[thelist] domain auction

Bob Meetin bobm at dottedi.biz
Tue Oct 19 14:34:22 CDT 2010


David Kaufman wrote:
> Hi Bob,
>
> Bob Meetin wrote:
>> A client wanna-be asked me to check on whether it is legit or not that a
>> domain name she wants is being offered through an auction at Sedo.com.
>> Aside from ebay I have no experience with these things. It lists a
>> current bid of around $70 and says no reserve price but that the reserve
>> is somewhere between $1 - $500.
>>
>> Hopefully I am not opening a can of worms, but feedback is appreciated,
>> on or off list.
>
> I've used Sedo to buy and sell several domains and, in my humble
> opinion, they are the only respectable outfit for doing either.
>
> I started using them when a company I worked for was buying a very
> important (to them) domain name from a seller in another country
> for over $10,000 and the CFO decided to use escrow.com to handle the
> transaction.
>
> Escrow.com had no idea, technically, how to protect the buyer during a
> domain transfer.  They understood how to protect the buyer during, say,
> a Rolex watch transfer: They get the watch from the seller, the money
> from the buyer and only after both are in their possession, release the
> goods to the buyer and the money to the seller.  But in our case, they
> paid the seller when all the seller had done to "transfer" the domain
> to us, was point the domain DNS at our IP address, using their DNS
> server.
>
> I freaked out because although we had initiated a zone transfer request
> with our registrar, the seller had not acknowledged it, and The whois
> db still showed the domain as belonging to them, and being registered
> though their registrar (which was also offshore).  Fortunately the
> seller did not steal the domain back, as they could easily could have
> due to escrow.com's incompetence.
>
> But after that incident incident I went looking for a domain escrow
> service that knew how to take control of a domain from a seller to
> ensure that the buyer is protected, and I found Sedo.  I have used them
> ever since, and recommended them often.
>
> -dave
>
Thank you all for the advice/feedback.  With that in mind, my client 
decided to do the auction (last week) mostly because she decided that it 
would make the service potentially more valuable if she ever sells it. 
She now owns it.  The one funky flaw in how the auction works is that 
Sedo extended the bidding time once or several times (10 minute 
intervals) after the posted closing time, which seems odd, unless of 
course they have that documented in their policies. 

Also to note, client paid several times less than in the past when some 
business has tried to sell it to her. Client is happy!


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