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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.
@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





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.

We did make a change to our auctions platform about 2 weeks ago that we talked about in this thread as well. If the high bidder of an action does not pay, they are given one warning and the auction is restarted. However, this does allow for a situation like e-health.co where s_n_7cf63f was the original high bidder then was unable to pay so the auction was restarted and f_s_ba8f66 became the high bidder. They had a payment issue as well so the auction was restarted for a third time.

It's not a perfect solution by far but its much better than how it worked before.
 
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Why make it a 10 day public auction yet again and again? its 3rd time the auction is being done.

Why leave such unpleasant taste for the serious users.

Give 24-48 hours notice to the auction winner to arrange / fix the payment issue issue if they cant simply ban them and restart the auction and make it a private auction for 3-5 days max for all the remaining participants.


We did make a change to our auctions platform about 2 weeks ago that we talked about in this thread as well. If the high bidder of an action does not pay, they are given one warning and the auction is restarted. However, this does allow for a situation like e-health.co where s_n_7cf63f was the original high bidder then was unable to pay so the auction was restarted and f_s_ba8f66 became the high bidder. They had a payment issue as well so the auction was restarted for a third time.

It's not a perfect solution by far but its much better than how it worked before.
 
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@Nick R
I did not read this entire thread so maybe this is already answered but I got the below email within 5 minutes of an auction ending. Was SAV able to identify that a user could not pay for an auction within 5 minutes? I'm not accusing anything but seems a little fishy. I also checked other current auctions and the same user has bids on every auction I opened.

The high bidder for the auction of ------.com 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.
 
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@Nick R
I did not read this entire thread so maybe this is already answered but I got the below email within 5 minutes of an auction ending. Was SAV able to identify that a user could not pay for an auction within 5 minutes? I'm not accusing anything but seems a little fishy. I also checked other current auctions and the same user has bids on every auction I opened.

The high bidder for the auction of ------.com 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.

That is weird. As are a lot of other auctions on their venue. I've been watching close to 40 auctions currently as this thread spiked my interest but there's too much strange bids going on, usually by a certain group of bidders, auctions being restarted. There seems to be a pattern. I could be wrong ofcourse. Anyway, too many red flags for me to even consider participating.
 
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Hello @lotk & @NameDeck . Per the changes announced earlier this this thread, if a bidder is unable to pay for an auction, they are given a warning and the auction is automatically restarted. If a bidder is unable to pay more than once, they get blocked from placing any new, future auction bids.

If you have any suspicions of strange bids that may violate our polices, please DM me the details and I would be happy to take a look.
 
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Thanks for the explanation Nick!
 
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@Nick R why do you give 2 chances before banning. A single person can mess up so many auctions (during the 10 day public auction with proxy bids)


Restarting the auction and making it a 10 day public auction that raises flags and the system open to abuse.

I think a better option would be to

Give the auction winner 24 hours to arrange an alternative payment option or to prepay the account but if they fail to still pay ban them for life and make it a 3-5 days private auction (available to the rest of the bidders only).​

Experienced Re-staring of auction cycle 3 times (30 days :sour::meh:) just because some user failed to pay is so distasteful for genuine buyers.
 
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@Nick R why do you give 2 chances before banning. A single person can mess up so many auctions (during the 10 day public auction with proxy bids)


Restarting the auction and making it a 10 day public auction that raises flags and the system open to abuse.

I think a better option would be to

Give the auction winner 24 hours to arrange an alternative payment option or to prepay the account but if they fail to still pay ban them for life and make it a 3-5 days private auction (available to the rest of the bidders only).​

Experienced Re-staring of auction cycle 3 times (30 days :sour::meh:) just because some user failed to pay is so distasteful for genuine buyers.

Hey @kamcreation Thanks for reaching out and sharing the suggestion. There are a lot of ways to go about handling auctions where the high bidder is unable to pay and unfortunately they all have pros and cons. Our system is currently built to require payment upon the close of the auction but expanding it to put the auction into a "pending payment" state for a set amount of time is what we are considering for a future release.
 
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Another rogue user f_s_ba8f66 strikes yet again.

Can you tell how many auctions were restarted tonight due to one single user f_s_ba8f66 he had bids on almost all the names that were ending tonight

I got emails for at-least 4 auction being restarted tonight and he has proxy bids on many domains what happen to them? Knowing that he has no intention to pay
 
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Hello @lotk & @NameDeck . Per the changes announced earlier this this thread, if a bidder is unable to pay for an auction, they are given a warning and the auction is automatically restarted. If a bidder is unable to pay more than once, they get blocked from placing any new, future auction bids.

If you have any suspicions of strange bids that may violate our polices, please DM me the details and I would be happy to take a look.

Thanks for the explanation Nick!

How was that an explanation? The question was how did SAV know within 5 minutes that the winner won't pay?
 
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Sorry, but I don't understand few things here:

1. I am unable to use my card on SAV. It is a card issued by a major European bank (ING). It is the same card I am using without any problem at GoDaddy, Dynadot, Epik, Porkbun, LCN, Ionos, etc.

