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

 

[Domain Shane]

In a response to this post I will give you what I've found from my point of view.
"
Hemanttilotia said: ↑
Thanks. Exactly my point, that this HKDN guy knew about the reserve and just made a bid that was just short of the reserve.
I too think it's Oliver only.
I would request DSAD staff and Shane to clarify as to why they removed content from May 14th article about HKDN.
It's getting indexed on Google but not there in the post.
I think they got some warning from NameJet, their sponsors, or were asked by Oliver to put that down.
If NameJet asked them, then I think NameJet would be in deep trouble here"

I checked my post on May 14th and the revisions and see nothing about HDKN. Maybe I did but I have no recollection of mentioning it as all. But I wrote about HDKN publicly several times. I put exactly what you all are saying in this thread in print months ago for the world to see.

On May 17th I wrote
https://dsad.com/domain-shanes-daily-list-domains-auction-wednesday-may-17th/

If you see HDKN as a bidder today you can be assured that this account has made a bid is just below the reserve price. If you want the name and bid you will meet reserve. But its not natural and blatantly obvious. I know because there I’ve tested it (actually wanted one of the names)

On May 24th I wrote

https://dsad.com/domain-shanes-daily-list-domains-auction-wednesday-may-24th/

in this post I wrote

These.com HDKN has a bid at $14,000 which lately has been a shill bidder that bids right below the reserve so my guess is the next bid meets reserve. Great name and worth the price in my opinion.

I have never been asked by Namejet to remove anything. I can write whatever I want and always have. I get paid by Namejet to promote their auctions. I am paid monthly and not by sales. Nothing effects my payment from Namejet other than they think my traffic sent to their auctions is not worth their payment. I am not told what to put on my list and have never been sent or guided to list one single name by Namejet.

Now that's out of the way. Yes. I called Jonathan about HDKN. I noticed his bids on the names I was bidding on and to me it looked unnatural. I was pissed that I lost Spreader.com to HDKN. I had not bid on names because he was setting his bids at reserve and I wasn't going to play that game. But this time I lost the name to him and he came in late. I was hot. I called again and simply said "if I find that name going back into Oliver Holgers account I am am going to go off" He told me that Marquee solutions was one of the biggest buyers on Namejet and they were legit. I did some homework and saw they bought a HUGE amount of names and maybe just maybe they were legit. And to this day its still in their account. Even though its in in that account it turns out I may have been right all along.

Like DomainGang's post today. I sleep very well. I knew there was shill bidding going on and I called the manager and told him. Which is more than most people have done. I called because it effected me and I thought it was BS. I am not a watchdog like Kosta but I do call directly to the head when I see something fishy. But I had no idea it was this deep. Yet it does not surprise me at all. The coding at Namejet is old and outdated. The backend is archaic and everyone with an API and scripts have more data than they do about who is bidding on what.

I think the industry needs Namejet. They have great inventory and we need good fresh inventory. But this has to be cleaned up. They have to be willing to ban people who break TOS regardless of how much they spend or bring in. Regardless of relationship. And since they didn't take me seriously, maybe now they will listen. And again, like DomainGang said. I do feel like I am an honest domainer and all honest domain investors should be pissed when another domain investor is stealing from you. That's not up for discussion

 

[Beezy]

Now that's out of the way. Yes. I called Jonathan about HDKN. I noticed his bids on the names I was bidding on and to me it looked unnatural. I was pissed that I lost Spreader.com to HDKN. I had not bid on names because he was setting his bids at reserve and I wasn't going to play that game. But this time I lost the name to him and he came in late. I was hot. I called again and simply said "if I find that name going back into Oliver Holgers account I am am going to go off" He told me that Marquee solutions was one of the biggest buyers on Namejet and they were legit. I did some homework and saw they bought a HUGE amount of names and maybe just maybe they were legit. And to this day its still in their account. Even though its in in that account it turns out I may have been right all along.

Thank you for sharing and this part is extremely damning.

Jonathan (@NameJetGM) has to resign tomorrow.

