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SAV auctions advice: DON'T BID against user s_n...

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Hi all, this is quite a specific issue but will interest users engaged in SAV auctions.

It happened several times already and from what I understood from SAV support, nothing will be done to prevent it, so I might as well make it public, it may help some of you.

s_n_7cf63f, one of the frequent bidders on SAV auctions, defaults payment lately. So don't enter a bid war with him because it will only lead to the following situations where you overpay for the name:

1. You loose the bid war and end up second behind him. What happens in this case is that when his payment method is charged and fails, you, as second highest bid, are charged immediately. You win the name , but at a high price.

2. You win the bid war and end up paying a high amount. But you could have paid way less.

Here is what you should do instead when you find that user s_n_7cf63f is the current highest bidder:

1. Bid the lowest amount possible allowed by the bidding system (usually = "highest bid + $1").

2a. If you are then highest bidder, don't enter a bid war if user s_n_7cf63f tries to beat you. Let him add $1 and wait for the end of the auction. You should end up with the name. (True on 29th of june 2020)

2b. If you are immediately beaten by a s_n_7cf63f proxy bid, don't enter a bid war. Just wait the end of the auction.

You understood that to win you should make sure you are second behind s_n_7cf63f and not try to outbid him.

===

A bit of background: got caught up in bid wars in at least two auctions (probably more, but didn't document it back then).
Last time was last week when I ended up overpaying for two domains on the same day. That's when I realized that there was a repeating scheme.

Some would say it's all part of the game, but I felt cheated because had I known in time that the user had defaulted on the first domain, I would NEVER had entered the second bid war!!!

I also feel that SAV could easily act in the case of this specific user by banning him (temporarily) from auctions. I know it's possible because... it was done to me! During the first weeks I used SAV, I had MANY problems with the charging of my visa card. Was banned from auction quite fast!!!!!
Could never sort it out, had to take a new card with a different bank just to pay SAV... (saw on different threads many users had similar payment problems).


@Nick R See below for suggestions on how to change that.

Your support made me understand that user s_n_7cf63f was acting fair and no special measures needed to be taken. I was even answered that I was outbid by a proxy bid (which shows a complete misunderstanding of the problem raised by the way...)

Shouldn't you implement a better system to take in account these situations?

Two suggestions :
- relaunch auction erasing the defaulting user from the bid history.
or
- In case of a duel ending with the winner defaulting, charge the second bidder only the amount of his first bid at the start of the bid war.

Don't know if it's worth the pain for you implementing all that, maybe the ban would simplify things.

In the meantime, my advice to all users is, you can win against s_n_7cf63f if you act like mentionned above. (disclaimer: True today, will not be true anymore if the user uses a valid payment method).

Good luck to you all.
Hagop
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Yes, they won't do business with them. They started bad by somewhat copying Dan's landers which set some bad blood.

They supposedly sent them a cease and desist.

I think they did something on top of that bad start. Reza wrote somewhere that he was disgusted, that normally he doesn't ban regisrars from the platform, but SAV did something awful (apparently after the copyright issue) to warrant that.

Considering that SAV is still holding tight to the money it should be returning to clients cheated out their money via the shill bidder, I can believe that.

I can't believe how gullible SAV thinks people are coming up with the most lame excuses, like majority bids were paid. What counts as majority? 51%? So, if the guy was in 1000 auctions, lost 500, but cause someone pay through the nose helping SAV, won 500, but paid 251 of those, while for 249 making others pay WAY over what they could have bought it for, again, benefiting SAV, then the guy is all good? No refunds necessary, no ban...
 
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I can't believe how gullible SAV thinks people are coming up with the most lame excuses, like majority bids were paid. What counts as majority? 51%?
If true that many were paid for (3% for the upcoming screenshots).
Youre either straight or shady.

Reimbursement (refund) using @Arfy 's model.
Close review on public NP thread of any future misbehaviour.
If you want to save your reputation.
 
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Good Morning Everyone! We appreciate everyone feedback and can assure you we are taking it into account and have added numerous auction improvements to our to-do list. As you can imagine, changes to how an auction system function can be a massive undertaking. Yesterday we rolled out a code push to auto ban bidders who do not pay multiple times which will permanently resolve this issue moving forward. This improvement is a direct result of the feedback in this thread and we thank everyone for bringing this to our attention.
 
