<p>Moderators can't do anything about what happened to the bounty, sorry. In fact there are very few circumstances in which we can do anything at all with bounties.</p>
<p>I definitely agree that the &quot;will be auto-awarded&quot; message is somewhat misleading about what the situation is, because it seems to suggest either that there's nothing <em>to</em> do and it will definitely award the bounty; or possibly even that somehow it is <em>already too late</em> for you to award the bounty yourself. What it actually means is something nearer to &quot;Award your bounty in the next 24 hours; after the 24 hour period the bounty auto-award script will run&quot;.</p>
<p>However, we also can't really do anything about the message, which is system-wide (we can do the same thing you can do - post a question on meta.SE about it; that <em>might</em> get some traction).</p>
<p>The way it operates is discussed here:</p>
<p><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16065/how-does-the-bounty-system-work">How does the bounty system work?</a></p>
<p>(About half-way down the page see the answer to the question &quot;What is automatic awarding?&quot;)</p>
<p>[That's part of the community FAQ which is <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7931/faq-for-stack-exchange-sites">here</a>.]</p>
<p>There are a few meta posts that relate to bounty messages, some with what look like good suggestions, such as these (although possibly some of them may be a little outdated by subsequent changes, there are some good ideas to be found):</p>
<p><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/111926/explain-auto-award-after-you-have-x-hours-to-award-the-bounty">Explain auto-award after “you have X hours to award the bounty”</a></p>
<p><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78975/tentatively-award-bounty-better-control-of-auto-award">Tentatively award bounty : better control of auto-award</a></p>
