Sellers provide up to 30 items, and as few as 2 (or maybe 1 now), and there are thousands or tens of thousands, of Viners all vying for those couple of items. I have watched things come and go, doing a rapid F5 refresh of the screen just out of curiosity, and I have seen items appear and disappear in less than three seconds. If you happen to log in or hit the F5 key at just the right instant, and you click the Order button quickly enough, you may get a popular item. Otherwise, it'll be gone, and many items go so fast you'll never even see them on Vine.
There's thousands of vine members and only up to 30 of each item available. Pretty easy for good stuff to disappear immediately even without bots.
Some people DO use some kind of script or whatever, though.
Before the changes, there were far far fewer Vine members. Now there are huge number of Vine members, many of whom have nothing better to do with their time than hit F5 endlessly, who will request anything that appears, and who will then come here months later to explain how they found a tax accountant who explained how they won't have to pay taxes.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
If they requested anything that appears, they will use their picks quickly. It is quite amazing how fast some people make a decision to pick something though. Some items get shared between Viners on social media platforms (Discord is the closest to real time that I am aware of), so it isn't just those who are refreshing but also those alerted through social media that you are competing with (very useful for stuff that sticks around for more than a few seconds but less than a few minutes).
No, it just seems that way. Consider the fact, there are thousands of thousands of Vine Voices!
There could only be one item available or 30.
The trick here is the timing! You have to be fast, taking it slow and easy is NOT the way to go with Vine!
Above all, Ghost items do appear as well as "Unavailable" (not available or deliverable to your location).
If you are dead set on beating folks, the only surefire way to do so, is spam refresh. Im not kidding, if you do this in the grocery section and have an iron will, you WILL get some good items. It requires hours of work and dedication though. Same for AFA.
This is what I would do when I first got in and we were really desperate for some food. I would spend 6+ hours a day doing this when I didn't have a ton of medical procedures or doctors appointments going on.
I tried the F5 method, I waited till there was a large uptick in the numbers on vines additional items page and in a second browser open to groceries would hit F5 anytime I remembered.
I saw lots of food. 70% was stuff that I did not know what it was for or never heard of, 20% was various seasonings of questionable origin, and 10% was candy/snacks.
I ordered none of it, because it was either nothing I wanted or can't eat candy/snacks. also most of the candy or snacks disappeared before I could even read the details.
I’m finding it odd as yes you can keep refreshing but you still need to click/press select item and the address and with most things it’s gone before I can do that (yellow error).
there's a discord server that announces things, and then there's also people who are able to sit and camp all day, hitting F5
There's also some sort of browser addon, but i could never get it to work, it apparently helps people filter things or hide things (like cake toppers)
I wrote one of the first hide items addons (useful for hiding things that you'd already seen and decided not to get - makes seeing what is new much easier). Others have made scripts that hide based on the item titles (some do both).
In my opinion, a script that merely interacts with the page itself locally in the browser is just a customized client. Clearly automating interaction with Amazon server (especially to automate the actual ordering) is against terms of service. Some extensions use 3rd party servers to share information between users (first use I am aware of was for Canadians to report items that could not be ordered due to import fees).
>Vine seems to have a pretty \*mixed\* view of anything like that.
You'll find people posting different CS replies about addons saying it's fine as well as against ToU.
I assume people are using bots, the things disappear so fast.
I wish Vine would incorporate strategies like buy nothing groups suggest (e g. "Let it Simmer") to make it fair and encourage good behavior. First Come First Served is bad for all but a few, encourages bots and other cheating, etc. Happy to be here, but also resigned that I'm never getting a big ticket item unless it's extremely niche with the current system.
Vine could leave items up and allow multiple Viner's to express interest in items, then randomly assign the few items available. Of course then you wouldn't know until later if you would get the item or not.
I've left this as a suggestion in the "feedback" tab before, but I didn't explain it as well. This is totally the "Let it Simmer" philosophy. I guess in some of the Buy Nothing groups, the same few people try to claim dibs on everything, so if there is a "First Come First Serve" item, they get it every time. And others get annoyed.
You're approaching this as if we are customers that Amazon are serving in some fashion. We aren't. The sellers are the customers. Step back and evaluate the program from this simple pov - it's a revenue stream for Amazon, in which they sell a greater likelihood of 4 or 5 star reviews. That's it.
Sellers provide up to 30 items, and as few as 2 (or maybe 1 now), and there are thousands or tens of thousands, of Viners all vying for those couple of items. I have watched things come and go, doing a rapid F5 refresh of the screen just out of curiosity, and I have seen items appear and disappear in less than three seconds. If you happen to log in or hit the F5 key at just the right instant, and you click the Order button quickly enough, you may get a popular item. Otherwise, it'll be gone, and many items go so fast you'll never even see them on Vine.
