FAQs and FACTs about eStEaL

• After registration, I have not received confirmation email. Is there a problem?
• I did not receive an email, when I won an auction. Am I supposed to receive it?
• How do I change my bid amount?
• Can I cancel a bid after it's placed?
• How do I track my bids?
• What does "UNIDENTIFIED HIGH BIDDER" mean on my pending screen, beside one of my items I have placed a snipe on? Is this me?
• How do I know if I won the auction?
• My bid was higher than the winning price; however, I'm not the winner. Auction's status indicates "Bid too low", but I doubt it was?..
• Why does the snipe not go off, and declare that the item is "N/A", when it's no where near the time to bid yet? My snipes moved over to "Completed Snipes" section, but they hadn't even happened yet, or gone higher than the bidding.
• Do you support Mature Audiences Category auctions?
• How reliable is your system?
• How do you keep your time settings the same as eBay's?
• What are the benefits to using esteal?
• What is the best Delta Time?
• What are advantages of a LONGER Delta Time?
• If an eBay item bidding starts at $15, yet also states "reserve not met", how does eStEaL bid? Does it start at $15, and then jumps all the way to the maximum offer entered? Does it have a way of trying bids inbetween, to find the item's miminum reserve?
• What's happening to the completed auctions records? Do you keep them in database, or erase them?

When you sign up or change your email in profile, eStEaL sends an automated confirmation email on the address provided. There is a link in this email; clicking on it, you can confirm your email address and use our service in full mode. Usually, it takes from 1 to 5 minutes to receive this email.

What of you've signed up for eStEaL.com, but did not receive an email confirmation, within few hours? By our rules, you can not use any of the email features eStEaL suggests. They include "lost password" sending on your email, and "outbid emails", which are sent before 1 hour of auction ending, if your bid is already too low.

If you don't receive an email, that means, your ISP, or server, or email client is blocking our automated messages, marking them as "spam" or "bulk", and we can do nothing in that case - our program needs a verified email, where you receive our messages on. Either register alternative email on the server, which is not blocking eStEaL emails, and change to it in Profile after. Either be prepared not to receive any emails from us. In that case, they are just wasting our resources.

We do not confirm emails manually. Please, do not attack our service staff with requests like this.

Despite of this, you can still use eStEaL for automatic bidding, with all web-features included, which do not depend on emailing.

We are not sending emails, if you are the winner of auction. eBay does the same, so there is no need to duplicate this process.

How do I change my bid amount?

Our system makes it extremely easy to modify your max bid amount. Login to your account and on the "main" page (the first page you see when you login) you will see your pending bids list. From here you can change the bid entry in the editable field for all auctions you want modified. Then push the "update" button and your bid(s) will be updated in our system.

How do I cancel my bid after its placed?

Next to each of your pending bids you will see a "delete" link. You can delete your bid at any time from here.

How do I track my bids?

Login to your account and you will immediately see all of your pending bids. To see your successfull bids you can view the "successfull" link.

UNDEFINED HIGH BIDDER means: currently, this auction has no bids at all (that's why high bidder is not determined). You can be the first and the only one bidder in the latest seconds, when your bid will be made by eStEaL; but overall, this is the matter of your luck, and reason for checking your bids more often.

How do I know if i won the auction?

Login to your account and go to the "successfull" section. If your auction is highlighted in green, then it means you won the auction.. Congratulations! You can also check the direct eBay page at any time by clicking on the item number next to the item. If your auction is highlighted in white, then it means you lost the auction or your bid was not high enough to place, or probably some another reason. You will see notes in the "result" column.

In most common cases, your bid was really made. However, eStEaL's bid was not high enough to meet the required step in bid amounts, at the time it was placed. Most probably because another user made more higher bid, and it was incremented by eBay automatically; but your bid was lower than this user's final price. At the end, this user won on proxy bidding. Learn on eBay about bid increments and proxy bidding.

This is because you are placing the snipes in a bidding group. When some item from the bidding group wins, others are removed from the pending queue immediately, with the status "Didn't bid". Learn more in our manual about bidding groups, and when you need to use them. Do not use bidding group for ALL items you must win!

No, we do not. For such kind of auctions, Identity Assurance is needed, and your credit card information needs to be verified on the way. We are not keeping, and can not keep any kind of your credit card information. eStEaL is designed only for bidding on regular auctions.

How reliable is your system?

We have successfully placed bids on thousands of ebay auctions. We believe we have the fastest and most reliable sniper service available today. Our internal statistics shows, that we have 100% of successful bids 6 days per week, and between 99% and 100% of successful snipes approximately 1 day per week (which most often depends on eBay failures - nobody is ideal). All buyers should be aware that there are many factors that can cause for delays in bids. This includes hardware failures or network resettings. This is a problem with the Internet, as a whole, and cannot be fixed. Because our system works directly with eBay, we are only as good as eBay's network. If eBay's network is slow, we will also be slow. Increasing your delta time is the best way to combat this problem.

How do you keep your time settings the same as eBay's?

We monitor ebay's time throughout the day with our sofware. Our software is "self updating" so if we are off even by a second with ebay time our software will update itself and ensure a proper snipe.

What are the benefits of using esteal?

There are numerous advantages to using our system:

1. our system is extremely fast and reliable. Using your own computer, or depending on yourself to snipe an auction is 100% unreliable.
2. never worry about losing out on your bid. Place your bid 5 days before the auction closes to ensure you don't forget about the auction. Esteal will wait for your auction to close and bid within your delta time automatically 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
3. esteal makes sure you are the last bidder on the auction. This will ensure that you have the final chance to win

What is the best Delta Time?

Delta Time is the time to place your bid before the auction closes. Contrary to popular belief. A lower delta time is NOT better! A 10 second delta time is the best delta time to use! Yes, a 10 second delta time is better than other snipers using 5 second delta times. Why? When a bid is placed, you place your 'highest bid' at 10 seconds before the auction close. Once your bid is placed, you will actually beat all 5 second snipers because the 10 second was bid 'first' and a 'tie' in bid will go to you. 10 seconds is also short enough that any manual bidders will not have time to try and 'rebid'.

What are advantages of a LONGER Delta Time?

A little thought out fact about sniping is that it is not critical to be the last bidder on an auction. The most important thing is that you do not reveal your bid to any "manual" bidders. That way they are not influenced by your bid to place a higher bid at the last minute. In our testing it is difficult (but possible) to read a new bid at 10 seconds before expiration and still place a new higher bid manually. It is virtually impossible to read a new bid at 5 seconds and manually place another bid. Therefore there is no advantage to placing a snipe any closer than 5 seconds to close. Remember that if another snipe is placed that has a higher bid than yours, you will not win regardless of whose bid is placed first. The only circumstance where time is important between two competing snipes is when they are for the same price. In that instance the snipe placed EARLIER (longer number of seconds before close) will win- thus the advantage for having a longer Delta Time.

eStEaL bids automatically at the price you set, once and forever.

We are not archiving these records. "Completed Items" more than 6 months old, are automatically deleted each day, and can not be recovered. If it's necessary for you to keep your eStEaL records, do a backup of this section manually time by time, simply saving pages from your browser (clicking on "File" -> "Save as" browser menu).