I need some help with serious GoDaddy/Afternic issue!

previous owner was BuyDomains.com?

I hope you're able to recover your domain.

I had an incident where some body listed one of my domain's at afternic to GD auction, luckily I received an email asking me to authorize the listing,

I replied them to remove the listing, as I did not list it for auction,

This's there response;

" Dear Customer,

Thank you for letting us know. We have gone ahead and removed the listing and issued a warning to the attempting listing party.

Regards,

Jess L.
Aftermarket Support "

“And so the sale will be honored. I don’t think you can get the domain back but you will be paid the amount it was sold for which is over 200% of what you paid for it.”

What a response! Why should she care about what you paid for the domain? The only thing that should matter here is whether GoDaddy or Afternic operated correctly or not.

Yeah .. I wonder what they would have said if you actually build out the domain into a website?

I keep some of my domains for my own person usage .. in those cases the domains are effectively priceless.

indiegrind said:

Look at this bs! This is not acceptable! Afternic sent me back to my premiere services rep, and here is her response.

Rod,



Thanks for your email. While I appreciate your feelings, as mentioned in our last call, the sale of the domain and for how much would need to be discussed with Afternic. If I was to make an assumption the domain was accepted into the Fast Transfer network by you. And so the sale will be honored. I don’t think you can get the domain back but you will be paid the amount it was sold for which is over 200% of what you paid for it. From my recall, the domain was never listed on Afternic for anything but what it sold for.

Keeping in mind this is all based on our last communication with the department communicating with Afternic. I recommend if you have any more questions about it, speak to Afternic as there is NOT anything else I can say or do to change what has happened. I hope that helps. Please let me know if there’s more I can do.



Be well,



Theresa Downs Barkley – Premier Services

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what a haughty answer. If you did not list it for that price or at all they need to fix it. I bet they wouldn’t tell MikeMann or another big boy stop your whining it sold for 200% what you paid for it. What you paid is irrelevant. GD/Afternic IS the devil. They have no standards or desire to improve because they being the huge known monopoly— don’t have to. No matter what crap policies or crap interface people will continue to give them money.

This is one of many issues.

I still can’t believe that 2FA isn’t an option on Afternic. That should be a top priority for GoDaddy.

No 2FA scares the crap out of me.

indiegrind said:

Yes, GoDaddy gets well into five figures a year from me, and right now I am looking at moving my business to dynadot.

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Do it sooner than later

karmaco said:

what a haughty answer. If you did not list it for that price or at all they need to fix it. I bet they wouldn’t tell MikeMann or another big boy stop your whining it sold for 200% what you paid for it. What you paid is irrelevant. GD/Afternic IS the devil. They have no standards or desire to improve because they being the huge known monopoly— don’t have to. No matter what crap policies or crap interface people will continue to give them money.

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Yes, I would be rather annoyed if this was the response I received from my account rep. The tone seems dismissive.

The part about doubling your money is irrelevant. Is GoDaddy willing to sell any domain they bought in large portfolios for only 2x what they paid?

I have had situations between Afternic/GoDaddy in the past and my account reps (Deron, then Brook) have always been extremely helpful in getting to the bottom of the situation.

I am sure next week Joe will take a look at this. It is probably going to require a little more deep research to figure out what exactly happened here.

Brad

Skip this message if you don't want to hear a godaddy rant that you've already heard 100 times.

"you will be paid the amount it was sold for which is over 200% of what you paid for it."

GoDaddy hates domainers with a seething contempt.

That's why their homepage is tricky nonsense like "$2.99 for .com! You just need to buy two years at a time, and year two is $25..." (in Canadian dollars, mind you.) This just isn't cool, everybody knows it isn't cool. It's for small biz owners who don't know any better, it's certainly not for domainers. These tactics are just not what user-friendly businesses do. It's like sneakily adding "EXTRA SUPER DUPER DOMAIN SAFETY" into someone's cart, or sneaky high renewals on hosting, or "free trials" in the cart, etc. It's just not cool to do, and everyone know it isn't cool, but huge corps will try cos they can.

