1) If you bid on an auction the crowns are immediately deducted from you, I understand that. But if you end up losing the auction, when do those crowns get refunded back to you?
edit: nvm about #1, just realized you have to check your mail and hit the "accept" button on the outbid notice. 8P
2) Anybody knows what the "time left" translates to? (i.e. medium, long, very long) Anyway to find out when an auction will actually end? Or is this purposeful to prevent sniping?
If you go to the Auction page and click on the tab that lets you put your own items up for auction, you can see that under the drop-down menu for duration, it lists intervals like 1 hour, 4 hours, 12 hours, 1 day, etc (I don't remember the exact numbers). So you can use those as a rough estimate, though I suspect what you assume is true; the time left descriptors are probably to prevent bid sniping.
There's a fee to bid? I wasn't keeping track of my exact crown count, but how much is the fee?
1) If someone bids higher than you, you are immediately mailed the refund (minus the fee to bid of course)
2) Can't really answer that yet I'm afraid :o