Petey,

For reasons I’d rather not explain here and now, when you came to live with us in 2001, you were probably at the lowest spiritual point of your life. You were afraid of everything; you had no reason to trust anyone. Your first few days here, you were even afraid to sleep, and you would not eat. Thus began your 10+ year journey with us. We had no idea how important you would become to all of us, including the many dogs that would pass through our doors over those years.

Petey, you became the center of our lives. Everything we did in this house was carefully considered as to how it would affect you, and would it be beneficial to your mental-emotional healing process. We did this to protect you, make you feel safe, so you could feel like a normal dog again someday. I’m sure at first we did this out of some sense of obligation because that is what we do, we are a dog rescue family… but I assure you Petey… it did not take long for us to *choose* do all this for you out of a true sense of sincere love for you. We saw your potential, and dedicated our home, our time, and our lives to bring out the best in you.

We, and your sister (Naomi), never gave up on you… and by the grace of God, you overcame your fears. Your love began to flow, and it filled our lives with meaning. For all that we did for you; you gave back so much more.

When we restored your trust, you gave us hope.
When we restored your faith, you gave us your love.
When we restored your confidence, you brought us joy.

After a while, I made you and your sister *seniors* and only the two of you could come in my room, get special treats and attention. I never realized how close we would become. I taught you simple tricks so you could do something fun and special, just so I could give you praise and treats. I would give all the dogs treats when you did these tricks, and they knew you were the reason they got those treats. It was you… your energy, and your enthusiasm for life that brought so much happiness to this house. You would *wooo wooo* sing for me when I came home, and you sang your heart out everyday when mom would wake up (all the dogs would join in after you started it). You felt so safe and secure… we would watch you sleep, and just feel good.

It has been 3 days since you left us, and this house has never been so quiet. Your sister (Naomi) is sad and sleeps on your red pad often. The rest of *your* pack (Radar, Niki, Spirit) are all subdued. Nobody knows what to do around here, especially us humans. We miss your energy, your enthusiasm, and your love. This house feels empty, and our hearts ache.

You truly were the heart of this household. You brought so much life to this place. You were the most wonderful friend to me. You may have entered our lives feeling like you didn’t matter, but you became the most meaningful part of daily life here for all of us. We all loved you very much. Thank you for all the love you shared with us. You touched our lives in the deepest way. We miss you.

I love you Petey

Penny auction websites attract people to them by promising expensive, big ticket items at unbelievably low prices – for example, Quibids shows a new iPad, which retails at $499 for the most basic model, selling for $22.54. But this winning bid of $22.54 is misleading.  This isn’t the truth of how much it costs to win that iPad.

The way penny auctions work is that you are only able to bid a single penny at any time during the auction. However, at Quibids.com, you must purchase each 1 cent bid for 60 cents. So an iPad that retails for $499 but was won for the grand total of 2,254 one cent bids (or $22.54) which actually cost 60 cents each means that the iPad just sold for $1352.40.

Though the person who wins the item usually has paid less than retail for what they have received, citing $22.54 as the winning bid is extremely misleading.

So is Quibids a Scam?

All penny auctions, regardless of reputation, are a bad idea and should be avoided.

First of all, Quibids.com and other penny auction sites require people to pay for the option to bid, but don’t allow them to bid in increments of their choosing. This means that Quibids is forcing the price up and profiting all the while.

On eBay, the seller and buyer have the auction monitored by the website, which is the trusted third party. On Quibids.com, there is no trusted third party. Quibids is the seller and the auctioneer. It works in their favor – and their favor only – to drive the price up in these small 1 or 2 cent increments.

Quibids tries to redeem themselves by offering you the “By It Now” option, which is when you can take the total amount of your failed bids and apply that toward the retail price of the item you were bidding on. Say you bid $80 total on an iPod Nano that cost $150.  For the remaining $70, Quibids will sell you a Nano. Well, $70 plus tax, fees, and shipping and handling.

And if you’re not willing to part with that extra $70 (there was a reason after all that you didn’t want to pay full retail price for that item), then you’re simply out your $80 with nothing to show for it.

It’s much better to stick to legitimate auction sites like eBay, instead of spending lots of frustrating time and effort on penny auction websites like Quibids, Beezid, SwipeBid, BidsTick, DealFun, StealBids, BidRivals, Jeaper, ZBiddy, BidRodeo, BidCactus, Swoopo, MadBid.

The idea is that a person wants to do something (make a movie, produce a music cd, publish a book… whatever. You come up with a project plan to attract donations, funding, pledges. You provide rewards to contributors based on how much they pledge. Lets say you want to create a line of products (calendars, t-shirts, bumper stickers) for a specific theme (nature, politics…). What you do is offer rewards to people who contribute to your project. Maybe they give $10, and you reward with a bumper sticker, $25 and they get the t-shirt… and so on.

Nice idea right? Sure, if they actually had an environment that provided an audience of potential donors…. but they don’t. Absolutely no where on their website do they say “bring your own donors”, but that is exactly what they will tell you to do. They want you to have a healthy size list of contacts. This includes social networking sites like facebook, friendster, myspace, message forums… you get the idea. Then…. they want you to encourage dozens or even hundreds of your contacts to join kickstarter to view, and (you guessed it) fund your project.

What do they provide you ask? They will accept your pledges (through Amazon’s payment system), but they will not charge anyone until you reach your goal amount. If you don’t reach your goal, no one gets charged. If you DO reach your goal (or exceed it), everyone’s pledge is processed on Amazon, and THEN…

Kickstarter takes 5% of all donations as a fee on successful projects! Amazon, which processes Kickstarter donations, also charges up to five percent.

If you raise $5000, Kickstarter gets $250…   $10,000, they get $500…     That doesn’t even count what Amazon will charge for processing the payment.

My question is, what did they do to deserve that fee? Nothing! You join the site, you plan and organize your own project, you create a reward system for donors, you bring your own donors, and if you beg enough of your own contacts for money to reach your goal, kickstarter will take 5% of it plus what you lose in processing fees to Amazon.

So… I bet you are wondering… “couldn’t I just have my contacts, friends, and family write me checks, or use a free basic paypal account (without fees) to collect money for my wonderful project?” Yes you could! You could even promise the same rewards & gifts to people.

So what does kickstarter actually provide? They offer a website for you to show off your idea to everyone you already know, with video or pictures. You could accomplish the exact same thing with a blog, and a basic paypal account. If some of your contacts are local to you, they could just hand you checks.

Are the 5-10% in fees worth it? Only if you are really lazy, which doesn’t make sense if you have a great idea, plan, or project in mind. That in itself takes a lot of effort, so do the work and collect the money yourself.

So I say again, what do they really offer? Nothing!

You do all the work, you bring all the people, they collect all the money and they keep some of it. That is what Kickstarter is all about.

What the internet needs is a site similar to this, but marketed better to truly attract random and anonymous donors to well thought out projects that offer decent rewards to contributors. This would work for anyone, including non-profits. All that would be needed is basic verification of projects seeking larger donation goals. A little fraud prevention, and some simple follow up (to make sure people get their rewards), and THEN I could see charging a small fee for the service.

So… before you get excited about kickstarter, or any site like it… if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Be optimistic, but be careful too. Trust but verify!