It's why they have insane prices for privacy when domainer-friendly registrars give it for free, not to mention renewals. You buy a closeout domain for the minimum price, make it private, renew, and all of a sudden you're staring down the barrel of $30, $40...

It's why they make us cancel privacy before transferring a domain, just to be like "Screw you, this is what you get for leaving us. You paid $15 to keep your email and address out of the whois? Tough luck, bucko." One hand, "privacy is so important, protect it by paying us a $15 yearly tax on each domain!" on the other hand "You gotta turn privacy off to transfer, lol, get rekt."

It's why we have to wait days for a response to emails or 45 minutes on hold, only to tell us we're talking to the wrong people, only to have to explain it all again, only to tell us we need to explain everything to the first department again, only to be told that there's nothing they can do, only to tell us we need to speak to X Y Z again, only to tell us we've waited too long. It's literally WEEKS until it even feels like someone's actually read what you typed and stops sending back copy/pasted responses.

On top of that, they sell our expired domains for so damn much in their auctions that it's literally in their best interest for us to drop dead. Maybe that's why they make their support process so damn STRESSFUL?

Anyways, back to OP's problem...

I'm curious to see what GoDaddy's own appraisal tool values this domain at.

If they sold a domain that wasn't theirs to sell for a price that OP never accepted, using their own appraisal tool seems like a fair watermark for them to eat the difference and pay OP.

Obviously, removing any of their service fees as well because they don't get commissions for sales that weren't authorized, when the owner has tried to alert them again and again that the sale should not proceed.

Unlikely tho, right? They can use their powers to reverse sales many weeks or months later and claw back domains when it serves them with no notice, no explanation, every support staff giving different reasons and bs guesses - like when their fraud protection fails and they accept bad payments so they just take the names back and leave their customers holding the bag, but god forbid GoDaddy would ever take a relatively tiny haircut to make things right for someone like OP.

Hi if you did not list the domain for sale in your Afternic account, you are NOT the party offering it for sale., and GD cannot impose the sale on you. If it is your name in the whois, you are the domain owner, even if it is in someone else's registrar account. Even if you had agreed in error to fast transfer that is not listing it for sale, if you have not listed the domain for sale you did not agree to the actual sale - you did not offer it or set a price.

Godaddy can and do claw back domains that were wrongly taken - stolen, transferred in error etc - we have many reports of that here. Afternic sellers don't get paid for a week. Does anyone have experience of how quickly buyers get the domain when buying a fast transfer domain? I suspect that despite the promises of getting it at once, they don't really. So domain and payment may well be sitting in a limbo right now.

GD expiring domain purchases that you list on Afternic send you an email after 60 days asking you to authorise the listing. They name the specific domain in the email, but don't seem to mention Fast Transfer. But there is a lot of confusion around managing Afternic listings at GD, the beta interface for that at GD looks easier to use but in practice people are reporting finding it very buggy and finding the Afternic interface better, which itself is full of handicaps - many of them known issues reported long ago at https://www.namepros.com/threads/problems-bugs-and-fixes-at-afternic-report-problems-here.1006373/

I have had Afternic/GD send me a 4 figure offer on a domain I no longer own - was not in my GD or Afternic account - a new owner had it listed with them- offer was way below list price - If I had clicked the yes link in the email agreeing to the sale, I imagine it would have sold, possibly fast transferred, and the seller would have gone ballistic. What would Afternic/GD have done - deny all responsibility? Tell owner their five figure asking price had been unrealistic? give me the money? I just ignored the email, took it to be a glitch.

Can someone post text of typical GD agree to Fast Transfer email?

karmaco said:

what a haughty answer. If you did not list it for that price or at all they need to fix it. I bet they wouldn’t tell MikeMann or another big boy stop your whining it sold for 200% what you paid for it. What you paid is irrelevant. GD/Afternic IS the devil. They have no standards or desire to improve because they being the huge known monopoly— don’t have to. No matter what crap policies or crap interface people will continue to give them money.

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bmugford said:

Yes, I would be rather annoyed if this was the response I received from my account rep. The tone seems dismissive.

