EAT PRAY LOVE - An Onscreen Travel Blog

Well, as much as I enjoy a Julie Roberts movie on occasion, dull is what I find myself saying about her most recent movie in which she plays the main character, Liz Gilbert in ' Eat Pray Love'  one of those 'find yourself' movies.  This movie which is suppose to be about a woman, Liz Gilbert, that has lost her passion for life; was more or less an onscreen travel blog - without action or excitement. 

Mini-Synopsis: Liz leaves everything behind, including her (newly) ex-husband, Stephen (Billy Crudup) and her even newer wanna-be-actor boyfriend, David (James Franco) to travel for an entire year.  First, she goes to Italy for a few months and rediscovers the joy of eating - I found the Italy experience to be one of the best, if not the only interesting of her experiences in the movie.  The second country she goes to is India.  In India she supposedly finds her inner peace through prayer and meditation - enough said.  The final destination is Bali, where she hopes to find balance - and the way she finds it, you guessed it, she falls in love with a wonderful man that makes her feel alive again.  Well, well, well, how else could there be a predictable neat and tidy happy ending without the protagonist falling in love.

Oh, one of the most memorable scenes (for me) in the movie, was when Liz and her buddy (during her India experience), Richard (Richard Jenkins) from Texas who referred to her as 'groceries' because of her appetite, was leaving for the airport.  As Liz and Richard were walking, the extras in the background were looking at Liz as if she were Julie Roberts, that was too freaking funny.  Of course in the next shot, the movie editor caught the flaw - too late. 

I'm glad I used my free-pass to see this chick-flick and I only did so because my copy of the book (which I needed to read for a book club meeting) hadn't come in yet.  What I did truly goes against my rules - never see a movie before reading the book it was adapted from; and I don't know how I could ever force myself to read the book now, considering what a snooze I found the movie to be - so I won't, because I just can't.

QuiBids or Quick Scam? You Be The Judge

I stumbled upon a site I didn’t know existed or simply had ignored, called QuiBids.com it proclaims itself to be:

“a fun and exciting, fast-paced auction website. On QuiBids, you can win all sorts of popular products at amazing low prices,”

That sounds great! exciting! and fun! doesn’t it?  Well that’s what I thought as well.  What I didn’t count on, but should have known was that…

“but you must purchase bids before you can win. “

And in order to do that you must,

“choose the Bid Pack you want and fill out your payment information on the right. “  Have no fear, because “QuiBids accepts Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express.”

In the help section it indicates that QuiBids offers 45, 75, 300, 600 and 800 bids.  Here are 3 bids packs that I found on the site:

Click to learn How does QuiBids work?

Above is a screen capture of a bid in progress for a Nikon D90 12.3 MP DSLR camera and lens.

Keep in mind, lilylee had this bid won with only 1 second left on the clock, but wouldn’t you know it, up pops a bid from willID3 which adds another $.01¢ to the price, which isn’t bad, but if lilylee had it won at less than $10.00 why is the bid still going at $22.33?  Because along with the additional $.01¢ for each bid, a timer is reset with another 0:20 seconds yes, that’s right every time someone else bids another 0:20 seconds is added to the timer.  Ummmm makes you wonder. 

Well, the bidding for the above item is closed and the winner is, Jennyleigh who placed 7 bids @ .60¢ = $4.20 with a final price of only $46.13 – that’s a heck of a bargain on a camera retailing at more than a thousand dollars.  I wish I could have made that deal, but I don’t think I’m ready to take that plunge yet – I need to do more research.  In the meantime, I’ve come across a few reviews that I found interesting, and you may too.

Here’s what a few reviewers had to say regarding QuiBids and how it works:

• “SCAM SCAM SCAM (mathematical screw-you to the buyers). AVOID!
  It costs $.60 to place a bid, so you think you are getting something cheap but end up spending $30-$40 on just bids and still end up being outbid. You can only bid in small increments (1 to 5 cents). The site is a scam for the bidders and a cash cow for the operators. …SCAM SCAM SCAM…How do you even know that you are being outbid by real people? It could be robot account owned by the website that outbids everyone last second in order to increase the number of bids and the website's total profit…So my advice for this site is WALK AWAY. read entire review”

• Penny Auctions my personal opinion is don’t get involved with them unless you have at least 75% of the retail price of the product you are seeking to purchase.  Another thing is before you get into a website like Quibids.com make sure you READ the terms and conditions and also understand what you are getting yourself into….read more

• QuiBids & Swoopo, two names I found doing the same thing. It’s genius. Each bid cost 60 cents but each bid only increments the price by a couple cents or maybe a nickle … so think about it. You buy a block of bids, say the minimum of 40, which cost you $24.00. You bid on an item and that bid cost you 60 cents but the item amount only increased a nickel. So if you are bidding on an item that is at $4.00 and it started at zero … there have already been 80 bids placed if each bid increments a nickel. At $4, they have already made $24. Say the item finally sells for $100. At 5 cent bid increments, it took 2000 bids to reach $100 and at 60 cents per bid they just made $1200 on a $100 sale. If the increments are only 2 cents per bid, they made $3000 on a $100 sale. If you won, you pay the winning amount plus all the amount you spent on the bids, plus shipping, so you just spent $124 + shipping.

I don’t know, after watching the bidding on the Nikon D90 – a camera I’d really like to have and to be able to get it for only $43.13,  that would be wonderful!  But the length of time it took for the experienced bidders to close this deal and to see it go to someone who entered the bidding long after the original bidder, makes me wonder if I would stand a chance on QuiBids.com. 

Final thought, at an auction if someone out bids you, you DON’T still have to pay your offered bid; that’s not the case with QuiBids, even if you’re out bid, you’re going to have to pay the money you’ve offered to bid.   The site may appear to offer unbelievably great deals, and it does – at a cost.   Just remember to READ all the terms and conditions, but also be prepared to pay sums of money for something you still may not even get.