Points of Light Foundation auctions on Ebay for Tickets to Europe
 

It certainly LOOKS legit. The auctions are for tickets evidently donated by corporate sponsors. 100% of the proceeds go to the charity. They say there are no blackout dates. I've emailed to ask about taxes and availability before I bid, as suggested. The feedback has comments about poor communication, but that's as bad as it gets. Think it's worth a shot? This is for TWO tickets - not a bad deal!

This one is a BUY IT NOW:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=320121090286

This one is biddable, but reserve not met:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=230222383622

Most of the won auctions are private, so I can't see what final prices on those are. I'm going to contact some of the winning bidders to see what their opinions are.

I bought 2 sets of the Buy It Now tickets from them on Friday. We received an email from them on Monday giving us direction on what to do. I emailed her my itinerary Monday afternoon and still have not heard back from them. I will post about my experience after my trip is booked. We looked back at past auctions and it looked like that the reserve was at least 1350 and when we were getting ready to buy the auctions were at about 1450. We needed 4 tickets so we went ahead and bought them. Hopefully it all goes well. Also, you have to fly on American only, not their codeshare or partner airlines. Just make sure that you know where they go before you buy.

Tina

Thank you! Yes, I got an email back from them that it must be AA - no worries, AA flies where I need to go, except from London to Edinburgh - that I can do on Easyjet once we're there.

$1450, did that include the taxes on the tickets? They mentioned they were about $60-70 per person. Either way, it's a decent deal!

No, it did not include the taxes. You pay the taxes at the airport before you leave. The slow communication is accurate as I still do not have a reply from my email on Monday. Let me know if you fare any better on the communication.

Tina

The response I got was pretty fast yesterday - within an hour. But then again, I haven't bid yet, so I'm still a potential customer :)

I've emailed them before as a potential customer. A couple times I got no reply, and one time I did.

FWIW, I usually see the bidding auctions close at $50 less than the buy-it-now.

Even the buy-it-now prices are pretty good - it's the taxes that worry me. Did they tell you how much exactly the taxes were?

"it's the taxes that worry me"

I was wondering about the taxes too. :-/

The email I got from them said the taxes were between $60-70 per person - and evidently they are payable at the airport. That would be a nasty time for an unwelcome surprise, IMHO.

I called American Airlines and told them my possible itinerary. The total taxes for 4 tickets was 419.00. Hopefully it is pretty accurate.

Tina

Before you buy anything from anybody on Ebay, you should check them out with www.toolhaus.org.

While this seller appears to have good feedback on the auction page (99.9 positive), it doesn't show you the whole picture: 18 Negative,
120 Neutral, 55 Withdrawn.

When a seller has that many withdrawals, it usually means they have held the buyer's rufund hostage in exchange for not leaving a negative or withdrawing it if it's already been done.

Check it out: http://www.toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs...rn=Received+by

I don't know about the Points of LIght thing, but there is a website www.skyauction.com that has been around a long time doing that same thing. I think you can see the winning bids on there.

I've bid on there a few times for Latin American tickets as they had some cheap winning bids. Some of the bidders don't know what they are doing, though, and bid as much or more than you can buy the ticket yourself regularly. It's kind of amazing.

I feel they did cheat me once as I put in a winning bid at about two second to go and somehow I did not win. When I checked back, they had awarded it to someone who had bid AFTER the closing time by a few seconds, which is not supposed to be allowed. I asked them to explain to me what happened and they never responded to my email. So, I was a little skeptical that somehow things were fixed on there, but I wasn't sure. Also, so many people can be bidding at the last few seconds, that their server gets overloaded, and your bid may not be counted until after closing, if it's busy. So you have to experiment some.

I've never heard any complaints about Skyauction (other than mine, but I didn't lose any money, at least) and I know they've been around for years.

If you look at their website, you can figure things out pretty well from the past history -- like they periodically offer the same airfares, so you know if you don't get this one, they'll have the same thing in a few weeks, probably. Yo do have to read the fine print, to know the fees that will be added on to your bid, but I think they tell you exactly what they are (ie, $340 for a RT to Paris for fuel surcharges and taxes), $30 for a weekend departure, and then $150 or so for high season. That's because they auction tickets that can be used for a long time period.

I saw the best deals in South and Latin American on there, though, not Europe.

Actually, out of almost 9000 sales, I don't consider less than 200 miscommunications to be that bad. I noticed a lot involved email, many phone calls - etc. I know spam blockers can be part of that.

Yeah, I've used Skyauction before, and you can rarely get a great deal there, as too many people know about it :)

"The email I got from them said the taxes were between $60-70 per person."

"The total taxes for 4 tickets was 419.00."

That's quite a difference. I'm interested in these auctions, but the taxes seem a bit ambiguous.

Well, the $419/4= $105 - not $70, but not $500, either. And they did say about :)

"Well, the $419/4= $105"

Yes, I realize this. I meant to say $105 and $70 is quite a difference. It is to me anyways. Or maybe it's that since I work with sales figures all day, I need a b&w scenario! :P

Since the tickets in question are $1500 for two, an extra $30 didn't make much of a diff to me. :)

I did get a call back from them yesterday and they said that it would be about a week before they had our reservations and confirmation to us. They were very nice on the phone so hopefully the slow communication is the only issue that we have. I will update when I have my booked flights.

Tina

thanks, and good luck! I'm still watching the auctions ;)