GoDaddy Auction, outbid notice, 7 minutes to cure?

Happened to me on numerous occasions. It's all part of this crazy hustle called domaining. Better luck next time.

xynames said:

I have had this domain on backorder for a while now with GoDaddy, finally I got a notice that the domain had been dropped to auction

But the notice didn't tell me what the auction end date or time was. I didn't really look that hard, it wasn't a domain I needed life or death, but one that I've had my eye on for a bit.

By the time I even noticed the outbid email, the auction was already over, and it sold, for just five dollars more than my $10. auto-bid. The outbid notice email was sent at 1:08pm, the auction ended at 1:15pm.

If I had known, or been able, I would have entered an auto $50. max bid in advance, but for some reason I wasn't able to access GoDaddy auctions at all, until after the auction was over.

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Who was the high bidder ...913932

There were two bids, mine (lost) and the winner's ($5. higher).

But the initial notification should have let me know when the auction ended. It did not.

And the only other notification I got was that I had been outbid, with seven minutes to auction's end. Oh well.


That number you mention means nothing to me, has nothing to do with this auction.

I am not blaming GoDaddy so much as their lack of informative disclosure in their "copy/paste" emails.

To summarize: I had a domain backordered for a long time, and finally it dropped. I got one notice that it had gone to auction and a $10. bid was made on my behalf, but when I clicked on the link it would not allow me to even see the auction, nor did that email disclose when the auction was ending.

Apparently I could not see the auction because I was not registered for GD auctions. I didn't really feel like paying to register for just this one domain, and I was thinking about getting someone I trusted at NP to monitor the auction for me, but it was a busy week and I forgot about it. My fault.

Then exactly 12 days later an email came saying my $10. bid had been outbid, and seven minutes later the auction ended and I was outbid by $5. lol What is strange is that when I clicked on the link on that second email, I WAS allowed to search GD auctions and place bids, without registering or paying anything. But the only auction I was interested in was the one that had already ended. Seven minutes notice was inadequate.

My suggestion to GoDaddy, a simple suggestion, @Joe Styler is that within THIS email:

the FIRST one that comes to alert you that a domain you have backordered is going to auction, Please INCLUDE the date and time that the auction ends.

I guess the second bid arrived exactly because somebody else (yourself) placed the 1st bid. Domains with bids are public on auctions.godaddy.com, and folks use this criteria to build their "wish lists" (expired feed) and, on many occasions, for auction sniping.

GoDaddy backorder may work for all types of expired domains. If it is normal redemptionperiod - pendingdelete drop - and if they grab it [rare but not impossible] - then the private auction is started. But, if the domain in question belongs to exclusive pre-release feed (GoDaddy, tucows, name.com and some other registrars) - which more likely happened with the domain you backordered - then they start a public auction:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/huge-domains-sniping-godaddy-closeouts.1135689/

The 1st bid was placed automatically on my behalf as part of the backorder process.

Yes it was probably a public auction. Anyway my suggestion remains - that the first email notifying that a back ordered domain has gone to auction at least notify us of the time and date the auction will end.

xynames said:

The 1st bid was placed automatically on my behalf as part of the backorder process.

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Yes, this is how the things work @ gd ... The unfortunate part is that the auction was (likely) public and not private for this particular domain.

xynames said:

date the auction will end

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Yes, this would be great. An exact HH:MM may be unknown a week before, but the day - is definitely known to the system

xynames said:

Apparently I could not see the auction because I was not registered for GD auctions. I didn't really feel like paying to register for just this one domain

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lmaorotf .. sorry for laughing .. but it's just absurd the way that works. ^THIS^ more than all the glitches and bugs is EXACTLY why I keep saying the GoDaddy "platform" is a disaster. Because it's not just technical bugs .. those are amplified by the countless unexpected/illogical behaviour issues as well as the extremely imprecise and confusingly vague (and sometimes flat out wrong) emails/FAQs.

All these platform changes they are doing with the auctions a while back and now domain management are completely pointless if the real important things under the hood like instructions and communications are still as horrible as they were before ... "lipstick on a pig" is the saying that comes to mind. lol


The real thing that needs to be done here is one step beyond what you're asking. The first email should have been to inform you the domain was going to auction and DO YOU WANT THEM TO PLACE AN OPENING BID FOR YOU? Because there are multiple reasons why you wouldn't even want to enter an auction .. namely tipping your hand on a good domain to other domainers who will see your domain.

Beyond that .. before you choose whther you want it to go to auction, there obviously should have been an explanation as to how it works and that you would indeed be given access to that specific auction.

Do you know if you only had access to the auction after the other person bid?

xynames said:

There were two bids, mine (lost) and the winner's ($5. higher).

That number you mention means nothing to me, has nothing to do with this auction.

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That number means something to me, GD surrogate HD, thanks @wwwweb for bringin # to every domainers attn, mean somethin even if wasnt involved in this GD auction

Samer

xynames said:

the FIRST one that comes to alert you that a domain you have backordered is going to auction, Please INCLUDE the date and time that the auction ends.

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That's just a form letter, everyone gets the same. To do as you ask would require them to write a code of some sort and somehow customize the letter to your backorder. They have so much work to do on their old code to bring it up to snuff I doubt this is going to get any attention soon. A form letter is easy as pie, anything else starts to become more complex and as you can see the godaddy platform just recently started to get a bit modernized.

If I were a wagering man I would say the whole auction platform will get a rewrite and in the future the email will link you straight back to the control panel where all the auction start and end times will be present.

MapleDots said:

... the godaddy platform just recently started to get a bit modernized.

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"Here be dragons!" - The GoDaddy Platform 2019 1920 1290 1029

The first email had no link in it to go to the auction. It had no link at all. This is the email that I suggest include the end date for the auction. It could be merged into the email as a field the same way the domain name itself was merged into the email.

When I received that email I googled and found GD auctions but I had no access to it because I wasn’t a paid auction member.

Twelve days later, I received the second email just seven minutes before auction’s close. This email included a link to the auction or actually I think it was to GoDaddy auctions in general, but I didn’t even notice the email or click the link until about a half hour after the auction ended. Maybe it was due to clicking that link but for whatever reason I was now allowed full access to GD auctions via my normal GD account, with ability to bid (I tested this with a random auction listing, but didn’t go all the way through with the bid) even though I had still never signed up or paid anything, but in that the domain I was interested in had sold, I didn’t spend much time inside the auction portal other than to search and locate the auction listing in question, which had ended.