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Fast Transfer does not mean Fast Transfer at Afternic

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I sold a name on Afternic on 12/1 and I just received a notice today that payment is scheduled for 12/12. The buyer paid immediately when he purchased the name. I received confirmation of that.
I sent emails asking for a payment date and it takes days for them to answer and the dates are always different.
I spoke to a rep on the phone this morning who was just rude.

I finally received an explanation today:
"I apologize for your troubles and the frustration this has caused. Fast transfer sales are an option for customers to have a hand's off experience in the transfer process of the domain however these sales do not mean that you will receive a faster payment."

Why is it called Fast Transfer? Seems blatantly misleading.
Notice that the explanation says nothing about the process being fast, in fact, it says you will not see a faster payment. The name should be changed, its lying.

I can use Escrow.com and get a deal done in 2 days - why so long Afternic? Why would I wait 2 weeks for a hands off approach? I can transfer a name within seconds.
 
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They can't release payment until they confirm the buyer has taken possession of the domain.
The transfer isn't fast either - the buyer just received the name today and I am still waiting for payment. It's been 12 days!
That is the catch, the buyer has to receive the domain, once they confirm this if it is early enough in the day, your payment can hit within the same day via paypal, or 1-2 days via bank. The key is they have to confirm the transfer is with the buyer. Now you will get paid maybe Wednesday via paypal, or Wed/Thurs via bank. Someone should have auto expressed it so it didn't take 5 days to countdown the transfer.

You have to make sure the status changes to transfer confirmed, otherwise your funds will not move until that step is complete. You might have to make a call to remind the broker to do that, I am sure they get busy with a lot inquiries over there.
 
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They can't release payment until they confirm the buyer has taken possession of the domain.

That is the catch, the buyer has to receive the domain, once they confirm this if it is early enough in the day, your payment can hit within the same day via paypal, or 1-2 days via bank. The key is they have to confirm the transfer is with the buyer. Now you will get paid maybe Wednesday via paypal, or Wed/Thurs via bank. Someone should have auto expressed it so it didn't take 5 days to countdown the transfer.
This is what I've told them, showing the whois screenshot with the buyers details, The answer was that they still need to verify the payment for 7 days, so it doesn't have anything to do with the buyer receiving the domain.
 
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This is what I've told them, showing the whois screenshot with the buyers details, The answer was that they still need to verify the payment for 7 days, so it doesn't have anything to do with the buyer receiving the domain.
So all your payouts are held for 7 days? I have never had that issue, I think others can probably confirm some pretty fast payouts out of afternic also. Sometimes a deal hits a transfer snag, like if the buyer wants it at netsol or something, but not really their fault.
 
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So all your payouts are held for 7 days? I have never had that issue, I think others can probably confirm some pretty fast payouts out of afternic also. Sometimes a deal hits a transfer snag, like if the buyer wants it at netsol or something, but not really their fault.
Not 7, between 11 and 17. I've heard about some fast payouts, usually when the domain is at godaddy and goes to godaddy, but I've heard about 2 months payouts as well, so you never know. I will not start using godaddy just to make afternic happy.
 
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Sometimes a deal hits a transfer snag, like if the buyer wants it at netsol or something, but not really their fault.

This shouldn't be seller's problem. Why would the seller wait 7,10,14 days for the buyer to confirm the transfer when fast transfering? The domain leaves your account right away, it's Afternic's problem to ensure the buyer receive the domain fast and smooth... in the end they are domain brokers not just payment processors and we all know what fees they charge.
 
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There is no comparison between DAN / Epik (near zero activity marketplaces) and something like Afternic / DynaDot (tens of thousands of actual buyers scouring daily).

Two Year review Afternic DomainAgents Sedo DynaDot Flippa Uniregistry UNDeveloped (DAN) marketplace
https://www.namepros.com/threads/tw...registry-undeveloped-dan-marketplace.1141640/

So, whether DAN / Epik pay you quickly or not, the chance of making a sale in their marketplaces is close to zero.
 
