Bexhill charity auction in memory of student who died is halted by eBay

#sophiespostcard is a charity auction run in memory of a former St Richard’s Catholic College pupil Sophie Maria Taylor who died in 2017.

It uses eBay to fundraise, selling postcards decorated by students, residents, and celebrities to raise money for The Royal Marsden which provided care for Sophie and her family.

The art auction was shut down on Saturday (July 9) by the site with 1,600 lots live. The charity had already raised £13,000 from bids and had more than £10,000 in pledged bids.

Miranda Pennington, an art teacher at the school, said: “To our immense dismay, there was no way of resuming the auctions that had been in progress and all bids and listings were lost.

"It was closed down midway through with £13k raised and over £10k in pledged bids, and there were still six and a half hours left to run. We don't know how much may have been raised but we were hoping to reach £40,000 to add to the £46,000 we have raised over the last two auctions.

"eBay finally contacted me on Sunday about 1pm. Whilst the contact there has been reasonable and he was happy to apologise to me personally, they haven't really done much to compensate.

"We are running #sophiespostcard part two which ends next tomorrow (July 16) and hope that the Twitter storm and associated publicity will drive up even more excitement about the event and hopefully raise even more money for the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity.”

eBay said it will now promote the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity as a featured “Give At Checkout” charity to raise funds.

An eBay spokesperson said: “We are sorry for the disruption to the #sophiespostcard auction. Our customer service team has supported the organiser to get the auction back up and running, and we’re happy to support the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity in raising funds for such a good cause.

“We have very strict policies in place to regulate fundraising on eBay. Any listing that is raising money for charity must be listed through our eBay for Charity platform, where we have dedicated teams to support charities to raise money as effectively as possible. This is to ensure that the funds raised really are donated to charity, and to prevent any unscrupulous sellers from taking advantage of our community’s goodwill.”

Miss Pennington added: "We are delighted that eBay have given The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity the 'Give At Checkout' for a week on their website and hope that this opportunity will raise lots of money for the charity. We have been reassured by eBay that the #sophiespostcard part two auction will be fully monitored and there will be no repeat of last week.

"St. Richard's Catholic College has been affiliated with the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity on eBay since 2018, so we are bewildered by the action taken by eBay. However, we are hopeful that we can now turn what was a truly devastating incident into a wonderful fundraising total for the charity.”

For more information on the charity please visit the #sophiespostcard website.