Advice needed - Charity auction hasn't come up with the goods

littledutchboy

In Jan 2005, I bid in a huge auction in aid of the Tsunami Appeal for my daughter to do an interview with a pop star for Smash Hits magazine. We won, paying over £800 via Paypal. Ultimately we were given all the contact details for the mag in order to claim our prize.

In the year and a half since winning this, we've gone through three editorial assistants dealing with the matter, two offers of interviews with only two days notice on school/working days that there was no way we could make it to, and two interviews that the stars cancelled with only a couple of hours notice after I'd taken the day off work and my kid out of school (what the hell, I'll name and shame them - Javine and Simon Webbe).

Since Autumn last year, we've been offered nothing (although they did send my daughter a nice goody bag for xmas to say sorry for the delay), and now of course the magazine has closed down.

Ebay and Paypal have been absolutely useless, offering no help or advice and washing their hands of the whole thing. The poor girl at EMAP has enough to worry about trying to retain her job and she's only inherited someone else's mess. And I'm down £800 and am left feeling like the bad guy because "hey, it was for charity".

Any advice or ideas? Do I have any legal recourse, and if so, who would it be against given that the recipients of the money (the charity) are different from the people providing what I paid for (EMAP)?

All comments gratefully received...

princessmoneysaver

Did you pay with a Credit Card through Paypal? If so, go to them & see what they say. Otherwise not much I can advise really.

Sugar_Coated_Owl

Why did you wait well over a year for this interview?

Did the auction state how long it would take before you got to interview someone?

zorber

YvonneCrossland wrote:

Did you pay with a Credit Card through Paypal? If so, go to them & see what they say. Otherwise not much I can advise really.

after 4 months credit cards wont do anything.
Any how i thought smash hits was now finished and no longer in circulation

princessmoneysaver

AFAIK Credit Cards have a duty to at least look into a claim upto 6 years after purchase.

ceebeeby

Ooooh - tricky one that one ... bit of a moral dilema to consider as well.

1) How much do you think you paid for the interview - v - how much you donated for charity (that's the moral thought rather than legal).
2) If you want your money back as Smash Hits now not going to honour the contract, who has to pay it - would you want it back if it's got to come back from DEC?

A bit of a suggestion only, as I'm not legal etc. First, write a formal letter, friendly but firm to whoever is handling the closure. Inform them of your daughter's and your disappointment that they were unable to meet their part of the bargain, and that although the goody bag was gratefully received, you think that perhaps they would have enough nudges in the right areas to get your daughter into a fabby event / concert and a meeting with a star ???

Additionally, you could always write to the producers / stars of whatever the latest trendy TV show (Top of the Pops or Saturday morning show), in a rather pleading manner, explaining what's happened, and is there any chance that your girl can go and do a bit of a celeb spot (fabby publicity story for them??)

As mentioned before, I don't know about the legal side of it, but not overly comfy with the idea of taking a charity to court.

HTH xxx

princessmoneysaver

Sounds like good advice from ceebeeby

Sugar_Coated_Owl

Just out of interest what charity was it?

Tomthumb

Was Sma!!!!s part of a group of magazines? If they were then I presume the director of the magazine group would be responsible for finding an alternative prize for your daughter maybe through another of the groups magazines. Yes it was for charity but I'd be pretty miffed

Also check out http://www.smashhits.net/

"The February 13 2006 issue of Smash Hits was the very last edition of the magazine... but fear not - we will continue to bring you pop fun through SmashHits.net and Smash Hits radio and TV"

Tomthumb

Not sure what happened there! Smash hits

littledutchboy

Thanks to everyone. You're right, Tomthumb, Smash Hits is part of EMAP, and it was EMAP who actually put up the prize, so they'll probably be my next port of call to put some pressure on them to deliver using Q magazine or Empire or one of the other mags in their stable. I haven't even approached the charity as I even though they might be legally responsible, I don't they are morally responsible, EMAP are. To be fair, the people there are still trying (and to answer razorbladekisses - who has a very cool username - I didn't exactly wait a year, it's just been a year of promises and constant conversations) but I'm tired of the whole thing now.

What really annoys me is how totally useless ebay have been. I joined ebay right in the early days and was evangelical about how great it was, but the minute they became a publicly quoted company they quit worrying about their users and just take the money and run...