2. If the winning bidder does not pay, why are you restarting the auction over and over again? Why not you're offering the name to the second bidder?

3. I just looked at some Trust Pilot reviews, and here's what I see:
Dynadot - 53 reviews (score 3.2)
Epik - 13 reviews (score 4.2)
Sav - 146 reviews (score 4.5)

So SAV, the new kid in town, is better than Dyna and Epik, which were both voted here the 2 best registrars of the year. Of course, if you'll look at those SAV reviews, you can read 5 stars reviews like this:

"finding homes in Belton Texas
I am the first time ever doing this so I have to find out to know if I really had an experience with it but hopefully it won't be a bad experience"

So @Nick R , I think you have a lot of work to do, if you wanna be a player in this game, and you're looking to be a reputable company.

Sorry, but for me, at this moment, SAV is looking a very shady company.
 
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How was that an explanation? The question was how did SAV know within 5 minutes that the winner won't pay?

I understood it as the card the buyer was using did not go through when charged so the domain was automatically relisted.
 
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I understood it as the card the buyer was using did not go through when charged so the domain was automatically relisted.

That shouldn't be the case though. If your card doesn't work, then you still have couple of days to sort it out and pay.

Doesn't it bother you that if your payment has problems within minutes you will lose the name and get a strike???

SAV is still playing games.

And, frankly, if anyone after this thread does business with them, they have it coming.
 
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Oh, here is another thing with SAV "reinventing" the wheel with the auctions:

They now cancel "unpaid" auctions, which effectively means there could be a non-disclosed reserve price there. They run an auction, there is a helper nick that either pushes the most aggressive bidder to the max or it "wins" and doesn't pay. SAV "strikes" it, meaning each nickname can get to do this twice before "being banned". Then SAV gets to rerun the auction to see if it can get more in the second run or even third etc.

There is a reason EVERY reputable auction house a) goes to the second highest bidder as winner b) second highest bidder pays only minimum increment above the third bidder, not his/her max bid.

Anything SAV "reinvents" here is to push its shill bidding enabling agenda.

And, again, anyone that keeps bidding there fully deserve anything SAV does to them.
 
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Hello and thanks for the lively discussion. We do want to move to giving a high bidder a few days to pay however, our auctions platform currently works in a way where immediate payment upon completion is required to function properly. This is why we went with restarting the auction in the meantime. We will be building in "pending payment" status with a set payment timeframe for high bidder in the future.

If anyone has any questions about how Sav works, any of our policies or is also a programmer and just wants to debate the merits of their favorite programming language, please feel free to DM me directly and I would be happy to go over it all!
 
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Oh, here is another thing with SAV "reinventing" the wheel with the auctions:

They now cancel "unpaid" auctions, which effectively means there could be a non-disclosed reserve price there. They run an auction, there is a helper nick that either pushes the most aggressive bidder to the max or it "wins" and doesn't pay. SAV "strikes" it, meaning each nickname can get to do this twice before "being banned". Then SAV gets to rerun the auction to see if it can get more in the second run or even third etc.

There is a reason EVERY reputable auction house a) goes to the second highest bidder as winner b) second highest bidder pays only minimum increment above the third bidder, not his/her max bid.

Anything SAV "reinvents" here is to push its shill bidding enabling agenda.

And, again, anyone that keeps bidding there fully deserve anything SAV does to them.

I was tracking a domain at SAV for the first time. It was a decent .io domain. Anyway, with about 2 days to go, the auction disappeared completely. I found it listed on SEDO after that. One day later, I found the domain on auction again, back at 10 days. Yesterday, after it had a day or two left (I'm not sure exactly, but I know I had time to bid), it disappeared AGAIN. Now the domain has nameservers pointed to DAN.com.

I went here to search for people's experiences with this site and I ran into this thread. What a blatant ripoff. What you said here coincides exactly with what I experienced. Thank you for your intelligent findings.

To me, it's quite clear these guys are shill bidder scammers. I would be very surprised if they weren't. We all ran into "non payer" bidders. I was watching one single name and this exact thing happened. So, what, their bidders happen to be comprised 95% of non payers? And they don't get banned? And they run the auction again with a non paying bidder? And the auction gets deleted 2 days before it ends? Please.

What a disgrace.
 
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I was tracking a domain at SAV for the first time. It was a decent .io domain. Anyway, with about 2 days to go, the auction disappeared completely. I found it listed on SEDO after that. One day later, I found the domain on auction again, back at 10 days. Yesterday, after it had a day or two left (I'm not sure exactly, but I know I had time to bid), it disappeared AGAIN. Now the domain has nameservers pointed to DAN.com.

I went here to search for people's experiences with this site and I ran into this thread. What a blatant ripoff. What you said here coincides exactly with what I experienced. Thank you for your intelligent findings.

