Captain Kirk

Captain Kirk

Friday, May 15, 2009

Shatner auction for premiere tix pulled by eBay

Posted by Paul, the admin of the Shatner BBS:
The auction got pulled by eBay - if you can believe that.
This is what they said:

"Unfortunately, we had to remove your listing because the following information violates our policy:

In description:100 of the Proceeds from this auction will benefit Mr. Shatner's Hollywood Charity Horseshow"

If it didn't have that line it would be fine so instead of having the over $1000 bid that was currently on the item - eBay decided to end it.

In looking at the eBay Policy they have this outside charitable company called Mission Fish which is "in charge" of handling the charitable donation auctions. They require non-profits to register in their database to be able to benefit from an eBay auction.

Ah but there's a catch. In the fine print it says:

"Because we’re a nonprofit, we keep a small part of each donation processed to offset bank fees and other expenses. The deduction for Community Seller donations is based on the size of the gift: our percentage gets smaller as the donation gets bigger. We never take more than 20% of any donation, and our average deduction is roughly 10%. "

I hate when people make it so damn hard to do something good.

1 comment:

April Brown said...

Ebay is there for a profit and of course they will have to get something out of the sell even if its for charity fundraising.

"I hate when people make it so damn hard to do something good." - what can I say?