Bidding on your own names at NameJet...?

[webquest]

Once in awhile I see people bidding on their own domains at NJ. I would think it would be frowned upon.

Today's seems more obvious than normal. Or am I missing something here?

Airlinejobs.com owned by Andy Booth at Booth.com and high bidder is BQDNcom (James Booth).

3 bids down we see Boothcom as a bidder.

Same thing with MovieZone.com. Owned by Andy Booth in which he currently appears to be the high bidder.

High Bid: $2,475 USD by boothcom

They actually won their own domain airplanesforsale.com. Im guessing it didnt get as high as they wanted so needed to protect it.

Bidder Amount Date
bqdncom $2,001 7/17/2017 12:23 PM
boothcom $1,950 7/17/2017 12:23 PM

 

[Internet.Domains]

He is well known as an active buyer/seller of short names, especially LLLL.COM names. DSAD had an article by him in 2015, but he generally keeps a low profile.

He is working closely with James Booth, and here is a testimonial by him on the BQDN.com website (James Booth's company page):
Show attachment 64594


Oliver Hoger is also connected to MediaOptions, and helped them with the 11.com sale (from dnjournal):
Show attachment 64595

Well that sure is disturbing. This public investigation seems to be growing with evidence against the accused......Most disturbing is the cover up by NameJet. It's looking like fraud and collusion more and more.

 

[offthehandle]

http://www.worststockmarketcrashes....eph-p-kennedy-1929-stock-market-crash-timing/

This isn't anything new.

In 1919, Joseph P. Kennedy joined the prominent stock brokerage firm of Hayden, Stone & Co. where he became an expert in dealing in the unregulated stock market of the day, engaging in tactics that would later be labeled insider trading and market manipulation.


He happened to be on the corner of Wall and Broad Streets at the moment of the Wall Street bombing on September 16, 1920, and was thrown to the ground by the force of the blast. In 1923, he left, and set up his own investment company, becoming a multi-millionaire during the bull market of the 1920s and even more wealthy as a result of taking “Short Positions” in 1929.

Many firms whose securities were publicly traded published no regular reports or issued reports whose data were so arbitrarily selected and capriciously audited as to be worse than useless. It was this circumstance that had conferred such awesome power on a handful of investment bankers like J.P. Morgan, because they commanded a virtual monopoly of the information necessary for making sound financial decisions. Especially in the secondary markets, where reliable information was all but impossible for the average investor to come by, opportunities abounded for insider manipulation and wildcat speculation.

Kennedy formed alliances with several other investors and he helped establish the Libby-Owens-Ford stock pool, an arrangement in which Kennedy and colleagues created a scarcity of Libby-Owens-Ford stock to drive up the value of their own holdings in the stock, using inside information and the public’s lack of knowledge. Pool operators would bribe journalists to present information in the most advantageous manner. Attempts to corner stocks were made that would cause the price to go up, and “Bear Raids” could cause the price to collapse downward. Kennedy got into a bidding war seeking control of founder John Hertz’s company Yellow Cab.

Kennedy later claimed he knew the rampant stock speculation of the late 1920s would lead to a crash. It is said that he knew it was time to get out of the market when he received stock tips from a shoe-shine boy. Kennedy survived the crash “because he possessed a passion for facts, a complete lack of sentiment and a marvelous sense of timing.” During the Depression Kennedy vastly increased his financial fortune by investing most of it in real estate. In 1929, Kennedy’s fortune was estimated to be $4 million (equivalent to $51.3 million today). By 1935, his wealth had increased to $180 million (equivalent to $2.88 billion today).

 

[Suzoki]

I guess @MediaOptions will go silent as well now. Birdie got caught trying to justify his buddy's bad bad actions. Which other defender of Shill bidding will be revealed??

He is well known as an active buyer/seller of short names, especially LLLL.COM names. DSAD had an by him in 2015, but he generally keeps a low profile.

He is working closely with James Booth, and here is a testimonial by him on the BQDN.com website (James Booth's company page):
Show attachment 64594


Oliver Hoger is also connected to MediaOptions, and helped them with the 11.com sal
Show attachment 64595

 

[Silentptnr]

I can't see any way that this will be explained away. Looks like this could be one of those situations where we see NJ and the Booths begin to turn on each other.

Maybe I should have some of that popcorn @vinodnair !