The part about doubling your money is irrelevant. Is GoDaddy willing to sell any domain they bought in large portfolios for only 2x what they paid?

I have had situations between Afternic/GoDaddy in the past and my account reps (Deron, then Brook) have always been extremely helpful in getting to the bottom of the situation.

I am sure next week Joe will take a look at this. It is probably going to require a little more deep research to figure out what exactly happened here.

Brad

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Well it is very hard to stay calm with an account rep like that lady honestly. If I were @indiegrind and stayed with GD, I would ask them to change her ASAP from being my account manager as from her attitude I feel she is not willing to help the customer at all.

Not sure why this thread was moved to marketplace reviews which buries the topic. This is a serious domain security issue that impacts almost all who use GoDaddy, afternic or any fast transfer network domain registrar.

I didn't even list the domain in afternic.

indiegrind said:

Not sure why this thread was moved to marketplace reviews which buries the topic. This is a serious domain security issue that impacts almost all who use GoDaddy, afternic or any fast transfer network domain registrar.

I didn't even list the domain in afternic.

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I agree. We need to figure out what actually happened here.

https://www.namepros.com/threads/why-was-this-thread-moved.1193186/

This is a major issue that I've been aware of, and in fear of for years. Here is my email to an afternic rep last year regarding a similar issue for a domain I owned for several years being recently listed on afternic by someone else.

Ryan217 said:

IMO the opt in email SHOULD INCLUDE the AFTERNIC USERNAME that listed the domain. That would make it much clearer to prevent accidential opt ins.

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Ategy said:

I have said that multiple times for years! Seems like at least a very simple quick fix. But since it would require coordinating Afternic data with GoDaddy email templates I'd say it's probably a 5 year job! At the very least if they can't coordinate, then they should send one email from afternic and one from the registrar the domain is at and have you confirm at each before the domain is able to change status.

Better yet would be to have a unique Afternic code associated with your individual registrar account, so that if you changed the settings within your registrar, that code would get sent to Afternic, who in turn would put it in the email (or even better on the confirmation page at Afternic after you click the link in the email AND after you log into Afternic)

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I agree with both of your suggestions.


Since there are multiple registrars involved, it would need to be something forcing registrars to display the afternic account username or unique ID with the approval. Otherwise, you end up getting an approval not knowing if you are approving the domain to be listed in your afternic account, or someone else's account like I did!

Alternatively, it could require registrars to keep a list of your approved Afternic accounts. Let's say I have 2 Afternic accounts, then Dynadot, Epik, GoDaddy, Network Solutions or any other registrar I use would keep track of which 2 Afternic accounts are approved for my registrar account.

If they get an approval notice from any other Afternic account it is just simply rejected. At this point it should also be auto flagged for deletion from Afternic.

Just make it a security requirement for the registrars to remain afternic partners and it'll be completed within a couple months.

I have had experience with afternic: some of my newly registered domains was removed from my afternic account and re listed by another person the same person listed it on nodaddy auction with make offer. i sent proof of screens to no daddy auctions and afternic support that I am a current owner and than nodaddy staff just deleted all my domains from my afternic account it was really annoying I think someone from nodaddy doing dirty things..

The domain also has a for sale page at uniregistry market, which I did not list.

I found it by looking up the domaintools whois info for the domain which is under privacy and clicking the domain is for sale link at the top.

I didn't previously disclose the name, but it is DepositCrypto.com

https://uniregistry.com/market/domain/depositcrypto.com?d=depositcrypto.com&src=domaintools

indiegrind said:

The domain also has a for sale page at uniregistry market, which I did not list.

I found it by looking up the domaintools whois info for the domain which is under privacy and clicking the domain is for sale link at the top.

I didn't previously disclose the name, but it is DepositCrypto.com

https://uniregistry.com/market/domain/depositcrypto.com?d=depositcrypto.com&src=domaintools

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In my case, it could be that the person who listed my domain was a prior owner who never flushed out their expired domains from their domain list/spreadsheet/database. But the list would have been 4+ years old.

But in any case, whether it is by mistake or done with criminal intentions, it is a huge security hole that has a solution that is easy technically, but a pain when dealing with so many external registrars.

