Canada Red Cross On-line Donation Overwhelmed

If you are like me, the recent news coming from Haiti about the devastation caused by the January 12th, 2010 earthquake prompted you make a donation to the aid agency you thought would be most effective.  I’m not going to tell you which aid agency that should have been, but I am going to share my experience with my online donation to the Canadian Red Cross.

January 13th, 2010

I logged on to the Canadian Red Cross website.  I went to the “Donate On-line” section of the website.  There I filled out my donation amount, name, address, and credit card details and finally pressed Submit at the bottom of the website.  The Submit button turns gray.  I wait.  I wait some more, nothing.

Personally I’m a big fan of running Firefox from my Linux distribution of choice (currently Arch Linux).  Could this be the problem?  Some incompatibility?  Maybe, so I load up Virtual Box drop into Windows XP and Internet Explorer.  A few moments later, I’m staring at the same grayed out Submit button.  Oh well, their server’s must be overloaded.  I’ll try again latter.

January 14th, 2010

Wait patently for any emails which would indicate that my previous day’s attempts to make a donation were successful.  None arrive.

January 15th, 2010

I try again.  Good old firefox and linux come through this time.  Everything processes quickly, I sleep soundly knowing I’ve done my good deed for the day.

January 18th, 2010

Checked the Visa statement.  Oh oh, two charges from January 13th.  Guess they went through.  Realizing that I can’t afford to make a donation triple in size to what I intended I quickly email the Red Cross.  Good news for me, and anyone else who made the same mistake, I received this reply by email.

Hello,

Due to an outpouring of generosity, our online donation system is running slower than normal, but we wish to assure you that your donations are being securely received.

Canadians who did not receive a confirmation of their donation can rest assured that their donations have been received. Donor tax receipts should be ready by January 29.  Donors who made multiple donations due to the white screen will be contacted by the Red Cross. We are working on refunding multiple donations.

Moral of the story, if your wanting to make a donation to the Canadian Red Cross, try once, and wait a few days to check your visa statement before trying again.  You won’t be receiving an email confirmation for a while, so your VISA statement will be the quickest indicator of the transaction’s success if like me, you are left with an unresponsive gray Submit box.

I’ll post an update latter on to let everyone know how I made out, but right now I’m feeling optimistic.

Update January 30th, 2010

I’m glad to report the Red Cross was true to their word.  They phoned me back this afternoon and asked if the triple donation was in error.  I said that it was, and they kindly refunded the difference and issued a tax receipt to my email address.  No problems.

Tags: charity

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 8:41 am and is filed under charity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.