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it took almost 15 days for the payment to hit my bank from the date the domain was sold. Though the domain was removed just immediately at the time of BIN.
 
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Same experience here, the domain was out in a few hours while the payment took almost 10 days to my bank and there are people here that complain if they don't receive their payment in 24 hours
 
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I will not start using godaddy just to make afternic happy.
The same on GD Auctions, they use the same payout procedure.
I lost ~3 weeks in 2018 awaiting their ACH...
It was my 1st and last sale there.
 
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Regarding terms...
It must be renamed to something like AUTOTRANSFER (because it actually means: without seller's participation).
 
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I was paid this morning- maybe they are starting to listen?
 
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I sold a name on Afternic on 12/1 and I just received a notice today that payment is scheduled for 12/12. The buyer paid immediately when he purchased the name. I received confirmation of that.
I sent emails asking for a payment date and it takes days for them to answer and the dates are always different.
I spoke to a rep on the phone this morning who was just rude.

I finally received an explanation today:
"I apologize for your troubles and the frustration this has caused. Fast transfer sales are an option for customers to have a hand's off experience in the transfer process of the domain however these sales do not mean that you will receive a faster payment."

Why is it called Fast Transfer? Seems blatantly misleading.
Notice that the explanation says nothing about the process being fast, in fact, it says you will not see a faster payment. The name should be changed, its lying.

I can use Escrow.com and get a deal done in 2 days - why so long Afternic? Why would I wait 2 weeks for a hands off approach? I can transfer a name within seconds.
Fast Transfer means Fast Transfer not Fast Payment. Although it is typically faster payment with that then the slow transfer.

I can give you the complete history here for everyone since I was closely involved with the project about 5 years ago where we came up with that name. The problem we encountered was that there is no standard industry term for these types of sales. Many people (us included then) used the term premium to denote a fast transfer domain. But Premium means a lot of things depending on who you are and who is selling it. Many other companies adopted that term to be used for domains but that made it even more complex. So it could be a Premium Listing with GoDaddy, not related to anything Afternic, or a Premium domain from the registry reserve inventory, or a Premium name meaning a higher tier new GTLD or a myriad of other uses.

This was leading to a lot of confusion for customers and for our front line support and confused buyers. Hi I bought or I sold this Premium domain and I want to know the status, what should I expect. Well... not sure there's a dozen or so types of premium domains which one are you talking about?

To keep it brief I will now move on to the Fast Transfer vs. Slow Transfer terms use. A Slow Transfer denotes what people typically think of as a transfer, unlocking the domain, corresponding with the new owner, giving them the auth code, etc.

Using Fast Transfer as a term vs. Premium is more helpful because it's less easy to use in multiple ways, e.g. a registry reserve name or higher priced tier premium name is not going to transfer to you so Fast Transfer doesn't work for that. What Fast transfer means on the Afternic side is that you opt in with your registrar in advance so that when the domain sells it moves automatically without any further action on your end, (in most cases). It specifically means it is part of the Afternic Premium Network vs the Standard Network, https://www.afternic.com/sell-domains. The big benefit of having a name as Fast Transfer is that it is in the Afternic Premium Network which is an expanded network of over 100 reseller sites (registrars, etc) vs 32 sites on the Standard Network. More eyeballs = more sales. Also end user buyers have less to do on Fast Transfer, the name comes into their account with in most cases no additional work compared to a new registration which is what they are most familiar with, the name just shows up in their account. The less friction we have in the process the higher the sell through rate for your domains. These are the big advantages of Fast Transfer and why we chose to call it Fast Transfer vs. Premium or making up a new term. We never mention anything about payment.

We are looking at ways to speed up payment, but we need to balance that with the needs of partners, fraud concerns, and also with keeping less friction in the process. The more friction the less sales commence. So we could use a third party to help mitigate fraud or help with the processes of the partner site the domain is sold on, but that introduces more friction which causes more sales to stall or not take place. The end result is a mix, some sales are paid faster, some slower, and some never complete as people drop off at various points of friction, the more hoops to jump through the more chance someone will give up. We haven't gotten 100% there but we have consistently over the years reduced the friction and added more partners to help improve the sell through rate for our customer's domains.

