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That got your attention didn’t it? To be clear it wasn’t actually Cingular that sold donated phones, it was a single Cingular employee by the name of A. C. Lao. Apparently two customers were asked if they wanted to donate their old phones to a women’s shelter. Unknowingly the woman believe the sales rep was being honest. Suprisingly the employee turned around and posted the phones on eBay.

“The salesperson asked ‘Would you like to donate the phone?’” Ebbinghaus recalls. “I said yeah, that’s no problem, what do you donate it to? And he mentioned a women’s shelter.” But the phones never made it to a women’s shelter. Both of the phones were purchased on eBay by Carol Winslow in Norfolk, Virginia. “I have this woman Lydia’s phone in my hand,” Winslow told WAVY-TV in Norfolk. “Somebody sold her phone out of Colorado and made a 100 percent profit on something they never owned.”

I’ve always been a bit weary about services claiming to send your donated phones to charity services. Anyone recall the Oklahoma couple who made $1.2 million off donated phones?

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