I wanted to respond here and let you all know that we are
really sorry about the packaging shipping issues that any of you have experienced.
We are working with the organizer of the auction to ensure that anyone who is dissatisfied with the condition of the photograph(s) when it arrived to them is provided with a replacement of that photo with free shipping. Thanks in advance for your patience. We have one great volunteer who has done everything with the auction from soliciting photographers, to collecting the photographs, to adding everything to ebay, invoicing and shipping. Obviously it's a lot of work for one person but we are committed to making sure everyone is 100% happy.
I also wanted to address the shipping cost issue. If someone won mulitple auctions, ebay automatically calculates shipping per item. So if you paid right away before you were invoiced by us, you may have been charged more shipping than needed. If you received an invoice by us and paid according to that invoice, you'll notice that the prints were shipped together thus reducing the cost of unnecessary shipping. The cost was a little higher this year because we had to add in costs for packaging. (last year the organziers paid for all packaging himself). We did try to save money to keep shipping costs down by using some different packaging. Obviously in some cases, that didn't work so well and we will be modifying our products in future auctions.
One other issue I wanted to bring up that it is come to our attention that there is an ebay scammer (his ebay ID is
muchb but he signed his email with the ebay logo and the AWF ebay ID of
theafricanwellfund.) out there preying on some bidders from our latest auction. I, personally received one of those emails telling me that the original winner of a photo I bid on was disqualified for security reasons and that I was now the winner and instructions for payment. I contacted the organizer of the auction (mdu2boy) and he confirmed that what I had received in my inbox was was indeed a fake email, ID and a scam. PLEASE be vigilant if you receive such an email and let us know, as well as sending the email directly to
spoof@ebay.com
I guess it is the way things go with ebay auctions that the more successful they get the higher the chances are that someone unscrupulous will be out there trying to make a profit off from it.
Thank you again to all you guys for the bids and the donations for this year's fundraiser. I think we are over $7700 from just the auction! We still have a couple of weeks left for direct donations
Again, if anyone else has quality issue with the condition of their photograph, please let us know. Just know that if you don't receive a reply right away, we are not ignoring you. We're all volunteers here, (even on the board) and we are working to make sure that all donors are satisfied and STAY donors. You are all VERY important to the future success of AWF.
Julie
jcook@africanwellfund.org
or
info@africanwellfund.org