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auctions Look at bidding war for WorldAirways.com

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LarryDomain

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Yikes! There's still a couple of hours left but worldairways.com is now over $65,000!! Guess someone needs to get it bad!
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Looking at Namebio..it's kinda weird.. how do they end up closing auction on same day of the year.. Usually a domain expires on the renew date and then takes about a month atleast before it hits expired auction.

There's something fishy about this domain..

Domain Price Date Venue
worldairways.com 66,000 USD 2017-05-05 GoDaddy
worldairways.com 3,650 USD 2016-05-05 GoDaddy

I would guess but I have not researched it, that last year the domain got renewed, Namebio once they list a domain as sold does not go back and remove for renewals unless someone contacts @Michael I try to do that when I see one so Michael can make an edit.
 
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yes it got renewed last year AFAIK. NameBio has a problem with godaddy feed as it assumes an expired auction that completes will be paid and not renewed. One of the major situations similar to this was HFH.com wish did not sold for that hefty price (actually the story of this is even darker but I will not get into it at this point...)
 
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I would guess but I have not researched it, that last year the domain got renewed, Namebio once they list a domain as sold does not go back and remove for renewals unless someone contacts @Michael I try to do that when I see one so Michael can make an edit.
The reason the dates are exactly the same is that the names don't actually drop, so when you win an auction the expiration date is the same as it was before. And because GoDaddy's drop cycle doesn't change, if you don't renew your auction win the next year the auction will close on the exact same day.

It isn't an indicator that the name was renewed and the first auction invalidated, or an indicator that the subsequent auction is likely to be renewed. Although logically you would assume that if someone just paid four figures for a domain that they aren't going to drop it in less than a year. But it happens. I don't review enough of them manually to say which scenario is more likely though.

The reason I don't review them is clear from WorldAirways.com. It went under privacy immediately after the original auction so no way to know if it was redeemed or the auction completed. The name servers had been on paetec.net since 2011 and never returned to them after the initial auction, so you could argue that the first auction likely completed. But again, no way to know with any level of certainty.

And privacy continued after the second auction with no change to the name servers, so literally no way to know what happened there. You may assume it was renewed, but that is just a guess since maybe the new buyer just hasn't set up a site yet and had a reason to change the name servers, and I don't want to remove potentially valuable data on a guess. A lot of auctions go down like this on GoDaddy.

Manually reviewing the data for so many auctions would be impossible. And doing it programmatically would be inaccurate. Someone could renew it and change the WHOIS info, many times the reason it expired is because the info wasn't kept up to date. That would look like a successful auction (i.e. changing hands) when it really wasn't. Or maybe the auction was successful but the WHOIS doesn't change, or someone intentionally keeps the WHOIS the same so we'd automatically delete the record.

I did a long post about this issue a while back and discussed some of these issues. Also the cost of WHOIS history API calls to programmatically "verify" these sales would be more than NameBio earns because of the high volume (remember we're recording all GoDaddy results $12+). All that cost and we still would have no clue on half the auctions, and make many wrong calls on what to keep or what to remove. We'd probably only be able to accurately verify a quarter of the results or less, we'd still have sales that didn't actually complete in our database, we might remove sales that did actually complete. Just not worth the effort or expense.

So yea, it's a pretty crappy situation. But GoDaddy is too big and important of a venue to have no data on, so it is kind of something we just have to cope with. Don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

If you're going to use a GoDaddy record as a comp in a purchase decision or sale, check WHOIS history first and try to figure out if it actually closed. If you find one that you're pretty sure didn't, shoot us an email, it just takes a second. Or better yet if you win an auction and it gets renewed on you, forward the email to us so we can remove the record. That alone would go a long way in helping to keep the data clean.
 
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We don't let people get cash back on the auctions. The reason behind that is we want each bidder to be on a level playing field, which is also the reason we only take bids in US dollars. We want everyone's bid to cost the same amount so you be be confident that if you are willing to pay $100 for a domain the person bidding against you is also paying $100 for their bid not 18% less or anything less. That concept of an equal bid for all parties is very important to us.
 
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@Joe Styler , why on earth do you make auctions on domains that still are on the renew grace period and can be renewed? what is the reasoning behind this?
 
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@Joe Styler , why on earth do you make auctions on domains that still are on the renew grace period and can be renewed? what is the reasoning behind this?

Paul Nicks answered this years ago:

Ms Domainer, re: the 42/45 day question:
Good question and one that I sincerely hope I can clarify. First, I’ll underscore a point I made in the interview, we created the system to give our registrants the ability to keep or redeem their name as long as possible. With that as the backdrop, hopefully the following explanation will make more sense.
For many TLDs we are given a grace period of up to 45 days after expiration to decide whether to keep or drop a domain. On the 25th day after expiration, after three attempts to contact the registrant, we put our expiring inventory onto the Go Daddy Auctions platform to see if any of our other customers are interested in acquiring them. During the entire time a domain is at auction the current registrant is able to redeem that domain, albeit for a fee.
On the 42nd day we will cancel the domain name if no other customer has expressed an interest in it via either the auction system or a Go Daddy backorder. If, however, a customer has expressed an interest via either of these platforms we will move the domain to their account on day 43. Since the domain is still in the Go Daddy ecosystem we do allow, in rare circumstances, the original registrant to get the domain back via our redemption system up until day 45 which signifies the end of the grace period.
Our help documentation (http://support.godaddy.com/help/art...s-for-handling-expired-domain-names?locale=en) specifies day 42 for deletion because our registrants need to understand that if they do not redeem prior to that date they could lose their domain forever. However, we will continue to err on the side of the registrant when it comes to the edge cases where a domain owner calls asking whether they can get their domain back after day 42.
I hope that helps ease any confusion around this topic.

-Paul

http://tldinvestors.com/2012/08/quick-chat-with-paul-nicks-go-daddy-aftermarket.html
 
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They are listing the "World Airways" company as part of their investment portfolio, and using the trademarked (live TM) logo of the now defunct airline, a TM that doesn't belong to them.
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WorldAirways.com resolves to a blank page.

They claim that their "portfolio companies reflect [their] dynamic approach to identifying opportunities across the risk-spectrum" and that all of their companies "embody [their] core values and investment philosophy."

What is the point of paying $66,000 for the expired domain of a defunct airline, copy-pasting their trademarked logo, and wrongfully claiming ownership of the airline that domain and mark belonged to?
 
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