 

[wwwweb]

In a response to this post I will give you what I've found from my point of view.
"
Hemanttilotia said: ↑
Thanks. Exactly my point, that this HKDN guy knew about the reserve and just made a bid that was just short of the reserve.
I too think it's Oliver only.
I would request DSAD staff and Shane to clarify as to why they removed content from May 14th article about HKDN.
It's getting indexed on Google but not there in the post.
I think they got some warning from NameJet, their sponsors, or were asked by Oliver to put that down.
If NameJet asked them, then I think NameJet would be in deep trouble here"

I checked my post on May 14th and the revisions and see nothing about HDKN. Maybe I did but I have no recollection of mentioning it as all. But I wrote about HDKN publicly several times. I put exactly what you all are saying in this thread in print months ago for the world to see.

On May 17th I wrote
https://dsad.com/domain-shanes-daily-list-domains-auction-wednesday-may-17th/

If you see HDKN as a bidder today you can be assured that this account has made a bid is just below the reserve price. If you want the name and bid you will meet reserve. But its not natural and blatantly obvious. I know because there I’ve tested it (actually wanted one of the names)

On May 24th I wrote

https://dsad.com/domain-shanes-daily-list-domains-auction-wednesday-may-24th/

in this post I wrote

These.com HDKN has a bid at $14,000 which lately has been a shill bidder that bids right below the reserve so my guess is the next bid meets reserve. Great name and worth the price in my opinion.

I have never been asked by Namejet to remove anything. I can write whatever I want and always have. I get paid by Namejet to promote their auctions. I am paid monthly and not by sales. Nothing effects my payment from Namejet other than they think my traffic sent to their auctions is not worth their payment. I am not told what to put on my list and have never been sent or guided to list one single name by Namejet.

Now that's out of the way. Yes. I called Jonathan about HDKN. I noticed his bids on the names I was bidding on and to me it looked unnatural. I was pissed that I lost Spreader.com to HDKN. I had not bid on names because he was setting his bids at reserve and I wasn't going to play that game. But this time I lost the name to him and he came in late. I was hot. I called again and simply said "if I find that name going back into Oliver Holgers account I am am going to go off" He told me that Marquee solutions was one of the biggest buyers on Namejet and they were legit. I did some homework and saw they bought a HUGE amount of names and maybe just maybe they were legit. And to this day its still in their account. Even though its in in that account it turns out I may have been right all along.

Like DomainGang's post today. I sleep very well. I knew there was shill bidding going on and I called the manager and told him. Which is more than most people have done. I called because it effected me and I thought it was BS. I am not a watchdog like Kosta but I do call directly to the head when I see something fishy. But I had no idea it was this deep. Yet it does not surprise me at all. The coding at Namejet is old and outdated. The backend is archaic and everyone with an API and scripts have more data than they do about who is bidding on what.

I think the industry needs Namejet. They have great inventory and we need good fresh inventory. But this has to be cleaned up. They have to be willing to ban people who break TOS regardless of how much they spend or bring in. Regardless of relationship. And since they didn't take me seriously, maybe now they will listen. And again, like DomainGang said. I do feel like I am an honest domainer and all honest domain investors should be pissed when another domain investor is stealing from you. That's not up for discussion

https://dsad.com/llll-coms-still-undervalued-oliver-hoger/

 

[Suzoki]

The plot thickens for @NameJetGM. Nice pretending earlier on this thread. But now things are starting to open up and like a previous user mentioned, your head is on the line. It's too late for you.

Thank you for sharing and this part is extremely damning.

Jonathan (@NameJetGM) has to resign tomorrow.

 

[Jim Holleran]

If you are talking about shady deals happening. Start looking into NamesCON and their relation to Namejet. Those guys heading NamesCON are a bunch of crooks. Excuse me for being so direct.

That was the biggest joke conference of them all. I get it half the dudes who went it was just an excuse to gamble, drink, and bang a hooker in Vegas, but they told there wife it's a very important conference which will lead to big contacts(lol) What contacts, meeting Negari (another scumbag) and the .xyz team, listening to speakers try to talk about how GTLD is the next big thing(lol) Or applaud Adam (con man) Dicker for winning developer of the year, what a joke.

 

[DNWon]

Please hire a third party with more thorough investigative capabilities and a more unforgiving response to such findings.

I'm pretty sure the FBI has a pretty decent forensic accounting department and they will probably do it for FREE too!

 

[offthehandle]

http://www.domaininvesting.com/some-advice-for-namejet/

Rick posted this link to Eliots blog

 

[hookbox]

Damn, someone beat me to it.