 

[wwwweb]

get some more popcorn there georgie.. *if* this turns out to be what many here suspect it to be, it has potential to rank as one of ugliest things in domain history.

Oh for sure there are many people here who have spent 5/6/7 figures at namejet, a full audit, and suit which would follow could cripple the company, maybe Rightside made the right move.

I would assume Namejet would want to clean this up internally, if a big fish decides to get their own lawyer involved that might open up a big can of worms.

As has been stated by Brad, and the others no scenario looks like a good scenario here.

 

[Beezy]

Oh for sure there are many people here who have spent 5-6 figures at namejet, a full audit, and suit which would follow could cripple the company, maybe Rightside made the right move.

I want to send a list of all of my auction wins to SOMEBODY at Namejet @NameJetGM and get a bidder's list, please.

At least I can do my own audit then and take the appropriate measures.

Can you provide an email address where I can do this?

 

[dodo1]

In other markets the practice of bidding on your own assets (be it openly or secretly) would be considered price manipulation and vehemently prosecuted by the regulator of that market. In domaining we don't have any such regulatory body. We have no choice but to rely on the integrity and ability of each market (i.e. platform) operator, which is a nightmare scenario considering the conflicts of interest involved.

Perhaps the Internet Commerce Association (ICA) will choose to step forward and write up a position paper on where they stand on the issue of shill bidding, price manipulation or whatever you want to call it, or at least include a paragraph in their code of conduct? No ICA member should be allowed to participate in or even support any of these unethical practices, in my opinion. After all, the ICA's mission is "advocating for the rights and interests of domain name owners and related service providers".

 

[Silentptnr]

I want to send a list of all of my auction wins to SOMEBODY at Namejet @NameJetGM and get a bidder's list, please.

At least I can do my own audit then and then take the appropriate measures.

Can you provide an email address where I can do this?

[email protected]

 

[JB Lions]

I want to send a list of all of my auction wins to SOMEBODY at Namejet @NameJetGM and get a bidder's list, please.

At least I can do my own audit then and then take the appropriate measures.

Can you provide an email address where I can do this?

You can do this yourself. Auctions Report then filter by Won. You can see all the bidders.

 

[Arca]

I want to send a list of all of my auction wins to SOMEBODY at Namejet @NameJetGM and get a bidder's list, please.

At least I can do my own audit then and then take the appropriate measures.

Can you provide an email address where I can do this?

That info is available in the auctions report section (http://www.namejet.com/Pages/MyAccount/reportsauctions.aspx) if you're willing to check each auction one by one.

 

[Embrand]

The Booth brothers sure like to compete against each other Right now they are both among the lead bidders for mgp.com ending in a few hours over at NameJet.

 

[urlurl]

i'm waiting to see what name jet has to say after their investigation

 

[Al Cohol]

At this point it is probably in everyone's best interest to have an outside non-biased third party conduct an audit on Namejet sales going by x amount of years.

While Namejet has seemed trustworthy in the past, some of the info being released, if true does not look good for whatever protocol currently exists at Namejet to prevent this sort of thing from happening.

Going to be tough to participate in auctions there and not feel a little uneasy.

 

[Arca]

The Booth brothers sure like to compete against each other Right now they are both among the lead bidders for mgp.com ending in a few hours over at NameJet.

I thought the Booth Brothers cooperated in their domain ventures? Here's a 3 month old post from the NamePros blog:

So they normally cooperate and joint acquire names as a team, but when they go on NameJet, they bid against each other and for each others names?

 

[bmugford]

Perhaps the Internet Commerce Association (ICA) will choose to step forward and write up a position paper on where they stand on the issue of shill bidding, price manipulation or whatever you want to call it, or at least include a paragraph in their code of conduct? No ICA member should be allowed to participate in or even support any of these unethical practices, in my opinion. After all, the ICA's mission is "advocating for the rights and interests of domain name owners and related service providers".

I am a member of the ICA. They serve a valuable purpose as one of the only organizations representing domainers & registrant rights.

With that said, the alleged behavior here involving shill bidding / auction manipulation is certainly not something that the ICA represents.

I would hope the ICA would address this, as well as ethics in domaining in general.

Brad

 

[Hemanttilotia]

Just checked my last 2 purchases on NameJet.
BHHA.com & ERFH.com, both reserve auctions, seller was Mr Oliver !!
And the bidder 'Russel' made an out of the blue $200 bid on both the Domains.
This was followed by the bidder 'HKDN' who made a big bid of $501, incidentally on both the said domains, falling just short of the reserve.
And the next bid increment of $10 by me met the reserve, and I won the auction.
Wow !!
Don't worry, I am taking this up and see what all I can do about this shill bidding.