We do pay faster on GoDaddy Auction sales, many times the day after the domain moves to the buyer. We could technically do this on Afternic, but I personally have pushed back on it until we continue to refine the auctions process and get a very good balance on customer experience, speed to payment, and fraud mitigation. We are getting there and we have been making progress towards paying faster on Afternic. There are also some accounting and regulatory things we need to work within the constraints of when making payment changes.

We do not want to hold the money any longer than we have to, but there are many things that come into play. Some partners take longer to clear the funds for fraud than others, sometimes the fast transfer breaks, and sometimes we are concerned with fraud. It is relatively easy to get a domain back when there is fraud, but it is not as easy to get your money back once it is paid out. So we pay you for a sale and three days later find out the guy who bought it hacked an account somewhere be it email or whatever logged into an third party account and bought your domain using a credit card on file and then the real card holder calls his bank and they reverse the charge. We are out that money. It is a big benefit to using a marketplace like us, in that we take on the risk for the sales, but it also comes at a cost in some added time for payment.

We also continue to work on speeding up payments across the board. For example when I started in auctions a decade ago it was a 20 day payout window on any sale. That continues to improve over time to in many cases the next day now. Afternic was the same, we have redone the back end way transactions work in an effort to pay faster, we also just hired another person in that department that deals specifically with payment transactions to help make sure we are able to handle any manual things faster as they come up.

Sorry for the long explanation but it seemed that many people were confused. Which is kind of why we decided to use new terms vs Premium :) to differentiate what exactly we mean when we say Fast Transfer.

Also please PM me the domain you sold. I am sorry to hear about your job so close to the holidays especially. If there is anything I can do to speed up your payment I will certainly try.
 
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I sold a name on Afternic on 12/1 and I just received a notice today that payment is scheduled for 12/12. The buyer paid immediately when he purchased the name. I received confirmation of that.
I sent emails asking for a payment date and it takes days for them to answer and the dates are always different.
I spoke to a rep on the phone this morning who was just rude.

I finally received an explanation today:
"I apologize for your troubles and the frustration this has caused. Fast transfer sales are an option for customers to have a hand's off experience in the transfer process of the domain however these sales do not mean that you will receive a faster payment."

Why is it called Fast Transfer? Seems blatantly misleading.
Notice that the explanation says nothing about the process being fast, in fact, it says you will not see a faster payment. The name should be changed, its lying.

I can use Escrow.com and get a deal done in 2 days - why so long Afternic? Why would I wait 2 weeks for a hands off approach? I can transfer a name within seconds.


congrats on the sale

fast transfer has nothing to do with fast payment
i got my money after weeks too but it,s ok

the buyer feel comfortable thats all what is important
 
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Fast Transfer means Fast Transfer not Fast Payment. Although it is typically faster payment with that then the slow transfer.

I can give you the complete history here for everyone since I was closely involved with the project about 5 years ago where we came up with that name. The problem we encountered was that there is no standard industry term for these types of sales. Many people (us included then) used the term premium to denote a fast transfer domain. But Premium means a lot of things depending on who you are and who is selling it. Many other companies adopted that term to be used for domains but that made it even more complex. So it could be a Premium Listing with GoDaddy, not related to anything Afternic, or a Premium domain from the registry reserve inventory, or a Premium name meaning a higher tier new GTLD or a myriad of other uses.

This was leading to a lot of confusion for customers and for our front line support and confused buyers. Hi I bought or I sold this Premium domain and I want to know the status, what should I expect. Well... not sure there's a dozen or so types of premium domains which one are you talking about?

To keep it brief I will now move on to the Fast Transfer vs. Slow Transfer terms use. A Slow Transfer denotes what people typically think of as a transfer, unlocking the domain, corresponding with the new owner, giving them the auth code, etc.

