PlayStation 3 charity auction over today!
By Ryan Block 
posted Dec 24th 2006 2:06PM
posted Dec 24th 2006 2:06PM
This is people, the moment of truth! We're auctioning a PS3 for charity, and that auction is over this afternoon -- in about three and a half hours by our watch. Meaning, of course, you've still got a bit of time left to place your bids. Once again, big thanks to our old pals at BoxWave. Here's what you need to know.- Real bids only people, this is for charity!
- Five day auction, no reserve. Where else are you gonna snag a PS3 on Christmas eve?
- Payment will go directly to Save Darfur, and will be expected to be made within two days of the auction's close.
- Since most shippers are closed on Christmas eve and Christmas day, we cannot guarantee overnight shipment to you for Christmas day. But you'll have secured the PS3, and we'll overnight it to you immediately thereafter. Hell, we'll even pay shipping.
P.S. -To those who bid but don't win -- don't let that stop you from donating to the charity of your choice this holiday season.
Bid!
Update: The auction is closed! Unfortunately, the scumbag who won the auction backed out in just about the most illegible way possible:
"i am very sorry my cousin bided on this item to get his own back at me bidding over £500 on an item on ebay so i left my computer on so he bided to get his own back. i do so very apologize for what has happened i do not want the PS3 please let the other bidder have it. Dinesh"
We traded emails -- he's refusing to pay. Why don't we all tell Dinesh Dave what we think about people who place fake bids on charity auctions? (idinesh@mac.com) For the record, we've contacted the top 3 bidders to see if they want to make good on their bids.
I agree with guntap and several others. Christmas is about forgiving and forgetting. You don't lower yourself to his level, regardless of his act. No one is suggesting what he did isn't despicable (assuming he's lying, of course). It reflects a certain moral bankruptcy. Despite that, a bigger man wouldn't retalitate like that -- no one was really hurt, after all, someone else will buy it and the money will go to those who need it. Not a class act, Ryan, and once your anger subsides, I'm certail you'll agree.
Hmmm will this make my Playstation 3 stocks on trendio go up? http://www.trendio.com/word.php?wordid=470&language=en
:lol:
What a lame excuse (total LIE) that Dinesh pulled.
Way to ruin a meaningful event, assh*le.
OK, he shouldn't have backed out, but that's downright low to post his e-mail for people to send hate mail to him. People could so easily sign him up for enough spam that he would have to ditch the address and get another one. Pull the address down.
Great idea, #3. Let's see.... what can I sign him up for?
This is a charity auction! I don't really care if he has to ditch his email address -- what kind of person screws with a charity on Christmas eve?
Dude, so backing out of a charity auction isn't worth at least destorying the douche bags email account?
Merry Xmas Darfur~!!!
not even...
let the oxygen thief pay for his mentality...another george w bush clone
no excuses
Thats exactly what i have been doing for the last hour. :)
Nice one on posting his email. I'm a little too lazy to do anything with it but I hope it gets bombarded with all kinds of spam.
Oh, happy Christmas too.
Scumbag is right. I support your posting of his email. If you screw somebody over on the Internet, you deserve what you get in return. I don't see a problem, at all, with posting his email address.
I agree. screwing around with ebay is one thing. screwing around with a charity auction on xmas eve, that's something different... post the email address.
That said, c'mon folks, remember, it's xmas eve :)
Nice, he gets what he deserves. Keep us up to date with the status of the action with his email still up there (who won, when it ships, when the winner receives it).
Maybe hes telling the truth lol?
Anyway great cause.
poor form on giving out his email. I'm seriously disappointed in you. Its christmas forgive and forget, or at least don't do be a douche back.
I think engadgets right..he got off lightly IMHO.
I'm all for making him ditch his email address. IMHO he STOLE from a charity. Besides that, anyone with a .mac address should have to change their email anyway.
Ryan, do the right thing and remove his email address. The guy apologized and it's pointless to retaliate like this.
Actually even if his excuse was true it is his responsibilty to do good. He left his computer on and his ebay up. He is required to pay. No different then giving your friend your atm pin and them taking money. The bank isnt responsible. And ha good luck ever beating engadget in a legal dispute, maybe you need to do some more research into who owns engadget. And pardon me but I never knew it was illegal to post a email address or an address or even a phone number. BESIDES all anyone would have to do is go to the ebay page click winning bidder and click CONTACT user. Engadget is just saving averyone the bother. And ya you dont get his email but you still get to thank him for being irresponsible with his computer. Besides who would ever spam him ;)
If you can afford 20 odd people in your house you should just go ahead and pay. and if you cant afford it... make him pay.
That is sooooooo lame!
Seriously I am all for what you did Ryan!
I mean its a charity event, and he has to ruin it this way, talk about giving n sharing ...
Dinesh .. you're really a scam bag!
I'm pretty dissapointed in both the auction-ruiner and Ryan's response. This is Christmas. If you're not familiar with the story, it's about the beginning of the ultimate case of forgiveness. Even if you don't believe in that, a messed up auction pales in comparison to the people in Darfur who are sleeping under the stars tonight and will wake up to the same old war in the morning.
Non-paying bidders are scumbags. Non-paying bidders on a charity auction on Christmas eve? What the f*ck, I don't even know how to classify that crap.
To all those saying Ryan posting his e-mail is underhanded: Get off your moral high horse about posting e-mails, woopidy doo, his mac email is ruined!!?!?!? ZOMG HE CAN'T POSSIBLY GET ANOTHER!?!?!! You're acting like Ryan posted his full address with instructions to rape and murder his family. Get over it. His fault or not (I don't buy the cousin bull or any other part of the story for a second), his e-mail being posted is probably the lightest punishment I could imagine.
