Charity Choice, Amazon angst

[angledge]

So, remember how I mentioned that the car I was driving while staying with vulgarbarbarian ended up going to the mechanic with transmission problems? Well, it turns out that the necessary repairs will cost more than the car is worth, so VB is going to write it off by donating the car to a charity. Even though the car doesn’t run well, this can still earn the charity some money. This is a well-known method of donation in the United States.

Anyway, VB has asked me to research some charities. Through the website donateacar.com, I’ve found five charities that are of interest for various reasons. If you know of another one that could accept an automobile donation from Connecticut, let me know (don’t nominate yourself unless you can prove that you, personally, are a 501(c)3 charity). And please vote for the charities you think deserve support.

[Poll #365450]

And in news from the world of fuckupery, Amazon deleted my account. So I lost all my reviews, my wish list, my Friends page, etc. Sooo displeased!

Comments

[impulsezip.livejournal.com]

Whew! mine's still there. Sorry, had to check. How'd yours get deleted?

[thereject.livejournal.com]

I can't help it :(

[marasca.livejournal.com]

When I was looking at donating my 4Runner, I found this site: http://www.v-dac.com/ They say on average 56% of the proceeds go to charity (according to them this is better than most car donation charities) and that they can give the money to any 501(c)3.

Might be worth finding out how much of the money goes to the charity if you use the Donate a Car folks (I'd looked at them as well).

[angledge.livejournal.com]

Good idea.

[krick.livejournal.com]

Jackie's mom looked into donating her car (which had some problems as well) to a charity. She called two different ones (I can't remember which ones) and they both said that if it wasn't in good running condition and less than X years old (I can't remember exactly what X was), then they didn't want it.

[krick.livejournal.com]

Until the red cross changes their discriminitory policy against taking blood from gay donors, I'd donate to someone else.

[funkyplaid.livejournal.com]

Why the hell did they delete your account?

That seriously sucketh!

what happened to my amazon.com account

[angledge.livejournal.com]

Somehow I had ended up with two accounts (I think one was created through amazon.com & the other through amazon.co.uk), both of which had the same name, email address, etc. The only difference between the account information was the password. One account had all kinds of data associated with it - all the books I'd ordered, all my reviews, my Wish List, etc. The other had nothing. I emailed them & asked them to delete the account that had nothing associated with it. Instead, they deleted both. Now that's customer service - they did twice as much as I asked for!

[angledge.livejournal.com]

According to the guy I just spoke to a donateacar's toll-free line, they make contracts with each individual non-profit. Of their ~1,300 charities, ~1,000 receive 70% of gross profits from the sale of the car, ~150 get 60%, & the rest get 50%. I can find out which gets what percentage if I ask by name (I didn't bother because I haven't narrowed down a list yet).

[ghostwriterxx.livejournal.com]

my dad donated his car, and about a month later the cops showed up at his door. Apparently the car was involved in a hit and run where someone died. Poor papa.

[afterwards.livejournal.com]

Car Talk uses them for their car donation program (the proceeds going to NPR, of course).

http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/vehicledonation/index.html

not cool

[angledge.livejournal.com]

Thus demonstrating the importance of a properly documented title transfer.

Re: what happened to my amazon.com account

[mrsjadephoenix.livejournal.com]

Aaaaargh! That's painful!

I registered with amazon.co.uk a few days ago, but I used a different email address so hopefully nothing weird will happen if I ever close it.

amazon.com vs. amazon.co.uk

[angledge.livejournal.com]

If you're thinking of ordering stuff from amazon.co.uk, make sure you check the prices from amazon.com first. They're ALWAYS much cheaper, & even with shipping from the US to the UK, in my experience it was still cheaper to order from amazon.com. This is assuming you still have an American bank account in US dollars available to you somewhere.

Re: amazon.com vs. amazon.co.uk

[mrsjadephoenix.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I realize that pretty much everything would be cheaper from amazon.com. I'm mainly registered in case I come across anything that's UK-specific (i.e. not readily available in the states) that I might want.

[angledge.livejournal.com]

How can I find your page (so I can see what you're reading)?

[impulsezip.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't have a public one but I am putting together a list for 50bookchallenge, which I'll post soon.

[impulsezip.livejournal.com]

What I'm reading...
http://www.livejournal.com/users/impulsezip/61273.html