listing as 10 day auctions without but now, still wants to charge me.

Pays to read the fine print.

this Promotion applies to the first 1,000 items listed (or scheduled to be listed) directly on eBay.com.au in in fixed price format,

Which makes sense, as it's a promotion for store owners and store listings are BIN, not auction.

the free listings are by invitation only apparently, and if you read the terms and conditions, doesn't start till midnight 30th JAn

IMO - these free listing days are good only if they are only 2 or 3 times a year.

From my experience - ebay gets swamped with stuff that is often overpriced with mass listers thinking that they only need to sell a handful of the overpriced items to cash in.

If these deals are say once a quarter for a 4 day period, they are good. Otherwise they can flood the site.

As they're only for store owners by invite and, the way I read it, you have to use SYI rather than a listing program, I doubt the site will get flooded. And they also seem to be few and far between, anyway. Certainly not quarterly.

If the items are overpriced, they won't sell.