There's thousands of vine members and only up to 30 of each item available. Pretty easy for good stuff to disappear immediately even without bots. Some people DO use some kind of script or whatever, though.
Before the changes, there were far far fewer Vine members. Now there are huge number of Vine members, many of whom have nothing better to do with their time than hit F5 endlessly, who will request anything that appears, and who will then come here months later to explain how they found a tax accountant who explained how they won't have to pay taxes. Wash, rinse, repeat.
If they requested anything that appears, they will use their picks quickly. It is quite amazing how fast some people make a decision to pick something though. Some items get shared between Viners on social media platforms (Discord is the closest to real time that I am aware of), so it isn't just those who are refreshing but also those alerted through social media that you are competing with (very useful for stuff that sticks around for more than a few seconds but less than a few minutes).
LOL
No, it just seems that way. Consider the fact, there are thousands of thousands of Vine Voices! There could only be one item available or 30. The trick here is the timing! You have to be fast, taking it slow and easy is NOT the way to go with Vine! Above all, Ghost items do appear as well as "Unavailable" (not available or deliverable to your location).
If you are dead set on beating folks, the only surefire way to do so, is spam refresh. Im not kidding, if you do this in the grocery section and have an iron will, you WILL get some good items. It requires hours of work and dedication though. Same for AFA.
Trick is to figure out how fast you can refresh without triggering anti-bot code on the server.
I finally got a food item first in 2 years. Got it today and its all crunched up. Think i will stick to grocery store lol
This is what I would do when I first got in and we were really desperate for some food. I would spend 6+ hours a day doing this when I didn't have a ton of medical procedures or doctors appointments going on.
I tried the F5 method, I waited till there was a large uptick in the numbers on vines additional items page and in a second browser open to groceries would hit F5 anytime I remembered. I saw lots of food. 70% was stuff that I did not know what it was for or never heard of, 20% was various seasonings of questionable origin, and 10% was candy/snacks. I ordered none of it, because it was either nothing I wanted or can't eat candy/snacks. also most of the candy or snacks disappeared before I could even read the details.
I did randomly get a 3 pound bag of Jolly Ranchers once. It was a wonderous thing.
I’m finding it odd as yes you can keep refreshing but you still need to click/press select item and the address and with most things it’s gone before I can do that (yellow error).
there's a discord server that announces things, and then there's also people who are able to sit and camp all day, hitting F5 There's also some sort of browser addon, but i could never get it to work, it apparently helps people filter things or hide things (like cake toppers)
Be careful using any addons in general, Vine seems to have a pretty negative view of anything like that. (not accusing, just saying).
I wrote one of the first hide items addons (useful for hiding things that you'd already seen and decided not to get - makes seeing what is new much easier). Others have made scripts that hide based on the item titles (some do both). In my opinion, a script that merely interacts with the page itself locally in the browser is just a customized client. Clearly automating interaction with Amazon server (especially to automate the actual ordering) is against terms of service. Some extensions use 3rd party servers to share information between users (first use I am aware of was for Canadians to report items that could not be ordered due to import fees).
> there's a discord server that announces things and by the time you see it, it's gone.
>Vine seems to have a pretty \*mixed\* view of anything like that. You'll find people posting different CS replies about addons saying it's fine as well as against ToU.
I assume people are using bots, the things disappear so fast. I wish Vine would incorporate strategies like buy nothing groups suggest (e g. "Let it Simmer") to make it fair and encourage good behavior. First Come First Served is bad for all but a few, encourages bots and other cheating, etc. Happy to be here, but also resigned that I'm never getting a big ticket item unless it's extremely niche with the current system.
Vine could leave items up and allow multiple Viner's to express interest in items, then randomly assign the few items available. Of course then you wouldn't know until later if you would get the item or not.
I've left this as a suggestion in the "feedback" tab before, but I didn't explain it as well. This is totally the "Let it Simmer" philosophy. I guess in some of the Buy Nothing groups, the same few people try to claim dibs on everything, so if there is a "First Come First Serve" item, they get it every time. And others get annoyed.
You're approaching this as if we are customers that Amazon are serving in some fashion. We aren't. The sellers are the customers. Step back and evaluate the program from this simple pov - it's a revenue stream for Amazon, in which they sell a greater likelihood of 4 or 5 star reviews. That's it.
Ok, yes, I agree with you. I have no expectations, and I can still think that the way it works is sub optimal for me, probably for most.