Using Fast Transfer as a term vs. Premium is more helpful because it's less easy to use in multiple ways, e.g. a registry reserve name or higher priced tier premium name is not going to transfer to you so Fast Transfer doesn't work for that. What Fast transfer means on the Afternic side is that you opt in with your registrar in advance so that when the domain sells it moves automatically without any further action on your end, (in most cases). It specifically means it is part of the Afternic Premium Network vs the Standard Network, https://www.afternic.com/sell-domains. The big benefit of having a name as Fast Transfer is that it is in the Afternic Premium Network which is an expanded network of over 100 reseller sites (registrars, etc) vs 32 sites on the Standard Network. More eyeballs = more sales. Also end user buyers have less to do on Fast Transfer, the name comes into their account with in most cases no additional work compared to a new registration which is what they are most familiar with, the name just shows up in their account. The less friction we have in the process the higher the sell through rate for your domains. These are the big advantages of Fast Transfer and why we chose to call it Fast Transfer vs. Premium or making up a new term. We never mention anything about payment.

We are looking at ways to speed up payment, but we need to balance that with the needs of partners, fraud concerns, and also with keeping less friction in the process. The more friction the less sales commence. So we could use a third party to help mitigate fraud or help with the processes of the partner site the domain is sold on, but that introduces more friction which causes more sales to stall or not take place. The end result is a mix, some sales are paid faster, some slower, and some never complete as people drop off at various points of friction, the more hoops to jump through the more chance someone will give up. We haven't gotten 100% there but we have consistently over the years reduced the friction and added more partners to help improve the sell through rate for our customer's domains.

We do pay faster on GoDaddy Auction sales, many times the day after the domain moves to the buyer. We could technically do this on Afternic, but I personally have pushed back on it until we continue to refine the auctions process and get a very good balance on customer experience, speed to payment, and fraud mitigation. We are getting there and we have been making progress towards paying faster on Afternic. There are also some accounting and regulatory things we need to work within the constraints of when making payment changes.

We do not want to hold the money any longer than we have to, but there are many things that come into play. Some partners take longer to clear the funds for fraud than others, sometimes the fast transfer breaks, and sometimes we are concerned with fraud. It is relatively easy to get a domain back when there is fraud, but it is not as easy to get your money back once it is paid out. So we pay you for a sale and three days later find out the guy who bought it hacked an account somewhere be it email or whatever logged into an third party account and bought your domain using a credit card on file and then the real card holder calls his bank and they reverse the charge. We are out that money. It is a big benefit to using a marketplace like us, in that we take on the risk for the sales, but it also comes at a cost in some added time for payment.

We also continue to work on speeding up payments across the board. For example when I started in auctions a decade ago it was a 20 day payout window on any sale. That continues to improve over time to in many cases the next day now. Afternic was the same, we have redone the back end way transactions work in an effort to pay faster, we also just hired another person in that department that deals specifically with payment transactions to help make sure we are able to handle any manual things faster as they come up.

Sorry for the long explanation but it seemed that many people were confused. Which is kind of why we decided to use new terms vs Premium :) to differentiate what exactly we mean when we say Fast Transfer.

Also please PM me the domain you sold. I am sorry to hear about your job so close to the holidays especially. If there is anything I can do to speed up your payment I will certainly try.
A long story, but it's more like a marketing story than one trying to explain issues. The issues can be deal't in a couple of phrases, answering questions like: Why undeveloped and epik can pay in hours and afternic needs 10-15 days or so, they don't deal with the same buyers/sellers/domains? Why it takes 3 days or more to get a reply from afternic support, when at others takes minutes? They are simple question and some simple answers will suffice.
 
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I was paid this morning- maybe they are starting to listen?
Just saw this. Maybe but I am one of the few people who is on Namepros and I was in late today for personal reasons so I think they just did it on their own. :)
 
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Just saw this. Maybe but I am one of the few people who is on Namepros and I was in late today for personal reasons so I think they just did it on their own. :)
I just got back on myself - I really do appreciate that you took the time to explain. Thank you Joe!
 
