Groovy G.

GAIA content has gotten quite slim in 2023, with most of the new series revolving around yoga and channeling. Nothing against either of these things but they are now forming the bulk of the new material on the network and in general, I do not think that new material would be of greatest interest to the majority of the Membership.

Shows in which I do have great interest in terms of the both the guests and topics are Open Minds (Regina Meredith) and Beyond Belief (George Noory), Having said that, each needs a new host. While both Regina and George have interesting content and guests, each of them never stops talking long enough for their guest(s) to really speak. Each episode then becomes a monologue of Regina interviewing herself, or George himself.

A season 5 of Ancient Civilizations would be something that might make me keep my GAIA Membership longer. In addition, a new season of any of the following, all of which are great shows with excellent hosts, would probably make me renew:
- CodeX - Robert Grant
- Inner Evolution - Bruce Lipton
- anything with Greg Braden
- anything with Linda Moulton Howe
- anything new with Freddy Silva
- some new material from David Icke

I gave them 1 star begrudgingly. Netflix Canada - which is like $25 a month now - is beyond bad. Most of the shows we get here are not in English - nor are they in French - they are dubbed versions of Indian, Asian, Turkish etc. The licensing issues are not the users concern - it is up to Netlix to work this out to offer a viable and desirable product to its subscribers. If they cannot offer that then they have nothing to sell. I am about ready to unsubscribe from Netflix and spend the money elsewhere on Prime, Amazon or whatever that will give me English-speaking content.

Have been ordering the Piping Rock Water Pills since an auto accident a few years back that left me with inflammation in my legs. This product is much more gentle and works as effectively as furosemide prescribed by the doctor and at a fraction of that cost.

The Roku TV is my best purchase of 2021. It's an all-in-one solution for your streaming and media needs. The only thing that prevents me giving the ROKU folks 5 stars is that currently there are not a lot of channels available to purchase in Canada.

I've been a Member at Worldwinner for about 4 years so I am not a newbie. The games seem unfair in various ways: in Scrabble Cubes, for example, there is NO way to know in advance against whom you are or will be playing - the computer picks and how do you know it doesn't pick someone with a higher score just to ensure you lose? There is NO! Way to verify in Trivial Pursuits that players against whom you are competing get the same questions you do. In Scrabble Cubes, there is NO! Way to be sure competitors get the same letter cubes as you do and thus, the same opportunities for scoring exist for both. Additionally, in Scrabble Cubes, I regularly see about five (5) usernames who each score in excess of 1,000 points (and often near 1,100 points) on one four-minute cube. This would be equivalent to playing a perfect game and getting a perfect score repeatedly which seems highly unlikely in the scheme of probabilities - some errors would be human, no? Not all cubes would be 1,100 cubes, no? The same people cannot get perfect cubes and play perfect games so often, it defies logic.

Why can't World Winner just be fair and transparent for the money they charge players. Suggestions would be to show players against whom they are or will be playing BEFORE the games starts. Ensure questions in Trivial Pursuits and cubes in Scrabble Cubes are the same for ALL players involved in the match to ensure equal opportunity for scoring. Weed out the obviously rigged or unreal players like "kernel_hotlook" and "wranderson" who are either bots, or cheaters, as they incredibly score 1,000+ at least twice a week and more usually 3-4 times per week for the wins.

UPDATE February 2023: So today they NEW AND IMPROVED the Scrabble Cubes interface. Now, you cannot even click the letters without it choosing the wrong one 12x and eating up your clock time. I have reported it several times to support - the Community Forum is full of much the same discussion about how the new interface does not work well. Nothing is done.

The problem with Bonanza for a seller

For a seller on Bonanza, there are two critical issues, in our view, that make it an overall poor choice of online marketplace.

The first issue, for a variety of sub-reasons into which we delve deeper further down, we will herein succinctly state as just overall POOR ROI (cost against views and sales | conversions). On top of this, the Company has dreadful problem resolution (ironically, the so-called resolution is a problem in itself!) and a totalitarian way of attempting problem resolution.

Our story went that, as an online seller of some success for more than 3 years within other marketplaces, we wanted to create an additional online presence for our goods. Thus, we looked at and spent considerable time and money, setting up a Bonanza booth.

