Server outages and auctions (in Public Record)

From: auctioneer Sent: October 5 2006 11:05 PM EDT
Your auction for An Enforcer's Crossbow [4x48] (+18) has sold for $280,000.

This is weak...

N|O|V|I|C|E| (Lawful Awesome) 69.12.230.30 Central Bank (Mr. Chairman) $280000 -- I want my exbow! 2:49 AM EDT

still waiting...guess I'll double check that I sent a cm

I believe your out 280k there man.. It was highest bid, so why does it matter that he got it?

it happened during a server outage, there was no way anyone else could bid

This sucks, but you are able to put a min bid on your items for a reason. If 280k was too low you should have made the min higher.

the point is not how much it sold for, but that the auction expired before the sever came back up, I suppose this is a misguided request for a fix to the issues auctions and BA run into when the server goes down...

I was asleep when it happened, but from the fact that Central Bank still was capable of bidding on it, I assume that the server wasn't down, but the Internet connection was. A problem is, how do you measure that reliably, and what to do if CB is unreachable for only parts of the world. Would it be fair if something is done about a total outage, but nothing if CB's provider loses its link to Europe only?

Anyway, this is another reason why people should stop trying to snipe auctions...