Hemant

 

[Suzoki]

FACT: We're not stupid enough to believe the Booth Brothers are stupid enough to bid against each other.

 

[wwwweb]

Just checked my last 2 purchases on NameJet.
BHHA.com & ERFH.com, both reserve auctions, seller was Mr Oliver !!
And the bidder 'Russel' made an out of the blue $200 bid on both the Domains.
This was followed by the bidder 'HKDN' who made a big bid of $501, incidentally on both the said domains, falling just short of the reserve.
And the next bid increment of $10 by me met the reserve, and I won the auction.
Wow !!
Don't worry, I am taking this up and see what all I can do about this shill bidding.

Hemant

So what was the reserve, HKDN is a big bidder on namejet, $510?

 

[Recons.Com]

Silentptnr & others,

I appreciate your comments. Please note that we are continuing to investigate this matter (as I said we would), and we will take steps needed to preserve and maintain the integrity of our platform.

And while I can appreciate the debate around bidding practices, our rules are clear - we do not condone shill bidding, period.

I will provide a further update when I can and thank everyone for their attention and the constructive comments. This helps us do better.

-Jonathan

I don't see why this should take this long to investigate.

And don't see why @NameJetGM is ignoring a simple question asked many times:

HOW DOES NJ VERIFY THE OWNERSHIP IF NOT BY WHOIS AND HOW DID ANOTHER SELLER MANAGE TO POST AN AUCTION FOR NAMES THAT CLEARLY WERE SHOWING OWNED BY BOOTH BROTHER(S)?

NJ's attitude is indication for me that they are somehow in it and I have lost my trust in them completely. I have bought domains in high $xx,xxx total from them, but this is the last drop for me and won't ever buy anything from the platform.

 

[Silentptnr]

The implications are very serious.

I don't think there will be a simple solution. Perhaps NameJet should setup a special email, telephone number or department to handle potential customer inquiries.

It might also be best to immediately freeze the domains of the members in question. These might be used to compensate the injured parties.

 

[tldboss]

1. No reserve

I am impressed by the (amount and quality) of info being provided by members here. Yet, namejet is taking hours to provide updates. Surely, it doesn't take time to verify sales or domain ownership.

In this case prices are being manipulated, which is really bad

2. With reserve

Just checked my last 2 purchases on NameJet.
BHHA.com & ERFH.com, both reserve auctions, seller was Mr Oliver !!
And the bidder 'Russel' made an out of the blue $200 bid on both the Domains.
This was followed by the bidder 'HKDN' who made a big bid of $501, incidentally on both the said domains, falling just short of the reserve.
And the next bid increment of $10 by me met the reserve, and I won the auction.
Wow !!
Don't worry, I am taking this up and see what all I can do about this shill bidding.

Hemant

I think it is fine, where there is a reserve. If you didn't add the 10 to reach the reserve, no-one was going to win

In the case of no reserve, there is always a winner as long as someone bid, problem is prices are being manipulated (seller either gets the price they want or they get back the domain and money back minus commission).

Hopefully namejet will address this soon, transparently.

 

[Hemanttilotia]

So what was the reserve, HKDN is a big bidder on namejet, $510?

Yes, $510
And he knew about it before, that's why jacked up the price till $501 and waited for someone else to just make the next $10 incremental bid.

 

[DNWon]

I really can't believe the shit I'm reading on this thread today! It's freaking mind boggling and disgusting!

 

[Hemanttilotia]

1. No reserve

I am impressed by the (amount and quality) info being provided by members here. Yet, namejet is taking hours to provide updates. Surely, it doesn't take time to verify sales or domain ownership.

In this case prices are being manipulated, which is really bad

2. With reserve


I think it is fine, where there is a reserve. If you didn't add the 10 to reach the reserve, no-one was going to win

In the case of no reserve, there is always a winner as long as someone bid, problem is prices are being manipulated (seller either gets the price they want or they get back the domain and money back minus commission).

Hopefully namejet will address this soon, transparently.

