The Screwing of the Good Samaritan - The Problems with eBay’s Giving Works and MissionFish   - 3,864 Views, 9 Comments

And they make it really easy to sell through Giving Works. You create an account at the Giving Works partner, Mission Fish. Then, when you create your auction listing with eBay, if you select the “give to charity” option, Mission Fish tracks that auction for you. You must use PayPal or a credit card as methods of payment.

I was very excited by the potential to do good things with this program, and created AuctionAid.org as a vehicle for attracting notice to the cause, and to the unique celebrity auctions I listed through eBay’s Giving Works. It also gave the Internet Patrol a way to provide our readers with a way to donate to charity without having to worry about online charity scams. I earmarked everything, 100% of the proceeds, for Hurricane Katrina aid, and raised over $5,000. It was grand.

And then the fine print kicked in.

First, my buyers’ payments for their auctions started showing up in my personal PayPal account, rather than going to the charity I’d elected. In using PayPal, an eBay company, I had thought, rather naturally I think, that my buyers’ payments through PayPal would go directly to the Red Cross (which makes lots of sense), or maybe Mission Fish. So I was stunned when the payments started showing up in my personal account. And I’m sure that my buyers never imagined that I would be the one receiving their donated payments.

Then I got email from Mission Fish telling me to transfer those payment to them. Not to the Red Cross. Not only were my buyers’ payments not going directly to the Red Cross, as I’m sure they’d assumed, but they weren’t even going from me to the Red Cross, but rather through a third party (and how long do you think Mission Fish holds those payments, hmm? The payover to the charity is far from expedient.)

And just giving the payments to the Red Cross directly instead of through Mission Fish wasn’t an option, because, Mission Fish told me, if I didn’t give them the money within two weeks of my receiving payment from the buyers, they were simply going to charge my credit card on file.

This also meant that my buyers could not deduct the contribution to the charity, as in reality they were not making the contribution to the charity.

But wait, it gets worse.

Their payments were now legally considered taxable income to me. And the payments I was now being required to make to the charity on behalf of my buyers - well, sure, those now became my charitable contribution (rather than my buyers’), but the general limit on how much in charitable deductions you are allowed to declare on your taxes is 20%. So the more successful you are at selling through Giving Works, the more you are screwing yourself, as each of those auctions count as income to you. In fact, it’s quite possible if you are very successful with your charity auctions to “donate” more to charity than you even earn. And you’ll be taxed on all but 20% of that “donated” amount.

Oh, and let’s not forget the amount which PayPal (remember, an eBay company) took for themselves, because for every $500.00 of those donations which came into my PayPal account from my buyers, PayPal skimmed a bit over $15.00 right off the top for merchant fees. Yes, you read that right. They took $15.00 out of a donation to charity. Now, I am a very satisfied PayPal merchant, and have no problem paying merchant fees for things which I actually - you know - sell, and for which I get - you know - paid. But in this case, with 100% of the winning bid going to charity, and %3 going to PayPal for merchant fees, well, you do the math.

And we aren’t even done. Because to add insult to injury, I received a bill from eBay for $135.00 for the fees for those charity listings. Because guess what. When they say they are going to donate the fees, they mean “we are going to take those fees from you, and give them to the charity”. Not, as I’d imagined, “we’re going to match, or waive those fees, because you are already donating 100% of your proceeds and you shouldn’t be out of pocket for your charitable efforts,” but “we’re just going to charge you the same amount, and give that money to the charity, which you could have done yourself for a lot less hassle and expense.”

So, again, the more successful you are with your eBay Giving Works charity auctions, the more you are screwing yourself.

In the end, I contacted all of my winning bidders, explained the situation, refunded their payments, cancelled the auctions, and had them make their donations directly to the Red Cross. That way they got the deduction, and when they emailed me their receipts for the donations, they still got what they had bid on.

But I’m still out those $135.00 in auction fees. And showing more than $5,000 in income which I’m going to have to expense and explain away.

And I will never, ever again conduct a charity auction through eBay.

