Gamers Charity

File Front.com
When Ebay pulled most of Joe's auctions it brought in more press. This interview was conducted by Andrew Serros of FileFront.com

“Crazy” Joe Harden started his eBay auctions with the best of intentions, giving all the proceeds to the Red Cross for the tsunami disaster relief. Unfortunately, his plans went awry because of eBay’s safeguards.

Source

Virtual Gold Charity Drive Hits Snag Written by: Andrew Serros

“Crazy” Joe Harden started his eBay auctions with the best of intentions, giving all the proceeds to the Red Cross for the tsunami disaster relief. Unfortunately, his plans went awry because of eBay’s safeguards.

“One-third to half of the auctions had bids on them,” the Stratics forum administrator said. “I was sitting on roughly $1500.”

The auctions were for in-game gold in Ultima Online. What Harden did was set up places within Ultima Online where players could come and either buy “junk,” as he called it, or simply donate gold to be auctioned off on eBay. After setting up 43 auctions, things were running smoothly until eBay pulled every single one of them off of their site.

“What we don't allow is for a regular individual to hold auctions in the name of charities,” Chris Donlay, eBay spokesperson, said. “There's no guarantee then that the individual is going to send them [the proceeds].”

The letter Harden received from the auction site stated that the company “has created very specific guidelines for when charitable solicitations will be allowed on eBay.” On his website, he said that although it is an inconvenience, he agrees with the policies because “there are real scum of the earth out there that will lie and say their auctions are for Charity.”

Donlay said there are a few ways that sellers can hold auctions on eBay for charity donations. The first is through a tool called “Givingworks,” where the money never even reaches the seller’s hands; it goes directly to the charity. The second is by including a scan of the proper documentation, proving that the auction will be for the named charity. Since Harden’s auctions followed neither of those two guidelines, they were pulled from eBay.

“Unfortunately, there are some bad apples out there,” Donlay said. “We try to create policies that protect our users so that they can trade safely on our site.”

What this means for Harden is resubmitting all of the auctions over again, but this time deleting any references to the Red Cross, or his own site which mentions the fact that his proceeds are going to go to charitable causes. “I purposely left a few tidbits in the very vague "new" auctions that hopefully will perk some eyebrows and buyers can investigate why this Auction mentions my name, the Tsunami, and Stratics,” he said.

Despite this setback, Harden was surprised and delighted at the success of his efforts. He said when he thought of the idea on New Year’s Eve while finishing up some accounting work, he never thought it would get so big.

“If I received $500, I would be speechless—if $1,000 I would… how to put it eloquently... "Crap Bricks,” he said.