I think you missed the point.
Both Russel and HKDN made exact same amount bid on both the domains, and HKDN just let it short of the reserve and that's shill bidding too.
I googled about HKDN, and found a 14-05-2017 DSAD.com article reference / excerpt on Google, that this user's bid is just short of reserves...etc, but couldn't find it when I visited the website.
Maybe DSAD.com must have removed the reference as NameJet is a sponsor for them.

 

[Want2learn]

Apparently Andrew Rosener thinks it's ok to bid on your own domain names, Well I would say Jonathan @NameJetGM you better clarify that.

From TheDomains:

1. Andrew Rosener says
   
   July 18, 2017 at 4:43 pm
   
   If a domain is listed for sale with no reserve I actually don’t see the problem with an owner bidding for the domain. In a state tax auction or any other type of asset forfeiture auction it is standard that creditors or prior owners would be bidding in the auction right up against other unrelated bidders.
   
   As long as they have to pay cold hard cash to buy the name back like everyone else, then where is the problem? They are creating no economic damage. In fact it is just another form of “reserve” pricing and actually is more economically accurate and beneficial to the market.
   
   With a reserve auction, nobody wins if the auction doesn’t hit reserve. You do not even get an accurate picture of the market value of the asset because the bids don’t mean ANYTHING until they are over the reserve. At least with a no-reserve auction where the owner is allowed to bid, you have real economic advantage and productivity. The owner must authentically create a value threshold. If owner buys it back, the auction house still gets their commission creating economic benefit. The market gets a true picture of the value of the asset. And the owner re-acquires the asset that they value higher than the market does.
   
   When you have any deal for ANYTHING and you have a bonafide buyer and a seller at the table then one of them will walk away with the property and one will walk away with the money but BOTH the property and money are on the table and up for grabs by either party. Read that again because its important. If the “Seller” doesn’t accept the offer from the buyer than, in essence, they have just paid whatever price the buyer offered to buy their own property back. Quite literally, there is no buyer and no seller, there are only two parties (or more in the case of an auction) who assign value to a particular piece of property. One party has money (or other consideration) and one party has the property. At that exact moment in time, you have two parties who each need to decide if they value the offered money or the property higher. One walks away with the property and one with the money. Its really that simple.
   
   Example:
   
   Lets say that we put Murphy.com for sale in auction or in a straight listing and we receive an offer of $150,000 for the domain. We have have only two options and outcomes:
   
   1. We accept the offer, transfer the domain and walk away with $150,000
   2. “Buy” the domain for $150,000 ourselves (by turning down the bonafide offer of $150k)
   
   This may not be immediately obvious to most folks but every time you say “NO” to an offer, what you did was buy your asset or property or contract for whatever the offer price was that you turned down.
   
   If an auction has a reserve price and the owner is bidding below the reserve price then that is a totally different story. I actually don’t necessarily see the issue with an owner bidding below the reserve either just to create “momentum” in the auction, but since the domain can not be sold below the reserve anyhow, it is not financially harming anyone involved. But I fully understand that this practice is more controversial and does create some false illusion of the value of the asset in the event it does not sell.
   
   Outside of the domain industry it is common practice that an owner would be able to bid for their own asset in lieu of setting a reserve. If they buy the property back they still have to pay the full commission to the auction house or broker. Again, that is real money paid and keep in mind that if they had let the #2 bidder win, that would have been money in their pocket. So the price paid is actually HIGHER than anyone else would have paid because they are paying the purchase price (opportunity cost) PLUS the auction commission (actual out of pocket cash). If that makes any sense…
   
   So while I’m sure my post will cause controversy, I must say, I think it is silly to worry about owners bidding on their own domains in either scenario. The only ones you need to worry about are the auction houses themselves and making sure there is no INTERNAL shill bidding (like Halvarez).

Upon starting to read this thread, I immediately thought that buying your own domain is a form of reserve pricing. I personally tend to bid less on reserve priced auctions. I do think this situation is definitely suspicious . . . but whoever wins pays. If the intent is to drive up pricing, sometimes it works and other times they essentially pay a commission on the sales price to keep the name. Artificially inflating prices isn't cool. I actually think if a person wants say . . . 200k for murphy.com and rolls an auction with no reserve, and bidding is up to say 125k . . . it behoovs them to buy the domain for 126k. They pay the commission, essentially, along with another year renewal Where its dicey is they want 200k and bidding is up to 180k. If value is 180k-ish now the bidding is ONLY to drive up the price. Commission is too high now if 200k is value, in my example.