And what is Mission Fish’s response to all of this? Who knows? Because despite being an organization which should presumably be accountable to you for handling thousands if not millions of dollars which you must trust them to pass on to your elected charity, they provide no way to directly contact them, either by email or telephone. In fact, none of the email addresses (role accounts) which by Internet standards are supposed to be enabled by default (support, info, help, postmaster) work. They offer no email address on their website. They offer no telephone number on their website. The only way to contact this organization, an organization with a fiduciary duty to you, your buyers, and the charities, is through a webform, or a fax number they put up for charities to use to fax their tax-free i.d. to Mission Fish.

I was lucky enough to reach a live person (I suspect perhaps the only real person at Mission Fish) because I thought to use the non-standard role account email address from which my confirmation of my newly-opened Mission Fish account was sent, and this person apparently was monitoring that address. And that person has actually been very nice - in fact they have been the only bright spot in a situation which otherwise surely qualifies as Dante’s 10th Circle.

And I was very careful to notify Mission Fish at that one serendipitously unearthed email address the moment that I cancelled each auction, individually for each and every auction, so that they would be sure to not try to charge my credit card when the donations didn’t show up in their coffers. Then I confirmed with the one live human that they had received the cancellation notices, as I’d not heard back from them, and that person confirmed that yes, each auction showed as cancelled.

Guess what showed up in my inbox this evening?:

Dear Anne P Mitchell:

Our system could not process your MasterCard credit card with the last four digits as XXXX for payment on your eBay Giving Works listings. It is probably nothing to worry about, but we need you to finish this one last step by completing your payment at http://www.missionfish.org/Sell/Signin.jsp?next_page=/cgt/seller/show.seller.payment.do.

There are several possible reasons why we could not process your payment(s):
- Your credit card might have reached its limit.
- The card on file with MissionFish might have expired.
- The card number in your My MissionFish account might have been mistyped.
- There could be a system problem with the bank.

…

As a safety precaution, you will not be able to list new charity items until this payment has been processed. Don’t wait! Come pay now at http://www.missionfish.org/Sell/Signin.jsp?next_page=/cgt/seller/show.seller.payment.do.

Here are the details of the listing(s) you were attempting to pay:

Listing 1: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4768410401
Final bid: $51.00
Quantity sold: 1
Donation percent: 100%
Donation due: $51.00
( Remember, there is a $10 minimum donation for every eBay Giving Works item sold )

Listing 2: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4768397908
Final bid: $46.00
Quantity sold: 1
Donation percent: 100%
Donation due: $46.00
( Remember, there is a $10 minimum donation for every eBay Giving Works item sold )

Listing 3: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4768401494
Final bid: $51.00
Quantity sold: 1
Donation percent: 100%
Donation due: $51.00
( Remember, there is a $10 minimum donation for every eBay Giving Works item sold )

Listing 4: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5999306638
Final bid: $4490.00
Quantity sold: 1
Donation percent: 100%
Donation due: $4490.00
( Remember, there is a $10 minimum donation for every eBay Giving Works item sold )

Listing 5: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5999307477
Final bid: $51.50
Quantity sold: 1
Donation percent: 100%
Donation due: $51.50
( Remember, there is a $10 minimum donation for every eBay Giving Works item sold )

Listing 6: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6561047321
Final bid: $28.00
Quantity sold: 1
Donation percent: 100%
Donation due: $28.00
( Remember, there is a $10 minimum donation for every eBay Giving Works item sold )

Listing 7: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6561138454
Final bid: $130.00
Quantity sold: 1
Donation percent: 100%
Donation due: $130.00
( Remember, there is a $10 minimum donation for every eBay Giving Works item sold )

Listing 8: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5808864163
Final bid: $521.00
Quantity sold: 1
Donation percent: 100%
Donation due: $521.00
( Remember, there is a $10 minimum donation for every eBay Giving Works item sold )

Listing 9: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6435054360
Final bid: $86.00
Quantity sold: 1
Donation percent: 100%
Donation due: $86.00
( Remember, there is a $10 minimum donation for every eBay Giving Works item sold )

Total: ¤5,454.50

If you have any questions about your payment, contact us right away at http://www.missionfish.org/Help/money.jsp

Your friends at MissionFish
http://www.missionfish.org/

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This e-mail is from a system address that can’t receive responses.

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I think that speaks for itself.