My time suddenly drops!!! and then I lose on time!!

Has anyone experienced losing a winning game because suddenly their time is almost up when all your moves are fast? 

I was a few moves from checkmate and then I lost on time, despite having more time than the other player who took longer to move.

lag

I see that lag is classified as cheating, yet I dont cheat and see no value in doing so. No one is paying me to play. I play for fun, and I am not receiving any rewards. 

Is there a way to not lose my time when playing? I am using broadband internet via my cell carrier.

Lag meaning connection speed differences. Even with a strong internet relay you may experience these crazy time skips. It's especially noticeable as the clock reaches the end, you could have 20 seconds left and your opponent 5, then yours falls to 15 in like a second, his goes from 1 to 2, .05 to .09, crazy movements like that. The site may try to compensate for the sake of fairness, but there's no actual way. It would be interesting to watch a timed chess game on video (the less time the better) and see how elapsed time between moves compares to that registered by each clock.

I tried using a stop watch to time the clock. the time on this site definitely jumps. Thanks for making me aware. 

There is no cheat! You just need to learn how technology (interent works). The opponent's timer that you  see on your screen is not the actual timer of your opponent in the server. The difference depends on server refresh rate and your lag of internet!! 

For example, if server referesh rate is every 10 secs, you will see your opponent timer dropping from 20 secs to 10 secs in your screen. But there is 0 sec loss in opponent time in the actual server. So in next refresh, you may see from 10 secs remaining to 20 secs back. 

In other words, the clocks can be wildly inaccurate (on every chess site i've visited). You're not playing chess per se, but almost wheel of fortune. Reminiscent of dice/randomness in backgammon. Technology may compensate for this eventually, but right now yes it's a pain. Occasionally you will win because of a tilted clock, but never have a "pure game".

Wow.  This whole time I was thinking that everything was accurate.  

Thanks all for the explanations. 

it happened to me!i lost 9 straight on time even though i moved fast!

that used to happen to me. then i just created a new account and deleted the old one. now it worked

I just calculated the time of each moves in my last 3 mins blitz game.

I only got a sum of 154.5 sec (instead of 180)

this is 25 sec less. I lost a lot of games because of time issue.