Heath, It was great to see all the items sell. Can you give us an update on the amount raised since and including the auctions in December and to which charity it will be going? Looking forward to hearing about this!
I hope you and your family are ok. That hurricain hit hard. We got hard rain all the way up here in northern georgia. I saw the saddest thing on the bst. There is a guy who lost part of his collection to the flood.
I agree with that sentiment, I hope you and you and your family are all ok, I cant even imagine what being hit with a hurricane would be like. And too bad about those charity yoyos, i bet that $300 would have been great!
Thanks,
FlyCaster
Im interested in seeing how much this auction made and were the money is going. Those skywalkers sold (I bought the perfume cloud) should have half the profit going so that should be a decent chunk of change. Hopefully we figure it out soon cause its been a while. Hope all is well. Kinda weird that everybody has been left in the dark this long though
I don’t mean to be rude here, but the benefiting charity wasn’t specified beforehand? I’m surprised people bid on a charity auction without the benefiting charity being specified in advance. The word ‘charity’ applies to a whole lot of organizations, and I’m pretty particular about which I support.
I got an email about this from someone yesterday - it was the 2 year anniversary from the date the Vs. Newton For the Works Charity thread was posted. With all due respect, Heath, I really do hate to be the one to do this, but the yoyo community has waited too long for this to come to a conclusion and I think this should be handled publicly.
Below is the contents of that email. I’ve edited out the name of the person who wrote it - this isn’t about them. And neither is it necessarily about whether the claims this person makes are all 100% accurate. The issue is that this needs to be taken care and it is utterly unacceptable and ridiculous that this has gone on for this long.
The email:
Hello,
Today is the 2 year anniversary of “The Works” charity auctions.
You are receiving this e-mail either because you bought a yo-yo from Heath Vizier as part of his “The Works” charity auction series or because you provided a yo-yo to be anodized and sold in one of these auctions.
According to my records, Heath has collected at least $3300 (after deducting eBay fees) from these auctions, but there is no evidence that any of this money has gone to charity. When he was recently asked to show a donation receipt from the American Cancer Society, he claimed that ACS would give him a "combined receipt for 2011 and 2012. This is simply untrue. ACS gives out receipts at the time of donation.
As far as I can tell, Heath hasn’t donated a single dollar to charity.
He has a history of making up excuses and failing to honor his word.
If this is true, and none of the money has gone to charity, I think it’s unfair that (1) Heath pocketed the money and (2) that he can continue profiting from VsNYYC. I need your help to figure out what’s going. By myself, I’m just one guy complaining. But together, we can pressure him to show good proof that the money has gone to charity – or we can put an end to this farce.
I’d like you to do two things:
(1) Please contact Heath directly and request to see a copy of his ACS donation receipt. This receipt will include the dollar figure donated because it is used by people to write off their charitable contributions when they do their taxes.
and request that Heath show the ACS donation receipt. Why has it taken 2 years?
I don’t enjoy doing this. It’s ugly. I don’t have anything personally against Heath. But I think it’s bad for the yo-yo community to allow this kind of behavior to continue, and seeing VsNYYC yo-yos sell out while Heath makes excuses and lies about donation receipts – that just butterfly me off.
Timeline:
9/23/2010 Heath creates the Works charity thread
1/31/2011 Heath says yo-yos are sent to the anodizer
1/31/2011 Claims hedgehog had cancer/surgery.
8/2/2011 Heath says the auctions will be delayed until after WYYC 2011
11/9/2011 Heath says he will post the yo-yos on eBay on the 11/10/2012: “The Works “works” yoyos are going on eBay. its really the best way to make sure it gets done at this point. i will start posting them tomorrow night and continue until they are all up”
12/3/2011 Babbylonian says, “So Heath, just wondering, that moonwalker I won several months ago, will I ever be able to purchase it? If not, it’s cool. I’ll just wait until you’re not so busy and you’re making more yoyos.”
12/4/2011 claims $615 raised pre-auctions
1/31/2012 Second Skywalker Release
7/20/2012 Heath ships Mitch Leake’s yo-yos from December 2011 auction. Claims he was waiting 7 months to see if Mitch also wanted to buy a SADR.
8/14/2012 Heath posts additional works colored yo-yos in the name of charity. They eventually sell for $1130
8/16/2012 Heath claims on the phone that ACS will give him one combined receipt for all charitable donations in the past 2 years…
8/27/2012 SkyWalkers and other VsNYYC releases go on sale at YYE.
9/1/2012 claims he needs to relist $311 modded yo-yos, even though $311 is the second highest bid… so at least 2 people bid that high. he never mentions 2nd chancing the items to the second highest bidder.
10/1/2012 Claims hurricane Isaac preventing him from showing receipt
Shouldn’t surprise anyone one bit who’s followed Heath over the last year or two. If anyone else pulled the stuff he’s pulled they would have been banned from the forums long ago.
^^ I didn’t buy the yoyo because I fell victim to the add I bought it because I wanted the 1 of 1 perfume cloud skywalker. It made it a little less sickening to pay 312 dollars for a yoyo knowing that half would go to the same charity. It wad stated on the auction it was for cancer along with other sites talking about the auction back in December when this part of it was going on. I did expect to have some kinda paperwork showing were it was going when I got the yoyo but I didn’t get anything but the yoyo. I still love it along with the rest of my skywalkers but it has kinda made me think of were it was going when I asked about it a few months later and the response I got was " the skywalkers weren’t a part of the charity auction and I decided last minute to donate half of those proceeds to the charity auction" whatever that ment outmeal still didn’t give me any idea of what was going on or proof of this ever happening
Personally I like Heath but have had mixed feelings in the business aspect. I thought this time was gonna be the turn around but he seems to have drifted off again and it sucks. I am a huge vsnyyc lover and collect skywalkers but the business side has not even came close to the other major companies who do exactly what they say when they say it with no excuse. Clyw for instance. If I have a question within a couple hours there is a answer from Chris himself and of he OS taking a break he tells people. Not cause he has to but because he cares enough not to leave people in the dark. I really hope things work out and there is a reason for all this. However if all this money didn’t go to a cancer research charity that is totally wrong. Its starting to smell fishy judging by the last posts. I have came to deal with the delays and wrong drop dates. If it says it will drop in September I bank on October but that’s one thing. This is much worse and I hope there is a explanation for it and fast. People bid these yoyos up so high because of the promise of where the money was going and people donated because of the reason behind it. This whole situation sucks
^^and the perfume cloud was 215 looking back to it not 3 something. Still a decent chuck of change and I wanted to clarify that I did ask for proof months back and didn’t get any and the subject was dropped. All I want is proof. Sucka it comes to this but come on. That’s super low of it hasn’t been donated. Hopefully Heath is just careless not someone playing on the generosity of this community.
Ya I know it hasn’t but it seemed like things were going better and he said he was making amends for the failure to ship on time with those peoples yoyos along with a free bad apple and belt buckle. Besides that he was posting a lot seemed to have the ball rolling for future releases and ran that contest …which has not came to a conclusion and a lot of people worked hard on. Heath was pretty bad at getting back to people but then it stopped and he was responding to people and because of my issues in the past he gave me a good deal on a banana d bearing skywalker which was nice but he seems to of vanished again
For Heath’s sake I hope he sent the money to the charity.
People tend to do a lot of jail time for raising money under the guise of a charitable organization.