I used the Firefox add-on to snipe an item 5 hours before end time and it never got sniped. I used 1 second bid time.

Not sure what's your question. Also, you did not provide the item number if you just wanted me to check.

If you just ask about time, then having anything lower than recommended 5-6 seconds is just a higher risk for your snipe to miss due to possible network lags or things like that.

If you have a different question, please clarify.

I meant I entered the snipe with the add-on and verified that it had been accepted but the auction ended without the snipe being made. I just logged in to see what happened and found the message: "Seller not accepting your bid". This is a seller who I bought from once and left very positive feedback. So I don't understand. The auction had a minimum bid and I exceeded it.

If you did not meet a restriction set by the seller, that means your bid will not be accepted by eBay when you bid manually.
If you can't bid manually, the sniper can't bid too.

Such restrictions are set per listing, not per seller. That means if you were able to place a bid on one listing, that does not mean that you can place your bid on other listings too.

What restrictions? There was no mention of any restrictions in the listing. There was a minimum bid that had to be met, that's all.

I have never had this happen in years of sniping.

Most restrictions are not listed in the description. They are set by the seller on per listing basis.

As I mentioned before, if not sure, please place a minimum manual bid directly on eBay.
If your manual bid did not work, your snipe will not work too.

Please feel free to check the following for more information on how seller can set those restrictions:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/buyer-requirements.html

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Last edited on Thu Jun 04, 2015 09:52 PM.

I don't meet any of those requirements. If I place a manual bid there is no point in then sniping. That defeats the purpose. That would only tip your hand to other bidders who wouldn't be aware of your intent until the last seconds when it is too late to do anything. That's how bidding wars start. Exactly what I'm trying to avoid.

I mentioned "minimum" manual bid just for testing purposes.
If you don't want to test, the sniper will, but it will be too late to ask seller to remove restrictions which you did not meet.

Well, I've already 'tested' the bid using the sniper. How can I ask the seller to remove restrictions whose requirements I have not met? This seller is flaky too. All his listings say 'absolutely no returns', which is a sign of a very bad seller. But he sometimes has good items that I want and I did receive an item from him that was much better than described. He is completely incommunicative. He never answered my question about the listed item, asking for more photos, even though in the listing he encouraged such requests. I contacted him about his not accepting the bid, reminding him that I was a past customer of his who gave him VERY positive feedback, even though he left none for me, and who paid immediately. He never replied. The only thing I can think of is, I was the only bidder, at the last second, and he didn't like the fact that I was sniping, and he had second thoughts about the price that he had decided on as the minimum bid. All very sleazy reasons to reject a bona fide snipe, uhhh I mean BID. ;)

You can either ask your seller to remove the restriction which you did not meet.
Or ask to add you to the exception list of allowed bidders.

Unfortunately, there is no other way to force the seller to do anything if he is not willing to.

Yeah, especially when he doesn't answer legitimate messages.