To follow up on Michael's post above:
We have many long-time sellers who have been around to see our acceptance rates go from very strict, to more open, back to strict. We understand that this can be frustrating, which is why we created the rule that all domains may be resubmitted for appraisal after 9 months — just in case anything has changed with the marketplace or buyer trends. We want our sellers to be able to get our opinion on a name at least twice within the first year of owning the name.
As Keith pointed out, dropping a name and then seeing it sold (on BrandBucket or anywhere else) after the fact is painful. Feeling that a marketplace is intentionally taking advantage of you is even more painful. My primary takeaway from this thread is that we at BrandBucket are currently doing a very poor job at keeping an open door for communication — the fact that this thread had to be a “Rant TO BrandBucket”, not ABOUT BrandBucket, shows me that David wasn’t presented with a more obvious or better option other than a public forum for getting in touch with someone at BrandBucket about his concern.
One of my primary goals for BrandBucket in 2017 is increased communication and transparency with our seller base. Please keep an eye out for changes, but also please jot down these lines of communication:
* For issues like the one in this thread, or any issue with a fellow seller:
[email protected] (comes directly to me).
* For reconsideration requests or repricing requests:
[email protected] (this will soon be more automated)
* My direct email:
[email protected]
Finally, in the matter of seller relations, we are making a change behind the scenes at BrandBucket. For a long time now, Michael and I as sellers on the platform have submitted our names through the same process as everyone else, and are looked at blindly by the domain submission team. As "regular" sellers, we have also been privy to the “resubmit after 9 months” rule. However, I feel in some cases we need to hold ourselves to a higher level of strictness than the rest of the seller community. Starting immediately, any member of BrandBucket's staff that is also a seller (now or in the future) will no longer be allowed to submit anything that has ever been rejected by the domain submission review team -- not nine months, not 1.5 years like the scenario in this thread, not 10 years down the line. To be clear, neither Michael or I look at lists of rejected names (this has NEVER been allowed), but as you all know Michael is very active catching dropped domains, and at times he may pick up something that has passed through our system at some point. This may still happen, but that domain will not have the privilege to be listed at BrandBucket.
Thank you to our sellers who continue to push us to be a better marketplace, and who hold us to a high standard because they believe in the value of brandable marketplaces as an important part of the domain aftermarket ecosystem.