First of all. Many buyers trust Sedo but they don't know what risk the go in buying domains from this platforms. And Sedo presents 'Buyer Protection' on their website. That's a joke. I know that there are hundreds of domain transaction a day to handle. But if you handle a hundred dollar transaction on the same way like hundred thousand dollar transaction then you have lost and getting 10 or 15% commission for it. That's really unbelievable.
Sedo needs to increase much their security level for high priced domains.
- Checking Whois History
- Special Handling for Domains from special Registrars like Network Solutions. Would not be very complicated.
- Insurance possibility
I am working for a big company with 30000 Users on big ERP- and BW-Systems and Security is very important. Such companies should be very interested in preventing such stories. But obviously there is no interest while they get their money anyway and are saved by their contract conditions.
It's very hard to rebuild a bad reputation if such stories happens often.
"First of all. Many buyers trust Sedo but they don't know what risk the go in buying domains from this platforms. "
A thief may say that "I didn't know stealing is a bad thing. If I knew I wouldn't steal. I am really sorry, have just learned it. Thanks you all. You taught me a new thing. Please forgive me." Would you forgive?
Lack of knowledge after a bad experience is a self deceit of the victim. Because victim knows, if he/she tries something for the first time, bad things can happen and takes all the unknown risks. When the risks has been realized, bad thing happens, victim forgets everything and tries to deceive himself/herself first and then the other people by using the argument of lack of knowledge about the risks. Indeed, nothing is guaranteed and everyone knows this. Even the clearly guaranteed things may not protect anyone after the risk has realized. Example? In a global level huge financial crisis, the bank you deposited all your money may go bankrupt in one night like other banks, and the next morning insurance company/government may not be able to pay you the guaranteed insuranced amount in your bank account. OR, you may be very careful on what you eat, how you live but you may catch a cancer. Even if you take all the precautions, the risk may realize.
Murphy's law says "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong". If a bank can go banckrupt it will go bankcrupt. If there can be a very big financial crisis, it will happen. If you can be cancer you will be cancer. If you can buy a stolen domain, it will happen.
"- Checking Whois History"
It can't help. Whois updates say nothing to me. Even I never needed to look at Whois info for any reason, other than to know the domain age and expiration and registrar name. I don't need to know other info on Whois.
"- Special Handling for Domains from special Registrars like Network Solutions. Would not be very complicated."
It can help. If something happens again and again like a pattern, you may handle it more carefully. But what can be done? Would you be happy if Sedo refuses to list domains on their platform based on registrars? You may answer "yes" after the risk realized for you. But if you had no bad experience with any registrar, you would think Sedo discriminates registrars for no reason. It would affect Sedo's reputation and trust more negatively. It can help lowering the risks in one side but may rise the risks on the other "unknown" sides. Solving a problem should not create bigger problems. Medical doctors know this rule. First priority of doctors is "not to damage", curing comes secondary for them.
"- Insurance possibility"
It can help. Again, like "special handling", its damage to the business can be more compared to its expected benefit. Insurance system is based on punishing good things to compensate bad things. Insurance is a cost. The platform will reflect this extra cost to its prices (commissions). Customers who use only reliable registrars will be punished for the risks that are caused by the other users who don't use reliable registrars. You may end up with hating all kind of insurances if you contemplate for a long time on insurance.
"I am working for a big company with 30000 Users on big ERP- and BW-Systems and Security is very important."
I worked in the finance department of a multional insurance company, in its headquarter in my country. I worked for multiple companies (more than 20) -not only a single insurance company- which still have millions/billions of $$$$, millions/thousands of clients, thousands of suppliers, workers, distributors, branches, offices, cars, buildings, plants, etc. I work for myself for very long years. Companies pay you 1x even if you bring them extra 1,000x profit. Success is not paid, sometimes success may be punished if your managers envy or affraid of your success. Companies always pay you what's enough to survive for you, or a little better but never what you deserve. When you see this once, you can no longer work for any company. This happened to me for 20+ times in 20+ different companies. This is not fair.
"Such companies should be very interested in preventing such stories. But obviously there is no interest while they get their money anyway and are saved by their contract conditions."
You look at only one side, reputation, and you see it inadequately not in full. Company top management looks at all the sides which you can never see until you become the owner or top manager of a company. Reputation doesn't consist of only decreasing the number of complaints. You can easily repair broken reputation by making a donation to a popular non-profit organization, by sponsoring events like public music concerts, festivals, etc. The most dangerous thing to reputation is to raise the prices or to stop giving the free things. People are not affected by negative comments about a company. Even very few people read/hear/watch those. You can find too many negative comments about Paypal, Adsense, etc. on the internet if you search. If those negative events had an effect, Paypal would have no user. As this is a domaining forum "elephants and godaddy" story would be more familiar to the readers. What happened to godaddy? Nothing. It's still the leader in its industry. People don't care about unhappy customers until they become an unhappy customer.
"It's very hard to rebuild a bad reputation if such stories happens often."
Think about it again after reading the paragraph above.. It's a wrong assumption. The things don't go always rationally in the real life. People can take purchase decisions irrationally. Even I can defend "people rarely take purchase decisions rationally". This is one of the reasons of why the business life is unpredictable. Companies may pay 1x salary to a very clever male staff who brought 1000x profit and may pay 10x salary to a very sympathetic female staff who brought 1000x loss. Irrational financial decisions are at all levels, not only at consumer level.
There is a solution:
Buy domains from registrars. Registrars can monitor registrar accounts of any user, can read logs of updates in any domain, can see all the other domains in an account, can see credit card details, payment history, login hours, login countries, etc.. A registrar can revert back everything easier if someone tries to sell stolen domains on their platforms, can implement software that will lock transferring domain to buyer or payout to seller. It would be very hard for a third party marketplace or escrow service as they don't have the logs which a registrar has.
Let's assume registrar marketplace couldn't notice and you bought a stolen a domain from a registrar marketplace, the risk has just realized!. You can ask for refund from the registrar more confidently as they controlled everything during the sale. They had the domain before they took your money, then took your money and gave you the domain and then they removed the domain which you paid for, from your account. There is only 1 actor in this scenario: Registrar. Everything in this process has been processed by the same actor: registrar. If something bad happens, registrar can not explain the things easily, in the end they had the domain and received the money to give you the domain. How can this be explained when they are unable to give you the domain? They will have to refund your money if they can't give you the domain. In other words, they would pay the costs of not taking necessary precautions. But when you buy from a third party, you can not ask for refund from the registrar directly. Because the registrar doesn't have your money. You can ask for refund from the third party marketplace/escrow but they have no knowledge or impact on selling stolen domain to you.
A third party marketplace may have this 100% true explanation: "We are really sorry. We are ready to help you. But we didn't remove the domain from your registrar account after the sale, we don't know the reason, please ask your registrar." This explanation is 100% true with no doubt. They can't know why the domain has been removed from your registrar account. Because the only registrar account they can control is their own registrar account. They can't know what happened on other registrar accounts.