@Rick Schwartz can add this to his sites that call out all these scumbags.

 

[main]

And at GoDaddy you can't even see who is bidding, making it difficult for the community to keep an eye on things. @Joe Styler This is precisely why having public handles is a good thing.

 

[tld_org]

In an effort to keep everyone current as to where we stand on this matter, I wanted to share the following update. There have been some inaccuracies and misconceptions that have been brought forth by such a spirited discussion. And it would be a challenge to respond to all of them - therefore, I want to bring the discussion back to the heart of the matter.

As stated earlier, we take the issue of shill bidding on NameJet very seriously and we are conducting a thorough investigation, keeping in mind that the integrity of our platform is of utmost importance to us. As I have said repeatedly, we do not condone shill bidding of any kind. We would never encourage, promote or otherwise be involved in any such thing and our position is clear – it is never allowed on NameJet!

In our current investigation certain auction activity has come to light that we deem questionable and a possible violation of our terms. This kind of activity is not acceptable to us and we are taking steps to deal with it. We have suspended several accounts while working through the information we have available.

I thank everyone for their patience as we work through these issues. Our goal is to best serve our customers and we are working hard to that effect.

-Jonathan

Jonathan - there's been many articles written over the YEARS about shill bidding on Namejet. What has been done from then until now to stop this? Anything? Anything that is documented? Is the domain community doing your job (in which case you should not be GM there and whoever else is at the top should not be there either) or did Namejet know about it not care to investigate? You do realize this is fraud??? So did Namejet not care to investigate fraud or did Namejet not care because it was financially beneficial to Namejet?

 

[Want2learn]

How do you respond to this?

We see your bid did meet the reserve price. If we take away the shill bid the auction does not consummate. We will refund your money for the domain.


How do you respond to that? Clearly we all bid on domains we liked. And if there was a reserve and it wasn't met we wouldn't have gotten the domain.

I have several such instances myself. I'm pretty sure refunding the money for the domain is not an option. Though if it were, we could conclude we over paid for the domain and try again for a cheaper price! Let's say we bid 275 and the shill bid brought it to 299. We then bid 310 and meet the reserve. In this case I would say the true value was 275. Now if NJ was involved that is collusion and my guess is that it would be enough to shut the company down with lawsuits. Let's assume some good faith here. Maybe a few rogue employees and or a blind eye. Well I think the best case scenario is getting refunded from 310 back to 275.

What do you all think?

 

[ikehook]

I skipped over the last 20 pages for sake of sanity and time.

Just wanted to make a comment about whois information.

With the new guidelines it's sometimes a pain in the ass to change the contact info. @stub and I just did a deal on NP where the domain wouldn't change accounts while simultaneously changing the whois. So I pushed the name with my contact info. The domain is defiantly in his account and he owns it, but anyone looking up the whois would think I still owned the name.

 

[Want2learn]

I skipped over the last 20 pages for sake of sanity and time.

Just wanted to make a comment about whois information.

With the new guidelines it's sometimes a pain in the ass to change the contact info. @stub and I just did a deal on NP where the domain wouldn't change accounts while simultaneously changing the whois. So I pushed the name with my contact info. The domain is defiantly in his account and he owns it, but anyone looking up the whois would think I still owned the name.

I have a few like that as well. Not many. In one case the seller won't respond so his info is still there. Eh.

 

[GeorgeK]

Tucows acquired Rightside's interest in Namejet as a part of the eNom acquisition:

http://domainnamewire.com/2017/01/20/tucows-acquires-enom-rightside/

I wonder if Tucows might have a cause of action against Rightside to recover some of the money they paid in that deal, if these issues weren't fully disclosed to Tucows when they acquired Namejet. Conceivably, this might end up impacting the Donuts acquisition of Rightside (and might be reflected at some point in Rightside's stock price).

NB: I don't have any position in Tucows or Rightside shares (although my company is a happy customer of Tucows).

 

[equity78]

And at GoDaddy you can't even see who is bidding, making it difficult for the community to keep an eye on things. @Joe Styler This is precisely why having public handles is a good thing.

http://tldinvestors.com/2017/07/its-time-for-godaddy-to-initiate-bidder-ids-to-godaddy-auctions.html

 

[Silentptnr]

I can see who the booths are, but who or what is HDKN?

