 3 seconds, and hers is set to 10 seconds. What exactly happens is:
1. Her first $1K snipe hits at 10 seconds and receives the message, "Congratulations, you are the high bidder."
2. All of her other $1K snipes receive the error, "You are already the high bidder. Please bid (this amount) or more."
3. All of your $1K snipes at 3 seconds receive the message, "Your bid is too low. Please bid (this amount) or more."
Therefore, the lower lead times really don't make that much of a difference. We were the very first service to advertise 3 seconds, when everyone used 7. There's a reason for that -- 7 is a good choice no matter what. But everyone copied the idea because it sounds better.
As the minimum bid increases with the current price of the auction, the higher the cost of the auction, the more important it is to bid earlier, not later. This is only important at items over $10,000, however, and so this is really just a concept, rather than something that should keep you up at night.
In summary,
1. It doesn't really help to use another service, as long as the one you use is one that has been around a long time, like us (20 years). There are a lot of caveats to operating this service, like making sure you can explain every no-win situation.
2. The documentation excerpt you gave us is definitely wrong. It seems we have a few spots left with the old documentation lingering; we'll get on that. But yes, the more security stuff you enable, the better, just for general welfare (not for sniping concerns).
Thank you for the great question. Please let us know if you have any other questions, since we're probably going to update the help page with the text from this thread. :-)
bidslammer
