Steve, with respect to your first question I guess that's the only way you can handle the situation other than just waiting for the item to be relisted or another one to come along. Hope you don't mind being called a "bottom feeder" or similar epithet when you make inquiry of the seller.
You also asked, "Is there a way I can watch auctions within AS?"
I set the auctions up as snipes on AS with the minimum bid amount set as my snipe bid. That way it's easy to track the auctions just by refreshing the auction information from time to time.
