NO CATCH!
This auction site differs from eBay in three critical ways:
1. You don't necessarily have to pay the price you bid. Some auctions are "fixed price", i.e. you pay say £59.99 however high the bids go. Some are even "100% discount", where all you pay is the P&P, however high the bids go.
2. The auction doesn't end at a fixed time. Every time a bid is received, some more time is added to the countdown timer, to give other people a chance to make a counter-bid. Obviously this means that auctions can go on and on.
3. Bidding isn't free. Each bid costs 50p.
So let's look at that
Canon 400D twin-lens kit. The winning bid was
£28.42. However it was a "fixed price" auction so the winner actually paid
£78.80 incl P&P. I believe that's genuine. Note also that, since bids go up in 7p increments, there must have been 406 bids, which would have cost £203.00. So the auction site actually received
£281.80 for the camera kit - still a bit short of what they'd have liked, I'm sure, but not the absolute giveaway it seems like..
Here's another one though. This
Canon 450D plus kit lens was in a fixed price auction, so the winner paid
£48.80 incl P&P. But the final "bid" was
£381.15, so there were 5,445 bids costing a total of £2,722.50. Hence the auction site actually received
£2,771.30 for the camera kit!!!!! Nice work if you can get it!
GENIUS IDEA!!