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Bidding on your own names at NameJet...?

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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
 
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The domains are no longer owned by either Booth. They were sold. There is no discussion here. But if they are going, at no reserve, for competitive prices, we are always interested. I am sure James would concur.
 
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Actually, you will find they are listed by another seller. I moved these domains on. How is this disgraceful? James is bidding because he wants these names (formerly owned by me) at those prices. I am bidding on these names (formerly owned by me), because it's for a price I would buy it back for, IE for less than I let them go to begin with. It isn't shill bidding, as evidenced by buying AirplanesforSale.com. Find something better to complain about.

If thats the case, cool.

You have to admit though, it does seem odd that you are listed in whois as the owner of moviezone.com and are the highest bidder right now with an hour to go in the auction.

Perhaps the previous owner never updated the whois and left your in there?
 
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Actually, you will find they are listed by another seller.

Skimmed through WHOIS for 100 of domains by this seller. I can confirm most WHOIS have the name of the seller screenshotted for (These.com)

I am bidding on these names (formerly owned by me), because it's for a price I would buy it back for

Why not bid on LawTeacher.com? For sale by the same seller of the domains in question...

upload_2017-7-18_15-8-16.png
 
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I sold them all very recently. If you do a more up to date whois lookup, you would see ALL domains we are bidding on are no longer with us. As I say, if they're buyable at a reasonable price, I would take them back. If the new owner wants them listed with no reserve, that's their risk/responsibility.
 
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Actually, you will find they are listed by another seller. I moved these domains on. How is this disgraceful? James is bidding because he wants these names (formerly owned by me) at those prices. I am bidding on these names (formerly owned by me), because it's for a price I would buy it back for, IE for less than I let them go to begin with. It isn't shill bidding, as evidenced by buying AirplanesforSale.com. Find something better to complain about.

MovieZone.com -

Current whois -

Admin Name: ANDY BOOTH
Admin Organization: BOOTH.COM
Admin Email: [email protected]

Current high bidder -
boothcom $2,475 7/17/2017 1:58 PM

WrestlingWorld.com -

Current whois -

Admin Name: ANDY BOOTH
Admin Organization: BOOTH.COM
Admin Email: [email protected]

Current high bidder -
bqdncom $541 7/18/2017 8:04 AM

I don't understand....

Brad
 
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Airlinejobs.com shows this in whois currently and auction has not ended yet. BQDNcom highest bidder.

Registrant Name: ANDY BOOTH
Registrant Organization: BOOTH.COM

Bidders at NJ

bqdncom $2,510 7/18/2017 10:12 AM
merlix $2,410 7/18/2017 9:53 AM
equin0x $1,657 7/18/2017 8:16 AM
camb $1,557 7/18/2017 7:55 AM
boothcom $1,500 7/18/2017 7:55 AM
 
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Actually, you will find they are listed by another seller. I moved these domains on. How is this disgraceful? James is bidding because he wants these names (formerly owned by me) at those prices. I am bidding on these names (formerly owned by me), because it's for a price I would buy it back for, IE for less than I let them go to begin with. It isn't shill bidding, as evidenced by buying AirplanesforSale.com. Find something better to complain about.

That my friend is pure BS !!
 
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These are not recent Whois lookups. They transferred out of my account. I don't own them. I have every right to bid on them to buy back.
 
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The domains are no longer owned by either Booth. They were sold. There is no discussion here. But if they are going, at no reserve, for competitive prices, we are always interested. I am sure James would concur.

No sales for LawTeacher, LACollege, MovieZone, MeatLoadRecipe, or WrestlingWorld on NameBio....

End this discussion by furnishing sales records. (email, escrow, ANYTHING) as this looks very suspicious to the naked eye.

Edit: It's funny that this seller is able to update WHOIS for other domains. Besides WHOIS privacy, a review of domains sold by this seller, show only two WHOIS names. Andy Booth and Oliver H (Oliver H is the presumed sellers account)
 
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Regardless of who owns what or when the whois lookups were performed I think most would agree that the optics do not look good.
 
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These are not recent Whois lookups. They transferred out of my account. I don't own them. I have every right to bid on them to buy back.

The current whois shows it right now. Feel free to look.

Brad
 
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I don't get how this type of collusion is even allowed by NameJet? It makes zero sense.
 
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It's just not possible for someone who bought a domain from you, to instantly become desperate and sell his domain on NJ at no reserve !!
Either you're a great seller or the buyer is not in his senses.
 
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Here's a real-time WhoIs lookup: https://gwhois.org/

Maybe your buyer didn't change the WhoIs.
 
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It's just not possible for someone who bought a domain from you, to instantly become desperate and sell his domain on NP at no reserve !!
Either you're a great seller or the buyer is not in his senses.
NJ*
 
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Hi all - Thanks for the heads-up. We are currently investigating this matter. We obviously do not condone any kind of shill bidding on NameJet, so we take this very seriously. I will post an update when I have one. Thanks again.

-JT
Also look into yesterday's AirplanesForSale.com auction, please. I lost out to James Booth (bqdncom), but boothcom was bidding during the final minutes too. I'm worried collusion & perhaps more was going on as it could have been their domain to begin with from what I'm reading here. Thanks.
 
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Also look into yesterday's AirplanesForSale.com auction, please. I lost out to James Booth (bqdncom), but boothcom was bidding during the final minutes too. I'm worried collusion & perhaps more was going on as it could have been their domain to begin with from what I'm reading here. Thanks.

March 16th, 2017 - the domain was owned by Andy Booth.

Current WHOIS - shows the domain owned by James Booth.
 
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I just won AirplanesForSale.com and guess what it got charged on my card straight away with fees. I have my own company and my own domains. I have bid against my brother on several names at Namejet. JLZ.com, MDO.com for example. Find something better to moan about. From what I understand Andy sold a bunch of names to someone who lists most of their names at Namejet with no reserves. If you can win a name back for a fraction of the price why wouldnt you. I guarantee most people would do that.
 
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I just won AirplanesForSale.com and guess what it got charged on my card straight away with fees.

The thing is, it was in Booth.com name (edit) prior to auction end. I looked up about 7 of these domains a week ago when I entered my bids. There are several auctions posted here that have not yet ended and are in Andy's name.

Whatever the reason may be, would you say that looks suspicious?
 
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I will wait until more comes out, but you can't blame people for being suspicious.

The whois says Andy Booth for both MovieZone.com and WrestlingWorld.com. These are both currently in auction. The leading bids are from boothcom and bqdncom on those domains. Something clearly does not make sense.

Brad
 
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Hi all - Thanks for the heads-up. We are currently investigating this matter. We obviously do not condone any kind of shill bidding on NameJet, so we take this very seriously. I will post an update when I have one. Thanks again.

-JT
Let the community know.:xf.smile:
 
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Hi all - Thanks for the heads-up. We are currently investigating this matter. We obviously do not condone any kind of shill bidding on NameJet, so we take this very seriously. I will post an update when I have one. Thanks again.

-JT

Wow. I knew your company played favoritism, but I did not know you let people bid on their own domains. :xf.cool:
 
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this has to be investigated thorougly
 
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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).
 
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