Online auction users have always participated in charity auctions, and are particularly responsive when there's a large-scale tragedy like the recent tsunami. This is the third in a series of articles dealing with the response of the online-auction community to fund-raising efforts for tsunami disaster relief.

Last week, AuctionBytes reported the Red Cross had turned away donations from Overstock Auctions, which claimed the Red Cross had told them it had an exclusive contract with eBay.

A spokesperson for the Red Cross said the organization does not have an exclusive agreement with eBay for charity auctions. However, she said the Red Cross has up to now worked exclusively with MissionFish.org, which does have an exclusive contract with eBay.

Red Cross spokesperson Kara Bunte denied Overstock Auctions' statement that the Red Cross was unwilling to work with the auction site. "They weren't willing to sign a very simple legal agreement," Bunte said of Overstock Auctions. But Overstock Auctions' Holly MacDonald-Korth said the Red Cross never mentioned any legal agreement.

Despite the "he said, she said," nature of the interaction, both parties say they are willing to work together. Overstock Auctions sellers continue to run charity auctions with the proceeds going to other charitable organizations (http://auctions.overstock.com/cgi-bin/auctions.cgi?PAGE=static&pagenum=3).

The Red Cross broke new ground this week and said it would accept donations from another auction site - for one day only. Bid4Assets said it will donate 100% of its revenue generated (on average $25 per auction sold with a $10,000 minimum commitment) on Tuesday, January 18, 2005, to the American Red Cross to help relief efforts for the recent tragedy in South Asia.

"As Americans, we are generous and compassionate," said Jenny Lynch, Bid4Assets Vice President of Corporate-Wide Communications. "We want to help the victims of the recent tragedy by declaring January 18th as a Tsunami relief day, the day we will give 100% of our proceeds to the American Red Cross. The American Red Cross was chosen because we feel they are the best charitable organization for handling both national and international disaster relief efforts."

Lynch said buyers and sellers are encouraged to visit the Bid4Assets Web site at http://www.bid4assets.com to list an item for sale (to close on January 18th) or to bid on an item scheduled to close on January 18th.

eBay updated its efforts on Tuesday on its Announcement Board (http://www2.ebay.com:80/aw/marketing.shtml#2005-01-11124215). It says it will now donate seller fees collected on Giving Works charity auctions to the member-selected nonprofit organization when the seller agrees to donate 100% of the final sale price. It will retroactively donate fees for qualified listings that were created January 1, 2005 or later.

eBay also said it will provide $1 million to directly benefit tsunami relief efforts, divided equally between the American Red Cross, Oxfam, Save the Children and UNICEF. This is in addition to a donation already made by the eBay Foundation.

Last week, Baazee.com, eBay's site in India, committed one month of generated fees to the relief efforts. Together with two additional contributions from eBay and the eBay Foundation, Baazee will make a $300,000 contribution to a relief fund set up by the Prime Minister of India.

eBay Germany recently launched an innovative charity effort with Deutsche Post to collect items that will be sold on the eBay.de site to benefit relief activities. More than 40,000 items have been collected so far.

eBay said PayPal users have donated over $775,000 to UNICEF through PayPal's homepage link.