To me, it's quite clear these guys are shill bidder scammers. I would be very surprised if they weren't. We all ran into "non payer" bidders. I was watching one single name and this exact thing happened. So, what, their bidders happen to be comprised 95% of non payers? And they don't get banned? And they run the auction again with a non paying bidder? And the auction gets deleted 2 days before it ends? Please.

What a disgrace.

I would be happy to take a look into it and see what is going on as auctions can not end before their completion date. What domain name were you watching? I'll take a look and give a full report on what we see.
 
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I do see only once instance of this auction. Vile.io is a domain that was captured via backorder that went to auction due to having multiple backorders on it. The auction started at September 13th, 2020 10:31:19 and ended on September 23rd, 2020 10:31:19. It was never paused, restarted or hidden.

The domain has since been transferred to the buyers account who looks to have it pointed to DAN.

Regarding Sedo, it's possible that the previous owners listing was still live. If that was the case and someone were to buy the domain, the previous owner would not have been able to provide the domain so it would have been cancelled.

If anyone has any concerns like this in the future, we ask that they please reach out to us so we can take a look at it and share the details we can before suggesting that its is disgrace. Sav is committed to running a fair and honest auctions platform and is happy to look into anyones concerns with it.
 
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I do see only once instance of this auction. Vile.io is a domain that was captured via backorder that went to auction due to having multiple backorders on it. The auction started at September 13th, 2020 10:31:19 and ended on September 23rd, 2020 10:31:19. It was never paused, restarted or hidden.

The domain has since been transferred to the buyers account who looks to have it pointed to DAN.

Here is my browser history with this domain:

6GHFfCn.png


3MBuuhx.png


So before September 23, the domain was in backorder stage. I suppose it was a pre-release auction. OK. After it dropped, expireddomains.net link for the domain kept pointing at Sedo. So ok, ignore the Sedo links because typing the domain into the address bar lead to the auction, which is fine.

But then, starting from September 19, the type in redirected to DAN as you can see. The domain disappeared from SAV and instead I got the ''misconfigured'' DAN link, whatever that means. How could that have happened if the buyer got the domain on September 23? I saw the SAV auction on September 18 but it disappeared and appeared on DAN the next day. You can clearly see this in the screenshots.
 
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I checked the EPP logs to the registry for this domain and see Sav's nameservers were set on the domain on 9/13 then it was changed to DAN on 9/23. There are no other changes of nameservers in the middle.

Now, I am not sure what the nameservers on the domain were before it dropped. If it was DAN, it possible the old nameservers were cached in some DNS nodes still, but others had switched to the new nameservers but that is past what we are able. We have seen that before.

Regardless of where the domain is pointing, I can confirm that the auction was still active and running on Sav.com as expected.
 
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I checked the EPP logs to the registry for this domain and see Sav's nameservers were set on the domain on 9/13 then it was changed to DAN on 9/23. There are no other changes of nameservers in the middle.

Now, I am not sure what the nameservers on the domain were before it dropped. If it was DAN, it possible the old nameservers were cached in some DNS nodes still, but others had switched to the new nameservers but that is past what we are able. We have seen that before.

Regardless of where the domain is pointing, I can confirm that the auction was still active and running on Sav.com as expected.

How is that even possible if typing ''vile.io'' into the address bar from September 19 onward landed me on DAN.com. You can see that this happened starting from September 19. This is DAN's logo.

In fact, the same exact page is being shown right now: http://vile.io/
You can see the same misconfigured error right now that shows up in my history. Screenshot for reference:

BuFNYyn.png
 
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I can confirm that the buyer has pointed the nameserves to DAN after the auction closed but I cant speak to why the domain would randomly point there during the auction aside from my guess in the post above.

I checked out Google Analytics for the Auction Parked Page and do see traffic going to the domain 19th and 20th.

Regardless of where the domain is pointing, there was only once instance of this auction running on Sav, and the auction was executed exactly as expected.
 
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How is that even possible if typing ''vile.io'' into the address bar from September 19 onward landed me on DAN.com. You can see that this happened starting from September 19. This is DAN's logo.

In fact, the same exact page is being shown right now: http://vile.io/
You can see the same misconfigured error right now that shows up in my history. Screenshot for reference:

BuFNYyn.png

He will BS his way out... There is no way after so many days suddenly some instances of cache start pointing at such outdated info.

On a side note, they should have kept Vile.io for future rebrand of SAV:

vile
adjective
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\ ˈvī(-ə)l \
viler\ ˈvī-lər \; vilest\ ˈvī-ləst \
Definition of vile


1a: morally despicable or abhorrentnothing is so vile as intellectual dishonesty
b: physically repulsive : FOULa vile slum
2: of little worth or account : COMMONalso : MEAN
3: tending to degradevile employments
4: disgustingly or utterly bad : OBNOXIOUS, CONTEMPTIBLEvile weatherhad a vile temper
 
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This thread is entertaining...

BTW, did anyone asked how their dropcatching service work ?
 
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