discuss Doing the right thing - How I could have made $35,000 but decided to move on.

[Arfy]

I just wanted to take a few minutes to write about a major crossroads that I was faced with today. To the left was $35,000 in profit and to the right, doing the right thing and $0. Let me explain from the beginning.

I recently acquired a few domain names as part of a cash+domains deal for one of my premium names. After a few weeks, I decided to add these to Uniregistry for sale. Uniregistry displayed an error after adding my domains to the account but some were added. One of the names wasn't showing and I wasn't sure if I would get an inquiry if one was to come through. To make sure, I decided to log a test inquiry from a different email address with a random 100k offer to see if it comes through to me.

After logging the inquiry, I carried on working on some other tasks and forgot all about it. A short while later, I received a message on Skype from the previous owner asking if I want to sell back a domain name he previously sold to me. I said, I'm looking for what would be a 50k profit for the name, thinking he would say too high (seeing as he sold it to me). He replied back with a 30k offer which shocked me, we quickly settled on what would be a 35k profit for me. A few minutes later he sent an Escrow agreement which I accepted. Wow, that was a nice surprise!

After a while I checked my emails and saw that a Uniregistry broker had sent me an email to my secondary email address. He mentioned that he would be discussing the 100k offer I had made as a test inquiry with the seller and get back to me ASAP. I checked my primary email address expected a message from him and saw nothing ... then it clicked. The domain was still under the previous owner's name and the broker had contacted him not me! That was the reason he was buying the name back from me and why he was so quick to do it. I felt a bit angry that he didn't let them know he doesn't own it nor did he tell me about the inquiry but rather tried to buy it back from me at a much lower price... if it was a genuine offer I would have paid him commission if he had brought me a lead.

I was now at a crossroads, do I take a $35,000 profit on the name? After all, I never told him to buy it back from me, he is doing it to make a quick buck (and he is very well off already). Or do I tell him that the offer he is basing this on is not real and do the right thing. After all, if I was willing to sell it to him he wasn't really ripping me off. Maybe he was just good a business. Does that mean I should also be good at business and just sell him the name and make the profit? What do I do?

After a few minutes I told myself that it would be against my morals and beliefs as a Muslim to profit from something that was not entirely right. It just feels wrong to proceed and I'm not that kind of person. I messaged him and explained what had happened. He cancelled the deal after hearing it. I also contacted the broker to let him know that inquiries need to come to me.

The morale of the story is: Money isn't everything, do what's right.

What would you have done in this situation?

thanks,

Arfy

 

[900Worldwide]

The old owner was the one being sneaky, but I don’t believe any money would have changed hands..

 

[Name Trader]

The old owner was the one being sneaky, but I don’t believe any money would have changed hands..

That's entire speculation. If that's how he became rich. It might have done He did after all open an Escrow transaction for it.

 

[poweredbyme]

More complicated hypothetical scenario:

What if the offer was made by someone else (e.g. partner of former owner) ?
OP wouldn't know the former owner was behind that offer.

Declining a good offer is usually a bad choice.

As to the moral part, let me share my own story. I sold a domain. 2 days later 50x offer came from another rmarketplace. I have never contacted the new owner or the person who made the offer, just logged in to that marketplace and deleted my domain there.

 

[youaintme]

WOW! Angel Domainer.

 

[Winterburn]

I wonder why are people waving this off as an imaginary scenario. There were actual offers on the table and as a broker approached the previous owner, it should have been enough conviction for him to pull the trigger with the 35k.

Arfy did not wait or checked out what would happen finally. He moved out of it when the possibilities were there. This, is the ethical part of it. If he was convinced that the deal would NOT go through and pulled out then it would be a different thing.

As for people who are complaining about why he did not try to remove the old listing, Arfy has already mentioned that it was confirmed by the previous owner that the name was removed.

This post has not made me a fan of Arfy, but I do not find it worth it to be a critic of what he has done and start bringing out unappreciative chain of thoughts. .

 

[Sutruk]

As for people who are complaining about why he did not try to remove the old listing, Arfy has already mentioned that it was confirmed by the previous owner that the name was removed.

He should have contacted the Marketplace asking to remove the previous listing, not the previous owner.
Confirmed by the previous owner? What you have to get is the confirmation of the Marketplace.
If you don't see the domain listed in your Marketplace listing accout, YOU KNOW the domain is not in your listing and it hasn't been removed from the previous owner listing. You don't have to get any confirmation from the previous owner to know this.

This, is the ethical part of it

The ethical part of this is that the OP started a fake chain of events making a $100k offer for a domain he already owns, and he already knew is not listed by him.
And the fake chain of events has been continued in a higher scale by the previous owner, trying to sell a domain that he didn't own. When he got the $100k offer, then he approached the current owner with a $35k offer, thinking he would get $65k because of the fake $100k offer.

 

[xynames]

Arfy’s describing taking “a $35,000 profit on the name” implies that he paid something for the domain. It was part of a cash + domains deal? Maybe we could understand the old owner’s willingness to pay $35,000 for it as well as his willingness to believe that someone would pay $100,000. for it if we knew what Arfy paid for it.

As far as this general scenario, I have multiple domains that are in escrow.com holding services with the buyer paying monthly. For each of these domains, since the buyer hasn’t made the final payment yet and the payment plans extend out many months (up to two years), I keep them listed for sale at something like 30x the price the buyer is paying me. I do this partly because I want to keep the domain for sale exposure out there in case the buyer defaults. If someone genuinely wanted to buy the domain at that 30x price, which is unlikely, I’d go to my buyer and propose that we sell the domain and split the profit.

 

[Chetan]

something similar happened with me as well
a friend who used to manage a part of my portfolio sold a domain for $4999 via his Afternic and told me that it was sold for $1500.
I only came to know about it via Godaddy appraisals a year later

 

[Arfy]

something similar happened with me as well
a friend who used to manage a part of my portfolio sold a domain for $4999 via his Afternic and told me that it was sold for $1500.
I only came to know about it via Godaddy appraisals a year later

that's despicable! Guessing he's no longer your friend?

 

[capybara]

And what if the GoDaddy appraisal result was a consequent sale and your friend really sold it for $1500?

 

[wwwweb]

something similar happened with me as well
a friend who used to manage a part of my portfolio sold a domain for $4999 via his Afternic and told me that it was sold for $1500.
I only came to know about it via Godaddy appraisals a year later

Poor management on your end, why are you using someone else's financial details, if they only manage your portfolio, they simply need to login, your financial details will submit payment to you.

 

[koolishman]

Poor management on your end, why are you using someone else's financial details, if they only manage your portfolio, they simply need to login, your financial details will submit payment to you.

Depends on the level of friendship also.