Rules were clear. Most people followed it. Timer on site was correct, blockchain time was correct, gmt time was correct. I even gave a bit of leway.
Not sure you shouldn't give refunds the first time. I really like it that on day 2 the early deposits will go into day 1, but that wasn't an option on the first day. However on my computer there is always a 16 second difference between your timer and GMT time. I don't think that count down timer works as well as you think it does. On the other hand getting GMT exact time is very easy. I think it would be a problem is someone sent in a deposit exactly at 00:00:00 and it didn't count though, so I'm not sure about your few seconds of waiting. If you set a time, make it work.
However, I don't believe the sob stories for one second and I can jack my wallet time to say what ever I want it to say. It isn't that hard to change the code and recompile a wallet. There are probably much easier ways to do that too.