At minimum this should be offered at GoDaddy and made available to registrar partners since the fix is trivial (to stop the issue from propagating).

There are 3 parts that consist of patching the problem to prevent new cases and identifying incorrect listings.

1. Patch the fix at GoDaddy/Afternic (small effort - only allow afternic listings to be approved by GoDaddy that are related to pre-authorized Afternic accounts)
2. Allow registrars to patch the issue via their API (small effort - just sending the Afternic account info with each domain approval. If I add my Afternic account/unique identifier at Epik, optionally send me an approval email)
3. Come up with a process to backflush the data at GoDaddy/Afternic to ensure domains are not listed by the wrong Afternic account. (Medium effort, but can be fixed by individual domain investors. For example, once the patch fixes are in place above, I would just go through all my accounts and ensure the domains I expect to be listed in Afternic, are actually in Afternic.)

If they can figure out how to quickly remove a domain from a customer's account when someone purchases from "another" platform, it shouldn't be a problem to verify ownership.

Normally if you sell something you do not own that is theft, and the buyer is in receipt of stolen goods and has no right to keep the goods.

indiegrind said:

If they can figure out how to quickly remove a domain from a customer's account when someone purchases from "another" platform, it shouldn't be a problem to verify ownership.

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The weird thing is they do, to some degree at least. Sold a domain here. It was listed on my Afternic with fast transfer. After pushing the domain to the buyers Epik account I logged into afternic to delete it and found it was "in review". Not completely deleted but AFAIK in review removes it from sale at least.

NameBuyer.com said:

In my case, it could be that the person who listed my domain was a prior owner who never flushed out their expired domains from their domain list/spreadsheet/database. But the list would have been 4+ years old.

But in any case, whether it is by mistake or done with criminal intentions, it is a huge security hole that has a solution that is easy technically, but a pain when dealing with so many external registrars.

At minimum this should be offered at GoDaddy and made available to registrar partners since the fix is trivial (to stop the issue from propagating).

There are 3 parts that consist of patching the problem to prevent new cases and identifying incorrect listings.

1. Patch the fix at GoDaddy/Afternic (small effort - only allow afternic listings to be approved by GoDaddy that are related to pre-authorized Afternic accounts)
2. Allow registrars to patch the issue via their API (small effort - just sending the Afternic account info with each domain approval. If I add my Afternic account/unique identifier at Epik, optionally send me an approval email)
3. Come up with a process to backflush the data at GoDaddy/Afternic to ensure domains are not listed by the wrong Afternic account. (Medium effort, but can be fixed by individual domain investors. For example, once the patch fixes are in place above, I would just go through all my accounts and ensure the domains I expect to be listed in Afternic, are actually in Afternic.)

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All of those sound like common sense safeguards that should have been implemented before the fast transfer even went live with GoDaddy and any other registrar partners.

Ryan217 said:

The weird thing is they do, to some degree at least. Sold a domain here. It was listed on my Afternic with fast transfer. After pushing the domain to the buyers Epik account I logged into afternic to delete it and found it was "in review". Not completely deleted but AFAIK in review removes it from sale at least.

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This fix will improve their whole "In Review" process. I have several domains that are "In Review" at any given time. I then need to reach out to an agent, who then needs to spend time manually reviewing these.

If they just had an automated check to say if Epik says the domain is being approved by someone who authorized this specific Afternic account, then that is all the review you would ever need. If the name is registered at Epik, and Epik is correctly requesting approval from the person who has the domain in their Epik account, and that Epik account already authorizes this particular Afternic account, what else could possibly be needed? "In Review" becomes obsolete, unless the process above occurs, and the domain is found to be in the wrong Afternic account. In that case, this same process would flag those domains to be deleted from the incorrect account.

Maybe it's time GD/Afternic just get rid of their archaic system. There must be a COTS product that could do a decent job and then GD/Afternic could just add their customizations in later

I'm still waiting on some response, and a couple of people have reached out to their contacts on my behalf which I am very grateful for.

But I am still waiting for some response.

Where are you @Joe Styler @Paul Nicks ???