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Good Morning Everyone! We appreciate everyone feedback and can assure you we are taking it into account and have added numerous auction improvements to our to-do list. As you can imagine, changes to how an auction system function can be a massive undertaking. Yesterday we rolled out a code push to auto ban bidders who do not pay multiple times which will permanently resolve this issue moving forward. This improvement is a direct result of the feedback in this thread and we thank everyone for bringing this to our attention.

plz define multiple times. it is a specific # within yer code. ty.
 
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plz define multiple times. it is a specific # within yer code. ty.
The new code will restrict bidding on any future auctions if a bidder is unable to pay for two auctions that they are the high bidder on upon auction close.
 
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Good Morning Everyone! We appreciate everyone feedback and can assure you we are taking it into account and have added numerous auction improvements to our to-do list. As you can imagine, changes to how an auction system function can be a massive undertaking. Yesterday we rolled out a code push to auto ban bidders who do not pay multiple times which will permanently resolve this issue moving forward. This improvement is a direct result of the feedback in this thread and we thank everyone for bringing this to our attention.
Are you going to refund people who were affected by 1 user's actions, shouldnt be much right?

Because otherwise we going to be thinking you had some urgent bills to pay.

Lots of people seem to have dealt with him/her.
We dont know how many auctions were affected by this.

1 user's behaviour, or organized crime affecting xx% of total auctions at sav.

We'd like to know.
 
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Hmm, interesting.

biobank(.)co auction ended yesterday at SAV. If you type the name, you'll see it has already been sold ... at DAN.
 
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Apparently, SAV will not act as a) there still be people that will keep going for more b) most their customers never heard of NP.

I'd advise everyone wronged by SAV to go and leave the review at Trustpilot as it seems SAV shows their 4.5 mark proudly as trusted business on all their pages and landers.

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.sav.com
 
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Hello Everyone. We wanted to be sure we could push this today before we announced it but, we just rolled out one more code push! Per the consensus of the NP community, we have modified our auctions platform not to charge any other bidders if there is a legitimate high bidder who is just unable to pay at the time of auction close. When this happens, we will now reset all bids and start a new auction for the domain.

In line with this new policy, we will be reaching out over the next day to all buyers who were charged for an auction where the highest bidder was unable to pay at the time and allow them to choose to have the auction restarted and the full amount of their bid refunded.

Thanks again for everyone’s feedback and help making a better Sav!
 
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I think they did something on top of that bad start. Reza wrote somewhere that he was disgusted, that normally he doesn't ban regisrars from the platform, but SAV did something awful (apparently after the copyright issue) to warrant that.

Considering that SAV is still holding tight to the money it should be returning to clients cheated out their money via the shill bidder, I can believe that.

I can't believe how gullible SAV thinks people are coming up with the most lame excuses, like majority bids were paid. What counts as majority? 51%? So, if the guy was in 1000 auctions, lost 500, but cause someone pay through the nose helping SAV, won 500, but paid 251 of those, while for 249 making others pay WAY over what they could have bought it for, again, benefiting SAV, then the guy is all good? No refunds necessary, no ban...

We'll probably never know what happened between them but for as far as I know Reza he wouldn't go and say things like that for no good reason.

Like you mentioned, sav isn't addressing the bigger concern here, and that is refunding people who got duped.

I have only one name with them as I wanted to see what the fuss was all about but I'll transfer it out sometime soon and request them to delete my account.

Beside the cheap pricing (not that far apart from established registrars) I don't see a reason to stay around. Too many red flags.

I don't mind a registrar owned by some domainers, good for them, but there are way too many unanswered questions and vague explanations on their part.
 
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line with this new policy, we will be reaching out over the next day to all buyers who were charged for an auction where the highest bidder was unable to pay at the time and allow them to choose to have the auction restarted and the full amount of their bid refunded.

Wouldn't it be the right thing to do to just refund them the amount overpaid? Restarting an auction now, for a domain you already own? Sounds strange to me.
 
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Has anyone trustworthy had an encounter where that bidder ended up paying?
 
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Wouldn't it be the right thing to do to just refund them the amount overpaid? Restarting an auction now, for a domain you already own? Sounds strange to me.

Exactly! The formula has been given to him and is the standard practice. Remove the violator from the equation and see who should have won at what price and correct it.