In related news, have a happy holiday everyone!
He got off lightly? please... destroying someone's email acount is a very low thing to do especially around the holidays. What if his excuse is legit? Your not 100% sure. If he is right (even if there is no proof of knowing
but the thought still lingers) how would you feel? I understand how he killed the hype for the charity auction. But he didn't actually kill the auction. I am sure out of the millions of generous Engadget viewers, at the very very least one would come through and donate.
you people need to get the fuck over it. straight up.
OK that sucks big time and he is an asshole and whatever you want to throw at him is quite deserved, i guess. but still, You People @ Engadget as newswriters building up this charity auction for those very obvious reasons should have kept the big story on these people over there, like some other said "sleeping under the stars", and i think here you just turned the hole thing into what it was just supposed to fight: Hate.
The guy that didn't pay sucks.
but you should have passed that part of the story a lot more briefly and get back to money finally getting donated by whoever it is to the ones who need it.
but the little revenge thing on this night kind of disapointed me.
i like the job you do, the stuff you write, and as you said Ryan you are part of a much larger company. you deserve the awards you have, BUT please, try to be a little 'higher' than that.
i mean don't go that low, the story just turned in a few hours into just basic primitive (childish?)HATE.
and that is not what it obviously was intended for.
get the kid's mail of the front page. people who'll want to play with him will definitely manage to find him anyway. though i'm sure the harm's done allready.
the thing is your writing just saddened this story a lot. Charity it was.
you're journalist, a lot of people read you and you now it. on X-mas eve, you shouldn't be writing that kind of posts, whatever bottom line of the story is. you should keep dealing with that a little more internaly. I'm not saying you should've hidden any truth. but i tink you just went a little too far.
keep it centered on those in need and not another fight.
and please remember you do have influence, in any way. hope you realize that.
Sorry but to me the end of that post giving away the mail adress just sounded to me like that guy from Street-Fighter screaming his famous "FIGHT"
and the title of this very same post is about charity auction...
end of violence anyone, is anybody a little smarter?
come on the PS3 is most certainly already sold to another one, who might actually enjoy a little more his X-mas, and go figure, he might even end up liking that dinesh guy for doing what he did.
come on you're still giving some good money for something good in the end,
so just be good all the way.
I don't see posting his email address as a bad thing to do... I mean, the responsibility is on the people who would be jackasses and sign him up for weird stuff, not on Engadget. The way I read it, it was if you want to tell the guy what a dick he is, go for it, not sign him up for every deviant porno site east of Eden. So yes, we should be forgiving, but imagine if you'd gone through the trouble to set up something in the spirit of helping the less fortunate and it got ruined.
Giving out someones email address so others can harrass him is not only jevnile but also illegal. Go sort out your shit via ebay.
Hey Engadget. Completely in keeping in the spirit of Christmas. Way to follow-up a classless act with a completely equal classless move of your own.
I just made a $50 donation on behalf of Dinesh to "Save Darfur".
Now do the right thing and take his e-mail address down.
Wow Ryan, guess my original post shoulda stayed here. Thanks to anyone who agrees to this being wrong to post his email on here. I originally noted and questioned it, but furious little Ryan had a temper tantrum and deleted it.
This is the problem with the North American society no one is ever responsible for anything anymore. The schools are not allowed to discipline kids, the parents are not allowed to do the same, the state washes its hands and the only people we seem to care about are the criminals whose rights we are not allowed to step on. The non bidder is a spineless FUKC who should grow some balls and take responsibility for his juvenile actions. I to am sorry dude that your family is from the shallow end of the gene pool, sorry you married your sister when you got drunk, sorry your father looked at you weird when you were 3 and now you are scarred for life, sorry you are a pathetic excuse of a human being, sorry you got no balls, sorry you screwed some charity for fun, sorry you suck and I am sorry you will have to read all the hate mail - NOT. Yes, it is your fault, you are responsible - now deal with it. And in closing just for some good measure, Merry Christmas and F**K you all who complain about it not being your fault - because it is.
Victor you cock gobbler stop repeating the same statement over and over again.
And who cares if your post got deleted.. jeez youd think he banged your bf..
You should've made a requirement that people actually have feedback to first ask for permission to bid and then bid. eBay is not full of, but has terrible excuses for people using it. Oh well, good luck with getting them to pay.
That was bad show Engadget. I love this blog, but to use your power as a popular website to hurt one of your readers is scary. Which one of us is next?
This guy may have cheated charity out of $1600 -- what's more, I definitely did not get his address from Engadget, I got it from communicating with him on eBay. You seriously think we'd ever expose someone's email address for no particular reason?
...now has anyone seen that newsletter harvester that will do all the hard work with three simple clicks.
I don't disagree w/ the posting of this person's email address, but think Ryan. You work for AOL now. If I were this guy I'd have a nice feast of a law suit brewing.
Not to mention that you've violated your company's privacy policy.
"We can tell you a few things for sure: these addresses are not harvested -- we hate spam, too (please see our privacy policy). We certainly wouldn't wish it on anyone else, so don't ever expect mailings from us unless you've signed up for an opt-in mailing list of some sort."
I did no such thing -- as I stated, I got his email address through eBay, not through any interaction on this site. Either way, posting an email address to the web is not an illegal action. Kinda mean, sure, but not as mean as cheating a charity. Sorry if you disagree -- closing comments now.
Oh get over it. The guy was a douchebag for doing that. If you can do something as childish as fake bidding on a PS3 for CHARITY, I'm sure he's done more of the same crap.
Besides, he was posting his email so we could all tell him how we feel about what he did. It's not like they told anyone to submit their email to porn subscriptions.