After both personal experience and being reminded by hc's post, I think eBay really, *really* needs to do something about this last-second bid-placement mullarkey.
I stumbled across a "how to win at eBay" website which extolled this idea of not placing any early bid on long-duration auctions, making the most of spectating the bidding activity in the final 5 minutes and then placing a bid in the final 10-15 seconds. (You know what you're prepared to pay at the outset, which is generally the "going rate" for the item).
At first, too many people caught on to this game and second, we now have apps to automate it.
If it were a real-world auction, the gavel would not fall until one of the last two bidders backs down.
The time limit thing is an entirely artificial feature which eBay have opted to use. By not letting items rise to their natural price, I even think they are losing out on commissions because of it.
A time limit as a way of stating "This auction takes place on (date) at (time)" is fine but it shouldn't be final.
It should be simple to code, too: make each last-second bid extend the initially advertised time limit by 30 seconds - the nearest equivalent of "going once, going twice" or whatever is fairest to those suffering slow page load times. The auto-bid apps have an upper limit set by their users and the genuinely highest bidder will win.
Even though I'll be unlikely to win any auctions again, I think this is fair.