Jane,
If it's any consolation, here's some things that we've encountered...while trying to snipe!

1. About 15 minutes before the end of an auction, ebay went down and we couldn't access the item to bid!! It's happened a couple of times, the WORST was a pair of cobalt blue glass swizzle sticks from the Boulder Club! We never saw any before that, and haven't seen any since . And they went cheap!

2. Messed up timing, placed the bid and got the ol' "Cannot proceed, auction has ended" message.

3. Messed up the bid amount...but had the timing perfect, so there was no time to place another bid.

4. (Most frequent) We simply forget that something we want is going off....and we forget to bid! OOOOOPS!! But, you can't have everything....

5. We get out-sniped!

Bottom line is, it's an auction. The high bid gets it. (And yes, we're aware there's sniping services....and no, we have no interest in using one.)