OnePlus is auctioning OnePlus 2 invites for charity

OnePlus is auctioning off invites for its new OnePlus 2 smartphone in partnership with eBay’s Giving Works Initiative, with the proceeds going to the UNICEF Tap Project, which provides clean drinking water to millions of children around the world.

Explaining the decision to auction off 100 invites, OnePlus said it noticed fans were cashing in on the demand for invites by selling them on third-party sites for a hefty profit, which “wasn’t very fair to our fans in the spirit of what we’re trying to achieve“. By auctioning official invites on eBay, the company is providing an official alternate source of invites and contributing to charity at the same time.

[related_videos title=”OnePlus 2 in video:” align=”left” type=”custom” videos=”630400,629200,629182,629181″]Currently, the company is auctioning 50 invites with a further 50 to be listed later today. Bids for invites -which is for the 64GB Sandstone Black variant of the OnePlus 2 – currently sit at over $500 for a single invite and given there’s been 1 million plus registrations, it’s likely to rise higher.  Once an auction ends, OnePlus says users will receive an unique invite via email and then have 7 days to claim the invite and 30 days to actually purchase the handset.

The auction lasts until August 8 and invites will be sent out from August 11 and you’ll need to be in one of a handful of countries (found at the source link below) to be able to buy the handset. The decision to auction invites is certainly better than some poorly conceived marketing campaigns for the OnePlus One and in doing so, the company is hoping to curb the third-party trade in invites. Given that demand is much vaster than supply, this doesn’t look too likely.