free now, pay later?

Speaking of auction sites, I recently ran across a site via PayPerPost known as bid4prizes. Although booking itself as an auction type site, the approach to this one is a bit different. They claim that the lowest unique bidder wins. However, upon visiting the URL that they provided, I am redirected to a landing page that states that you *might* win an iPhone by signing up for a $9.99 monthly subscription. To what, I am not sure, as it doesn't really say. As far as I can tell, I have no idea what this has to do with online auctions.

Assuming that the site was actually directed to an auction site (as it was supposed to), I'm sure I'd be willing to throw a few dollars at an iPhone, but this landing page looks more like one of those product review services, where your subscription eventually far outweighs whatever money you might have saved on the "free" prize (and by that time, the item is probably out-of-date technology and yesterday's fad).

Personally, this looks likes one of those spammy opportunities that affiliate sites like Azoogle offer website owners to try and make money off of generating leads. In other words, by submitting the user's phone number on the landing page, the website owner (or affiliate) would earn a few bucks. Reading the fine print, it says that your subscription gets you 20 bids a month, so I guess if those bids win at auction (if you can find the auction items), you might be getting a deal.

In the end, I'm left wondering who would try this, given the lack of information, "spammy" appearance of the site, and the fact that the term "landingpages" is plainly displayed as part of the URL...