On eBay Spam & Charity Auctions

eBay has a distressing number of high-ticket charity auctions lately that are, if not absolutely fraudulent, expensively seedy and spectacularly lame.

Some of the tactics I've been seeing include the $500,000 "mystery box", the Ultimate VIP Package "net proceeds benefit charity" approach, the random art auction (and I have to apologize for this if this is a serious artist, but because of the high-repetition spam auctions, you can't tell), the asinine "Donald Trump's Ferrari (this is an auction for a photograph of the real thing and if you buy it i will buy the real thing)" approach. . . and all of these are in the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars as a bidding range.

I have to say, however, that the ultimate, most-annoying, Apply Directly to the Head "charity auction" ever conceived is the "The Presidency: You'll be elected if you use my slogan" / "Here are the lyrics to my world peace song, and I will send you a copy of my CD, Xillion, the Rock Opera" / "I am a practicing nurse" auction, which seems to run perpetually for $99,000 and similar prices. (Does he keep selling them and coming up with new ones? Does he never sell it and keep hoping he will? When will he get a clue?)

Do people really fall for these things? eBay seriously needs to do something about this. Because it's getting worse by the week.

And they need to do it not just because people fall for the scams. (I'm tempted to say you deserve what you get if you bid $45,000 on a "really terrific mystery box" from which 15% goes to charity, but the fact is people do sometimes trust what seem to be bona fide charity efforts - and eBay endorses the charitable proceeds aspect of these auctions with their MissionFish arm.)

They need to do it because all these phony auctions PREVENT REAL DONORS FROM FINDING AND BIDDING ON REAL CHARITY AUCTIONS. Even when you do find them, it's harder to trust them now.

That is very sad for the many good organizations that depend on charity auctions for lifeblood-level funding. And it's very sad for eBay, who are the original web2.0 commerce company, and who have done a lot to facilitate socially good transactions and donations.

But seriously, how hard can it be to set some guidelines on these things, especially when it's obviously the same few sellers and formulae over and over again.

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