I have just timed how long it takes from selecting a product I want to buy up 'til the moment when I reach the trade depot and the item is either available or it's already sold : 10,3 seconds on my Nexus 7 with excellent internet connection.
This does not include loading the global Tade HQ and searching for the item, neither does it include traveling back to my city and entering the HQ again.
I also ran another test where I wanted to buy bricks (any amount, any price). I quit after exactly ten minutes of constantly refreshing the Trade HQ and searching for bricks. During those ten minutes, I visited 5 cities (the only 5 selling bricks out of numerous HQ refreshs), but I was always too late.
This just demonstrates how useless the trade center is.
I hope EA addresses the elephant in the room and will announce a trade center update very soon!
Is the 30sec refresh also enforced server side? With all the 'sold already' I feel that a bot is querying your trade server more frequently than the ui only (?) 30 sec restriction.
Maybe that's just me being a frustrated sore loser, to use the above poster's euphemism 🙂