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A long story, but it's more like a marketing story than one trying to explain issues. The issues can be deal't in a couple of phrases, answering questions like: Why undeveloped and epik can pay in hours and afternic needs 10-15 days or so, they don't deal with the same buyers/sellers/domains? Why it takes 3 days or more to get a reply from afternic support, when at others takes minutes? They are simple question and some simple answers will suffice.
I think I gave a pretty long explanation already. There are pros and cons for anything as people have pointed out already on the thread and you need to decide for yourself. We have a very large reach, lots of customers and lots of sales, we also work with a hundred or so different partners. With that breadth of reach comes added time but more sales. If you only sell on GoDaddy auctions you get paid in hours, but you get less reach than that of Afternic. Although setting up a landing page for GoDaddy auction and selling on the Auctions only would be more apples to apples vs Epik or Dan, but I would guess we have more reach by volume of potential buyers on the auctions site then they would, also we have a wider brand recognition and trust among average end users. They are more likely to know who we are and send their money to someone they know. That is not to say anything bad about either Dan or Epik, they are both good companies with people who want to innovate and push everyone in the industry to continue to improve. I would trust them with my money and have nothing against them. I am just saying GoDaddy has a wider brand reach and I think that helps so apples to apples without an expanded network we do pay in hours, and I would argue sell more.
But Apples to Oranges on Afternic we have a very wide network of partners, over 100. This means much more exposure for your domains. It also means local language and marketing by those companies in China, or India, or Germany, etc. We also have local sales and support agents in Europe and China to help close deals in local time, and local language, on the phone at Afternic etc, etc. You have to decide on your own the benefits of each sales platform and how it meets your individual needs.
 
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Who cares? The afternic DLS sells a ton of names, that’s all that matters to me! I won’t “not” list with their network because I have to wait a week to get the funds.
 
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I think I gave a pretty long explanation already. There are pros and cons for anything as people have pointed out already on the thread and you need to decide for yourself. We have a very large reach, lots of customers and lots of sales, we also work with a hundred or so different partners. With that breadth of reach comes added time but more sales. If you only sell on GoDaddy auctions you get paid in hours, but you get less reach than that of Afternic. Although setting up a landing page for GoDaddy auction and selling on the Auctions only would be more apples to apples vs Epik or Dan, but I would guess we have more reach by volume of potential buyers on the auctions site then they would, also we have a wider brand recognition and trust among average end users. They are more likely to know who we are and send their money to someone they know. That is not to say anything bad about either Dan or Epik, they are both good companies with people who want to innovate and push everyone in the industry to continue to improve. I would trust them with my money and have nothing against them. I am just saying GoDaddy has a wider brand reach and I think that helps so apples to apples without an expanded network we do pay in hours, and I would argue sell more.
But Apples to Oranges on Afternic we have a very wide network of partners, over 100. This means much more exposure for your domains. It also means local language and marketing by those companies in China, or India, or Germany, etc. We also have local sales and support agents in Europe and China to help close deals in local time, and local language, on the phone at Afternic etc, etc. You have to decide on your own the benefits of each sales platform and how it meets your individual needs.
So apples to apples would be a sale through standard network at afternic and a sale at undeveloped or epik, because you don't need all those registrar for a basic sale, no? The only issue is that even if it's a basic sale, without having anything to do with others and it still takes afternic 10-15 days to release the payments. Last year when I had my last sale through godaddy it still took 20 days to get paid, so I didn't felt the progress, now I don't list at godaddy anymore. About the trust issue, if you compare the european market, I don't know if there is any trust difference compared to undeveloped at least. Also, how it;s possible to move a domain in (seconds/minutes/even hours), with whois confirmation of the new owner, but you are saying that you still need to verify it, when the domain is long gone. It will be the same after one minute or one day, you don't need to wait 10 days after the whois change, to disburse the payment.
 
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Who cares? The afternic DLS sells a ton of names, that’s all that matters to me! I won’t “not” list with their network because I have to wait a week to get the funds.
Maybe for you, in my case, I get tens more inquiries where my landing pages are, than with the 100 registrars from the afternic DLS. Also, if you are flipping domains, I can reinvest 4-5 times more that amount, which I get in 15 hours, until I get the 13-15 days payout from afternic.
 
