Shameless begging or fraud?

Kilarney

Take a look at this Ebay listing.

Do you really believe it? Or do you think that it's just a money making scheme?

A couple of thoughts:
1) At best, it's disingenuous. Are we really supposed to believe that this guy's 11 year old kid is the emotional equivalent of a 4 year old? Shame on him for using his kids as props.
2) Maybe the better lesson is that Santa might not be able to give you an IPod Touch whenever you feel like it. Maybe when your 11 and 9 year old kids say "Santa brings presents for free as long as you have been good," it's time to have a serious talk with them. This guy has a real opportunity to build character in his children. Sadly, he's blowing it entirely. The kids should get a present, but they don't have to have a lesson in materialism.
3) This guy lost his job in the beginning of December and his home is already in foreclosure? And we're supposed to trust him with our money? He couldn't even make it three weeks!

Apreche

First off, I think you have to assume it's a scam, even if it's not. When you gamble, and a raffle is gambling, there is always some verification that things are conducted properly. The lottery drawing is on television live. Casinos are heavily regulated. Without the proof of the raffle, the ticket in your hand, seeing the ticket go in the hat, seeing a winner drawn out of that same hat, you have to assume it's a scam.

Secondly, IANAL, but I'm pretty sure it's illegal, and probably against eBay rules to do this. There are laws governing contests and such that are different in every state, and I think there's little chance of this being allowed in all of them.

If this really is a guy with no job, and not just a scam, maybe he'd have more money if he thought of better ways to make some besides eBay raffles. Even if you just lost a relatively high paying job, you can go get a seasonal retail job. That tiny bit of money is better than no money at all.

Thaed

There's a lot of this going on right now.

HungryJoe

There's a lot of this going on right now.

That's true. Anyone who thinks he's too smart or too virtuous to end up in a similar or worse position as the "seller" is fooling himself.

Kilarney

That's true. Anyone who thinks he's too smart or too virtuous to end up in a similar or worse the same position as the "seller" is fooling himself.

Perhaps Thaed meant that there is a lot of scamming going on?

Whether or not the guy is in a tough situation, there are some major red flags here. He says he lost his job just a couple of weeks ago, yet his house is in foreclosure. Just getting to that point takes months.

Secondly, he's either got the stupidest kids in the world or he's lying.

There is also no way to verify that the winner actually exists. You'll see a "name" being drawn, but that's it. What does that prove?

So even if he is truly hard up, I'm not willing to ignore the danger signs. A lot of good people are having very rough times right now. But that doesn't mean you should throw your bullshit detector out the window.

One sidenote: I don't understand why (at least on the state level) government is cutting back on programs that help the poor and vulnerable in these hard times. These programs should be scaled back during the good times, not during bad times. The savings during the good times could be tucked away so services can be ramped up during the bad times without hurting taxpayers. But I guess that would take leaders with good business sense. Politics gets in the way.

Dave

I think the most obvious lie is that his family goes through two gallons of milk a day. For a family of six that's nearly a quart and a half per person INCLUDING THE ONE YEAR OLD. That newborn baby is drinking upwards of a fourth of his weight in milk every day!

Apreche

I think the most obvious lie is that his family goes through two gallons of milk a day. For a family of six that's nearly a quart and a half per person INCLUDING THE ONE YEAR OLD. That newborn baby is drinking upwards of a fourth of his weight in milk every day!

My brother drinks a gallon of milk by himself every 2 or 3 days.

HungryJoe

I think the most obvious lie is that his family goes through two gallons of milk a day. For a family of six that's nearly a quart and a half per person INCLUDING THE ONE YEAR OLD. That newborn baby is drinking upwards of a fourth of his weight in milk every day!

My brother drinks a gallon of milk by himself every 2 or 3 days.