The set up took several months to complete (an upload of our partial inventory of about 2,000 items). The importer tool, which is supposed to reduce the time needed to set up a booth, did NOT work well and did NOT import images. On top of this, the costs associated with operating a booth within Bonanza can be and were for us extremely high. In fact, the highest we have paid in our three years of online selling, in some cases coming in at a whopping 30% (these are just the commissions paid and do NOT include other fees that may apply depending on payment method of buyer, as one example of an additional cost). As well, the overall traffic to Bonanza.com is much less (often to the point of non-existent) compared to other online marketplaces where we pay much less in overall fees.

The Turbolister packages, an additional expense to a Bonanza seller, which claim to provide more booth views (so presumably, more Google etc online advertising of your items), will set you back about $50 a month based on using 2 packages a month at about $25 a package (USD). Then there are the Memberships, which are optional, and they also cost extra (Silver at $20 USD a month, Gold at $40 USD a month). Again, Bonanza claims they will provide enhanced traffic to your booth. We didn't really see that and when searching for our shop's listed items using Google Search, after paying for all this Bonanza advertising, our listings were never found. In fact, NO! Mention of Bonanza-listed items were ever found by us on Google, even when checking other shop's listings that appeared to have been listed for some time (more than long enough for Google to have indexed them). We tried various combinations of relevant keywords and nada was found!

Our conclusion here? The user-programmable commissions that claim to offer enhanced | increased online exposure of booth items do not seem to be registering with the world's #1 search Engine, Google, making us wonder what we (or those other Bonanza sellers) were and are paying for! While Sellers may choose lower rates of commission (3.5% to 30% are the ranges), it should be noted that any commission setting below 9% commission paid on a sale comes with ZERO other advertising (not that we seemed to be getting any anyway!) and it is stated that your items are then restricted to Bonanza.com organic traffic only. In this scenario, a would-be purchaser would have to directly log onto the Bonanza site, type in a search for an item you have in your booth, find your item and purchase it. This scenario would, in our view, be rather rare. Bonanza is not a recognized marketplace (unlike Etsy, for example, which has a very high presence within the minds of vintage and antique shoppers) and presumably again, they would rely heavily on search-engine ads to drive traffic (again, we didn't find any relevant ads for our items, or others, using Google... but that would be the theory for a little-known brand).

Giving Bonanza a try, our unfortunate results speak for themselves. In about 4 MONTHS of operation, hundreds in fees and two months of set up, our Bonanza booth garnered a total of 4 sales. This is in direct comparison to 150-200 sales PER MONTH! (so, 600-800 sales in 4 months) within other, overall far less costly, online marketplaces where when we pay for advertising, we can actually see our items come up on the first page of search engines like Google.

As a smaller service provider, Bonanza Customer Service is not as readily available and this can be an issue. Folks will normally find they will wait at least 24H (often longer) for a response to any queries sent to staff. Staff appear to be more volunteers than paid employees and often, the information they provide is incorrect after also being slow to arrive.

On the positive side, the Bonanza booth set-up interface is very easy to use (beware some things like the non-working importer and unintended duplications, etc) and when staff does contact you, in our experience, they have been pleasant and eager to help, just slow at offering help with information and instructions that are sometimes incorrect.

A specific beef with the Administration for us were the innumerable times Bonanza attempted to bill a few days ahead of schedule to a card. The system seems to NEVER retain debit VISA or MC card #s, for whatever reason and thus, each month, the entire booth would get put on hold for non-payment. Once the issue is sorted - by re-entering the card # manually each month - a seller must also then manually take the shop off of the imposed vacation status and update all items for sale. If there were any advertising campaigns (again, NOT that we could find our ads anywhere to begin with, even when paying), the Seller would have to re-start the advertising process with Google or another search engine re-spidering the booth. Not great for a site which is already costing you heavily and administrative issues that were not really the Seller's fault.

The site just doesn't work, doesn't live up to claims and is costly. There are better options by far, at less cost, than a Bonanza booth.

Our opinion.

Overall, Bonanza was and is seen by us as representing poor value and bad overall service to its Sellers. Our rating of 1 star reflects these sentiments and we have now closed our Bonanza booth and chalked the wasted time and money up to experience.