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So apples to apples would be a sale through standard network at afternic and a sale at undeveloped or epik, because you don't need all those registrar for a basic sale, no? The only issue is that even if it's a basic sale, without having anything to do with others and it still takes afternic 10-15 days to release the payments. Last year when I had my last sale through godaddy it still took 20 days to get paid, so I didn't felt the progress, now I don't list at godaddy anymore. About the trust issue, if you compare the european market, I don't know if there is any trust difference compared to undeveloped at least. Also, how it;s possible to move a domain in (seconds/minutes/even hours), with whois confirmation of the new owner, but you are saying that you still need to verify it, when the domain is long gone. It will be the same after one minute or one day, you don't need to wait 10 days after the whois change, to disburse the payment.

No apples to apples would be GoDaddy alone vs Epik or Dan alone. On most auction sales we pay out very quickly.

GoDaddy is the parent company of many European brands so we have European brand recognition as well under various names.

On the Afternic standard Network we have 32 reseller partners. That is still apples to oranges. That is different from Epik or Dan. Anytime you add in more companies you have more people and systems and regulations etc to deal with. There is nothing wrong with that, again it is personal preference. With 32 partners you have broader brand recognition as well. End users are going to the companies they know to buy a domain and your domain is showing up there if it is a partner. If it is in the Fast transfer network you have over 100 partners so it is even broader.
 
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Maybe for you, in my case, I get tens more inquiries where my landing pages are, than with the 100 registrars from the afternic DLS. Also, if you are flipping domains, I can reinvest 4-5 times more that amount, which I get in 15 hours, until I get the 13-15 days payout from afternic.
Thats good then. If it is working for you better that way you should continue to do it. I am not saying what to do, I am only pointing out the differences in approach and features and answering some of the questions as to why we operate like we do. As I said there are pros and cons to each and everyone needs to use what works best for them. If you do that it helps everyone. The more people are successful in investing in domains the better it is for everyone involved.
 
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I have to chime in that maybe I'm lucky, but I get paid through Afternic very quickly. Almost like clockwork. The pattern I see is that perhaps they give the buyer an inspection period or something because I get paid in 72 hours pretty much every time.

Now, on non-fast transfer transactions it can take longer. I sold a name a couple of weeks ago through an Afternic broker and ultimately I ended up waiting for the buyer to create an account at Dynadot (the name could only be pushed). The cool thing I learned on that one was that Afternic has holding accounts with most registrars for pushes. It worked out great.

Anyway, I truly think payment is reliable. I would always give 3 days after transfer confirmation.
 
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I am satisfied with Joes answer - I just wish the speed of payment was faster but I better understand the logistics.
Im all good - thank you @Joe Styler
 
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No apples to apples would be GoDaddy alone vs Epik or Dan alone. On most auction sales we pay out very quickly.

GoDaddy is the parent company of many European brands so we have European brand recognition as well under various names.

On the Afternic standard Network we have 32 reseller partners. That is still apples to oranges. That is different from Epik or Dan. Anytime you add in more companies you have more people and systems and regulations etc to deal with. There is nothing wrong with that, again it is personal preference. With 32 partners you have broader brand recognition as well. End users are going to the companies they know to buy a domain and your domain is showing up there if it is a partner. If it is in the Fast transfer network you have over 100 partners so it is even broader.
Why comparing Godaddy( a registrar) to dan(not a registrar), this is apples to apples? You should compare afternic to dan, both are marketplaces and not registrars. And is you don't count the afternic dls, beacuse you are saying that you need to work it out with another 100 registrars, than you should compare an afternic standard listing to dan standard listing. The result is the same, afternic has 13-15 days average for a standard listing, for disbursement(domain not a godaddy) and an average reply time of 3-4 days; dan has an average of 17 hours for disbursement and around 2-3 response time. So, do you see any difference?
 
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