To be feel that some of the public have been mislead and a charity have lost out?

[JoanHickson]

I just had a look at Dax's tale of New York on facebook. I now see the £13k they promised of the publics money to Ronald Mcdonald House isn't going there now. They raised the money by advising the public, funds were to cover medical bills, then they were going to give to the charity.

All this would stop if they just made the donation to RMH wouldn't it? So I'm wondering why they keep talking about donating but not actually making the donation? Have they spent the money on themselves? Are they waiting for it to transfer from another account? If they have nothing to hide I'm unsure why they're behaving like this.

The number of those posting on the fb page and number following.

You get a sort code and account number from RMH or give them your card details. You either go to the bank and transfer.click a few keys online or phone up, it takes a few minutes to transfer money.

In fact it's less than forty people posting and less than half think they should keep the money.

All the posts on the page are supportive though? All along the lines of 'keep the money for dax' or 'we donated to you, ignore those who are moaning' etc so it appears most of the people who donated were happy to do so, don't want the money back and don't care that Katie and lee are keeping it rather than donating it to RMH?

Anyone with a view any different to that view is deleted or abused. It is a very few people holding that view a bit like Nazi Germany. Goodwins law .

How do you know if the posts have been deleted?!

Yeah, why the hell don't they just make the damn donation to RMH?

It seems that either they want to make a huge song and dance about it, 'look at uuuuuussssssss, donating to charideeeeeeee' they seem the types

Or

They have no intention of donating at all and are just waiting for the whole thing to blow over.

I've followed this from the start and been dismayed by the behaviour of the parents and their friend Richard.

I have no doubt in my mind that they originally claimed they weren't insured, then they back tracked and said there had been a delay in confirming the status of their claim. Then they were collecting for their living expenses (and daddy's pants), then they backtracked as RMH were actually providing accommodation and promised money would go to RMH.

I also remember the abuse a donator got for request her donation back when it became clear they weren't being straightforward about how the funds were being spent.
And MN had the nerve to delete a thread that was pointing this out.

I'd go with the latter christy....

How do you know if the posts have been deleted?!

Because I assume that either people from here have had their own posts deleted or have seen negative comments suddenly disappear.

I posted on the Fb group once saying how good the insurance company had been when our DS needed hospital treatment abroad. They paid for the taxi journeys and would have paid for living expenses and meals but we didn't need them. The comment was deleted and I was stopped from posting on the group!

There's a message on the page now saying new profiles/messages will be deleted, which I assume means they have a few 'haters'

So they will put up a post confirming the amount of their donation then? Good. Because if they donated £100 they could get a letter confirming their donation but lead everyone to believe they donated it all.

Or ... They have no intention of donating at all and are just waiting for the whole thing to blow over

Sounds about right to me

They say 'we would like to confirm that we will be donating to RMH very soon' - they were saying that very thing when this first all started, it's to get people off their backs for a little while, it's bullshit.

Also this whole 'please don't be asking Richard about whether we are donating, he ran the page out of kindness, it's nothing to do with him blah blah'. So Dick was perfectly happy to make it his business when it involved squeezing money out of kind hearted people to go and buy designer pants, and 2 grand breast pumps, but now people are questioning things, it's 'nothing to do with him'?

It's all bollocks

They could have put a post up saying

We've spunked it all on gadgets and new designer furniture and are donating £1.23 to RMH

Because that's pretty much what they've done

You can bet the donation confirmation won't include the amount. I reckon the donation in any case won't be over £1000.

Irks me the most that Richard posted on Thursday xx day I believe (can't be bothered to check the timeline now) that the insurance company have confirmed they will cover medical bills. At that point the fundraiisng should of stopped and the money raised donated to RMH and a new fundraising set up if they then wantedpeople to donate to cover personal bills. However they didn't go down that route instead despite updating fb page to say the insruance was paying out and that money will now go towarsd paying personal bills, the fundraising page was not updated until late Saturday, so for another 2.5 days people were donating on the premise it was to cover medical bills. Remember the majority of people were clicking a link to the fundraising page through news articles and would have all come via the fb page so yes its very misleading.

In those 2 days there were posts asking Richard to update the page but his response was to post he was too busy and delete people posting a sensible suggestion and banning them. So he is too busy to update the fundraising page but not too busy to comment on fb?

Infact after he posted that the insurance were paying up he then posted to say the fundraising site was back up and running (think it is because paypal had an issue with it). The fundraising page that was back up still referred to the money going to medical bills. So why did Richard when putting the fundraising page back up not update it then? He knew at that point the insurance was paying out.

Many people who donated won't of neccessarily known that they could get arefund either and after the abuse the one person who asked for one got and calls for her to be named and shamed who the hell is going to want to either.

For someone who is self employed if you are having a baby you surely plan to save money to cover time off - every self employed person I know does so they really shouldn't need the money to pay their bills. Just smacks of the self entitlement attitude that seems to be growing where the workd should pay for people's bills.

I mena hwat makes this so different to the story about the airport couple.

The fact is if they stopped stalling on donating to RMH then other families would be helped, straight away. So why don't they just do it? Those families are just missing out?

oh my goodness - Lees voice....

why does it STILL say he was left with a £130k bill? (see pic)

I think that this is more important than the parents of baby dax IMHO.

I personally think that the baby dax website was misleading, given that the timeframe between updating the website saying their insurance costs would be covered / implying huge costs were needed and the big delay in saying where and what balance will be given to the Ronald McDonald houses is not fair play. However, there are those who have donated and don't care so , hey , who am I to say.

There is also this case

thesteepletimes.com/editorial/wrong-lane/

The Heathrow couple. They raised over 10,000 UKP (which came down to just over 8,000 after some publicity about the case where people asked for their donations back after seeing more "facts')

So, without making any judgments, my concern about these fundraising sites is that the huge media interest they get is not regulated (pp made a similar point) and they, as I understand it, are not actually charities, it is pretty much asking for money. So people are allowed to give money where they like, of course they are ,but I would like to see, and it may not be possible, some better regulation about well publicised crowd funding events. Ie and if anyone knows anything about this , would there be a way of checking out these things or is it just an internet way of going door to door with no comeback.

Just a thought - no comment on the two cases implied.

I can't imagine why they needed over £13k to cover rent and bills at home...lets do the maths for them...

Average rent in Lincoln is approx £600pcm
Bills = £200pcm >> I'm taking my average bills for London which I am sure is more than it would be for Lincoln. This cover water,gas,electric and council tax

Total amount needed to ensure they still have roof and basic utilities is £800pcm.

They stayed in New York say two months in total (although I am sure it is slightly less than that) = £1600pcm

Considering the insurance company will cover all their US expenses, RMH provided accommodation, flights paid for, their parents visited them so could of taken over more clothes etc. I'll be kind and throw them £1k for any misc costs.

So a grand total of £2600.

Total amount raised is approx £13k on the site only not including bucket collections etc.

So I would fully expect to see RMH getting a very large donation to the tune of £10k at the very least.

People on the Facebook page are urging the couple to keep all the cash as they might need it as Dax grows older.