They say that you should take online reviews with a grain of salt, as the loudest complainers tend to drown out the happy customers. Happy people usually don’t take to the internet to rage, while complainers on the other hand looove to throw their voices around using the power of online review sites.
So, we share the following from bestcompany with that in mind:
I set up a fund for a friend diagnosed with cancer and though the whole procedure was easy enough to do as well as the collecting of donations, there was a rude surprise when i tried to withdraw the money. I thought I had researched on the site well enough to know what to expect but was frustrated when it actually occurred. I my case I did not wish to burden my friend with any part of the process and wanted to handle it on my own. As i went trough the process to set that up, suddenly things became complicated. even with back and forth email I was never given enough information at one time to know what to expect. When it became clear that the only way the money would be released was with authorization from my friend, I proceeded only to discover that my friend had to make a copy of an ID with him in it and address some additional requirements. I was mad that only till the end did I find out that my friend, dealing with his diagnosis and medical appointments had to comply with requests for him to meet their demands. My advise is to be fully aware of what you must do before, during and after the fund is initiated.
If true, what this means is that GoFundMe allows people to put up fundraisers for any reason without verification, but then might hassle them about cashing out after funds are raised? Why is this significant?
Let’s check GoFundMe’s FAQ, shall we?
While it’s free to create and share your online fundraising campaign, GoFundMe will deduct a 5% fee from each donation that you receive. Since our fee is deducted automatically, you’ll never need to worry about being billed or owing us any money. A small processing fee of about 3% will also be deducted from each donation. Please see Pricing & Fees for more info.
Note the language: GoFundMe deducts its 5% from each donation automatically, not from your withdrawals. Which means a system to fight fraud put in place to prevent fraudulent pages from being put up at all would mean GoFundMe doesn’t get as many fees. The current system, however, puts the onus on the account-holder after funds have already been raised and GoFundMe has taken its percentage.
With over $2 billion raised on GoFundMe to date, you can do the math on their cut.
What do you think? Should GoFundMe put stricter rules in place to prevent misuse of the site before any funds are raised or is requiring additional info only when account-holders try to cash out sufficient?