And see how he has been ignoring everything about refund for few pages until Trustpilot link above? Somehow, I was expecting that to happen.
 
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Has anyone trustworthy had an encounter where that bidder ended up paying?

You'd think someone would mention an experience where the guy paid, right? Everyone's experience seem to be the guy never paid, but SAV claims "majority" of times he did. Luck, I guess?
 
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headsup to op...else this would get fixed who knows when if ever.. and victims would pile up endlessly
 
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IMO the only "right" way is it redo the auction. It's not so simple to just undo the last bid or undo all bids by the non-paying party. Either way is problematic. As we have seen here merely undoing the last bid causes the second highest bidder to unnecessarily overpay, not a good look. And rolling back all the bids by the non-payer as if they weren't there can be abused by someone to underpay for an auction. In the end the illegitimate bids still "happened" and affected the actions of everybody in the auction causing any resolution short of redoing the auction to be biased. So I am glad to see that is finally changing.

That said they have other policies that aren't domainer friendly so I for one don't use them at all.
 
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Hello Everyone. We wanted to be sure we could push this today before we announced it but, we just rolled out one more code push! Per the consensus of the NP community, we have modified our auctions platform not to charge any other bidders if there is a legitimate high bidder who is just unable to pay at the time of auction close. When this happens, we will now reset all bids and start a new auction for the domain.

In line with this new policy, we will be reaching out over the next day to all buyers who were charged for an auction where the highest bidder was unable to pay at the time and allow them to choose to have the auction restarted and the full amount of their bid refunded.

Thanks again for everyone’s feedback and help making a better Sav!

This is a very good start and a prompt response to criticism. If you refund people that historically overpaid due to the flaw that was discovered and continue with the practice of restarting auctions as a go forward BAU process, then I would say you have put in controls to solve the issue. The community can judge in the coming months if the controls are sufficient.
 
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This is a very good start and a prompt response to criticism. If you refund people that historically overpaid due to the flaw that was discovered and continue with the practice of restarting auctions as a go forward BAU process, then I would say you have put in controls to solve the issue. The community can judge in the coming months if the controls are sufficient.

Disagree. wont disclose times inflated auctions

Why trust anything they have to say?
Nothing short Refund and full disclosures,
Speculate systemic damage caused 1 user.
If paid “majority” of time, @Nick R disclose? Because more than wants you to let on.

Samer
 
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Disagree. wont disclose times inflated auctions

Why trust anything they have to say?
Nothing short Refund and full disclosures,
Speculate systemic damage caused 1 user.
If paid “majority” of time, @Nick R disclose? Because it’s more than wants you to let on.

Samer

I agree that they need to refund users so the steps I was mentioning were to:
1. Put in the controls that they mentioned around auction restart, which seems reasonable to stop further occurrence.
2. Refund all customers affected by similar incidents. I fully agree that there needs to be transparency around this redress and remediation effort to ensure that they are refunding all cases.

Further to the above, agreed that there should be metrics provided to their customers on how often this has occurred.

Anyway, I don't work for them so I don't have time to spend on a comprehensive remediation strategy. :)
 
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Still waiting for someone trustworthy who had an encounter where the guy paid.
 
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Still waiting for someone trustworthy who had an encounter where the guy paid.
How could i check? I don't run a log of my won/lost auctions.
 
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I have no idea how sav works.
Lots of people seem to remember this guy's username from instances where he did not pay.

Since you are usually bidding on auctions until the last second, you should remember the person who won the auction instead of you.

Thats why im calling out.
 
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For any auction I participated at GD, I can check who the winner was or, if I won, who the runner up was.

The fact that you cannot go and check the history for all your auctions, is already an indication of shady working.
 
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@Nick R looks like we have yet another rouge user "f_s_ba8f66" which has placed high proxy bids across a lot of names and just today I got the email


Hello ,

The high bidder for the auction of xxxxxx.co was unable to complete the transaction. Due to this, we have restarted the auction and all bids have been reset. If you are still interested in participating in the auction, please place a new bid before the auction closes in 10 days.

View New Auction Details

Best Regards,
Sav.com


This is the 3rd time the auction is restarting:banghead::banghead: ..........Serious questions if this platform is for serious buyers:?:............

Would definitely be moving all my names out.
 
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