I too have read articles about a possible automated account bidding. I only looked briefly today and I cant believe that is a human. Immense numbers of bids. And yet i havent seen sales by this user.

It would be easy to suspend a bot.

And far too many right near reserve to be any coincidence.

 

[jaybuk]

I can see who the booths are, but who or what is HDKN?

I too have read articles about a possible automated account bidding. I only looked briefly today and I cant believe that is a human. Immense numbers of bids. And yet i havent seen sales by this user.

It would be easy to suspend a bot.

And far too many right near reserve to be any coincidence.

I think it is quite obvious who HKDN is or is connected to. The WHOIS appears to be for a non existent company in the Seychelles. Also the phone number is invalid. I connected the dots in an earlier post on this thread.

 

[offthehandle]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shill

Read this article. This is human behavior, and not just in auctions. To state that is somehow going to be erradicated is naive. Sorry. It's like the war on drugs farce.

No matter how many checks and balances are made in software, all someone has to do is ask their girlfriend to bid, then next time their other girlfiend, then their half cousin, etc. The loopholes are endless.

The true reality is this is never going to end. Even with an audit if it finds something, people are banned, shill bidding will never go away. It will just morph into someone else proxy bidding. There are no clean auctions, I have been to hundreds. There are only those auctions that are "less dirty", auction houses try their best to police, but it won't go away. Period. It's the reality of life, like crooked lobbying. It's garbage. but it's all about greed and money.

Caveat emptor always. You do your best not to overpay, and that is all you can do. There are less bargains to be had now in the digital age, so people are also greedier. Sure it can be cleaned up, but without identification by physical sight of all bidders it will be very tough to police. Even at that, you never know who they all are and who they represent or work for.

 

[xn--v4h.com]

I skipped over the last 20 pages for sake of sanity and time.

Just wanted to make a comment about whois information.

With the new guidelines it's sometimes a pain in the ass to change the contact info. @stub and I just did a deal on NP where the domain wouldn't change accounts while simultaneously changing the whois. So I pushed the name with my contact info. The domain is defiantly in his account and he owns it, but anyone looking up the whois would think I still owned the name.

Yes but to place that domain into auction, the new owner has to prove it's his or her domain, and that is done only through changing the registrant info.

 

[aceeca]

This risk is the opportunity cost. I really am surprised nobody understands that!!!!!!

If i put xyz.com in auction and its about to sell for $10,000 and I bid $10,100 then i have made the decision that i rather have the domain name xyz.com than the $10,000 (minus auction commission). If I rather have $10,000 then i let someone else win.

Free market capitalism 101.

Question, if you win bidding on your own auction say for $100K, will you pay $100K to yourself ?

If Yes, why will you pay , you already own the domain.
If No, why not , by bidding you are agreeing to pay for the domain ?

 

[ikehook]

Yes but to place that domain into auction, the new owner has to prove it's his or her domain, and that is done only through changing the registrant info.

That's really not accurate. I've sold a ton of Chinese type stuff the last few months, mostly with 1 bid at $69(so don't get excited) but it was through a featured auction with numerous sellers. The whois info was mine but I was sending it to someone else to auction off, as far as namejet knew I didn't have anything to do with the auction.

 

[xn--v4h.com]

That's really not accurate. I've sold a ton of Chinese type stuff the last few months, mostly with 1 bid at $69(so don't get excited) but it was through a featured auction with numerous sellers. The whois info was mine but I was sending it to someone else to auction off, as far as namejet knew I didn't have anything to do with the auction.

So you're telling me NameJet doesn't even verify the owner of the domain?

 

[ikehook]

So you're telling me NameJet doesn't even verify the owner of the domain?

I seriously don't think they do at all. Maybe for individuals, but I don't see how they would do it with some of the bigger promoted auctions. We've done a couple at DSAD, we handled the information and verification not namejet.

 

[offthehandle]

eBay are all to aware of this spiralling problem, and seem to have little or no way of detecting or preventing it. eBay are basically reliant on vigilant members to identify fraudulant activity.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/gds/How-To-Id...ques-And-Avoid-Them-/10000000004987485/g.html

 

[xn--v4h.com]

I seriously don't think they do at all. Maybe for individuals, but I don't see how they would do it with some of the bigger promoted auctions. We've done a couple at DSAD, we handled the information and verification not namejet.

Wow that's quite shocking to me. Thanks for the info!