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Glitch Halts Online Auction For Deer Park

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By COURTNEY CAIRNS PASTOR, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 8, 2007

NINE EAGLES - Putting a school auction online seemed like an easy way to get more exposure and raise more money than the old-fashioned alternative.

But volunteer Julie Banks didn't expect it would almost collapse the entire event.

Banks, a mother of three, wanted to help Deer Park Elementary's fifth-graders raise money for school activities, projects and a field trip to Universal Studios.

Silent auctions, held at the school, had worked for parent-teacher associations, but the fifth-grade volunteer committee didn't want to compete with the PTA.

The committee thought it would try the online auction site eBay. Parents would donate items or contact businesses they knew for gift certificates and services, and the committee would post the goods. People inside and outside of Deer Park could place bids, and no one at the school would feel hounded to donate.

Committee members set up an account - deerparkgrade5 - and spent about nine hours posting offerings.

The fundraiser worked well for a week at the end of November and drew about $1,000 in bids on 45 items, including Webkinz toys, hockey tickets and restaurant gift cards. With three days left on the auction, Banks logged on to eBay to see how it was going.

The items and descriptions were gone. The bids had vanished. Buyers had received notices that the listings were canceled.

"We ran into a glitch," said Banks, the committee chairwoman.

Banks and other committee members who had posted items under the "deerparkgrade5" name had returned to eBay to place bids using their personal accounts.

The site recognized the posters came from the same computers, under different names, and flagged the bids as "shill bidding," or artificially inflating the prices.

"We didn't even know we were doing anything wrong," Banks said.

Because shilling violates eBay's terms of service, the site ended the auctions.

Banks went on a campaign to get the listings reinstated. She tracked down e-mail addresses and phone numbers for top executives and began leaving messages for several days, multiple times a day.

"Please help me," she titled her e-mail before making her case: "I do realize that eBay was just following procedures, and we broke a rule, whether we realized it or not. If it were just my personal issue, I would back off and consider it a lesson learned. But this is not just me. This is the one and only fundraiser that the fifth-grade will have this year."

Finally she got a response that it sounded like an honest mistake. EBay worked with Banks to get Deer Park registered as a nonprofit group with "MissionFish," which helps organizations raise money online. A two-week suspension was listed, and the school was allowed to put the donated items online.

Buyers had to place their bids again, but the auction resumed Nov. 29. It ended Thursday.

A couple of days before the auction ended, the fifth-grade class had seen bids that ranged from 99 cents for a plush elephant to more than $400 for a custom granite or marble vanity top.

Banks said it was a good lesson to learn and should make future eBay auctions easier for the school. She has several years invested in Deer Park, which opened last year and moved into its permanent building in August. Besides her fifth-grader, she has children in first and third grade and knows she will likely be planning more fundraisers.

"You stumble through," she said. "Everything I'm setting up is going to make it so much easier for next year."

Reporter Courtney Cairns Pastor can be reached at (813) 865-1503 or cpastor@tampatrib .com.

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