My brother was the same way. He would drink milk like it was soda. He probably drank a half gallon a day.

meat and cheese

The pictures alone make it seem like a fraud. How about some real pictures of the laptop, and that Santa picture is a joke! That doesn't look like a place where you would take your kids to see Santa. It's probably his house, that Santa is him, and the kids are probably from around the neighborhood.

TheWhaleShark

I think the most obvious lie is that his family goes through two gallons of milk a day. For a family of six that's nearly a quart and a half per person INCLUDING THE ONE YEAR OLD. That newborn baby is drinking upwards of a fourth of his weight in milk every day!

My brother drinks a gallon of milk by himself every 2 or 3 days.

An entire family with children aged 9 and younger drinking 2 gallons of milk a day? That's not exactly feasible. If there were teenagers or young adults, maybe.

EDIT: I just reread the listing. I didn't catch this the first time around, but he doesn't actually have the laptop. He's going to sell tickets, buy the laptop, and send it to the winner. That sounds really really fishy to me.

Kilarney

He also left the Ebay and Paypal fees out of his equation. I wonder if those will come out of the Salvation Army's cut or his? Hmm...

Apreche

I was just thinking about what would happen if you took this phenomenon to the extreme. You have a society where a few people do enough work to provide for everybody. However, all the people who don't work, because their labor is not valuable, have to find ways to get money from those who do. They all set up tiny casinos, but make you feel good about gambling because it's charity, just like the state lottery. They all end up competing with each other over who can set the best odds while still making enough to get by. Sounds like material for a good short story.

Kilarney

I was actually thinking about this as a business model for big ticket items.

Surely there are some people out there who want a good laptop, but are never disciplined to set aside enough money for one.

So let's say that you run a monthly lottery, and keep your fees very reasonable - 10% or so. Each month, you sell a ticket for $10. Let's say the laptop is $1,000. Each month there is a cap of 110 entrants.

So for "throw away" money, you have a chance of winning a very nice laptop. You even have a chance of scoring the laptop for much cheaper than retail. Of course you also have the chance of not winning the laptop until well after you've spent more than $1,000 on tickets. But the chance to win it in a manner that requires little money at any given time must be worth something to these people. You'll eventually win, and you never have to come up with a lot of cash.

Over the long term, as a participant, you'd wouldn't come out ahead. You'd spend 10% more than you should. However, it's the chance that you could come out ahead that would entice people. And if you know that you'll never be disciplined enough to set the money aside, there is some inherent value in this system.

The only downside is that it should take you, on average, 110 months to win. That time frame is just too long for people to believe that they will eventually get paid off. (At a profit or a loss.) If you raise the fee, then people feel like they are spending real money.

Maybe you just sell as many $10 tickets as you want, and draw a winner every time you reach 110 tickets sold. This has the potential of speeding up the cycle greatly, which also increases the profits of the seller.

Of course, statistically, people would be much better off saving the money and making the purchase when they have enough saved, but this preys upon people's inability to do that.

Apreche

There are two problems I see.

One is that such a system further economically divides the smart and the stupid. There are already enough ways for stupid people to give their money to smart people, tobacco, alcohol, legal gambling, so we don't really need more.

Two is that eBay has proved that people don't want to deal with bullshit. There were two main ideas behind eBay originally. One was that you could get other people's old stuff that you couldn't find in stores. We're talking mostly about collectible type goods, old toys and such. Since prices on these objects were unknown, auctions are a good fit. The other idea behind eBay was that customers could save money with auctions. In an auction, nobody is stupid enough to bid a price that is equal to or greater than retail price. Therefore, if you win an auction, you're getting a bargain.

What happened was that while eBay does provide these two things, they have become secondary. eBay evolved into a way for people to setup their own eCommerce shop without technological hassle. Yes, even nowadays it's a pain in the ass to setup your own online shop. Even with things like Google Checkout, it's still not easy. Also, people on ebay have largely gravitated towards "buy it now" prices, and moved away from auctions.

People just want to buy things, straight up.

Thaed

The listing violates eBay policy.