Afternic: Cancelled my parking account and kept my money

[roasty]

Hi everyone,

I parked my domains (200+) at Afternic around fall of 2014. They produced decent cash the first couple of months. After a few months I noticed that my domain stopped receiving traffic all together and found at the dns settings had all been changed by my registrar. About 95% of my domains are parked at 1&1. This happened at about the same time that 1&1 was overhauling their user control panel (1&1 cp is sucks). At the time I was finishing my last couple quarters at university so I couldn't tend to fixing all my domains. Those of you who have domains with 1&1 know what a tedious task it is! At any rate, last week I finally had a chance to tend to my domains so I went to afternic just to check on my funds but they were gone. I contacted afternic. Here's their reply:

Hello xxxxx,

Thank you for reaching out to us for assistance. We are sorry to inform you that your Afternic parking account has been suspended. It appears that at least one of the domains in your account exhibited one or several of the following issues:

- Suspicious or anomalous traffic patterns
- Click fraud
- IP fraud
- Continued low or poor quality traffic
- Chargebacks from our feed providers
- iFrame violations

Per the Afternic Terms & Conditions, your parking account has been disabled due to one of the reasons above and earnings will not be paid out to you. Your Afternic seller account is still active and you can list domains for sale there, but they will not be parked with Afternic. This is all the information we can and will provide to you. Your parking account will not be re-instated and you can no longer park your domains with Afternic.

The Afternic Parking Team
​

What I can tell you guys is that I 100% did not do anything illegal. I believe that my domains fell into the "Continued low or poor quality traffic" clause. What I don't understand is how that's fair grounds to take money I already earned. Its not like that reason is the same as doing some form of illegal activity.

I'm a total newbie with domains. Got a couple hundred. Read my intro post. Aside from posting this rant, I need some advise on what to do with domains. I've got some specific questions but I plan to start another post for that. I just wanted to share this somewhat negative experience with Afternic.

R.

 

[Kate]

Why not post the domains here ? Perhaps you bought some domains with questionable history and bad traffic, but didn't do enough research.

 

[roasty]

Hi sdsinc,

I haven't purchased any used domains. All of them were were original purchases. Are there any risks with publicly posting list of domains on forum as such?

 

[kemjika11]

At least they allowed u keep ur acct on their aftermarket... [emoji9]

 

[Willox Perez]

One of the most interesting things about this situation is to simply understand when it comes to any parking service or even Google AdSense, CPA or any of those forms of monetizing. We DO NOT HAVE CONTROL. At any given moment this can happen and sadly there is nothing you can do about it.

A lot of times they put it in the fine print that if the company feels you have violated the terms they have the right to simply terminate your account and take the funds to "Give it back to the advertisers" (Which I think they probably keep it themselves)

Even though they don't allow you to park them in Afternic do not worry, it seems the domains have value and you have a ton of them so simply take a look at the other parking Companies.

I know Smurge (a NamePros member) really knows his stuff about parking and he likes the following ones:

#1 Bodis.com (Supports Foreign Traffic)(Zero Click Model Supported)
#2 Domainsponsor.com (Supports Foreign Traffic) (Zero Click Model Supported)
#3 Parkingcrew.com (Supports Foreign Traffic)
#4 Voodoo.com (Highest Payouts In The Industry)

I personally use Voodoo.com and it is pretty awesome. They have a nice tracking system which allows me to see the traffic any of my domains bring. Also Have been getting offers on some of my domains due to the for sale banner displayed on the site.

- Will

 

[biggie]

transfer out of 1 & 1

it's really not ideal for resellers

 

[Marlon Phillips]

I agree a lot with what Will had to say. In the end, you need to find a parking company and develop a personal relationship with your account manager. When anomalies do happen with your account, trust is your best defense.

 

[venturefile.com]

I also vote for Voodoo. I have all of my domains parked there..

 

[Dom456]

Hi,

I recently encountered the same situation. I parked over 500 domain names, with Afternic, for a year and a half. My total earnings was in the account was several hundred dollars. My earnings were set to check, but I was not receiving any checks. I switched the payment method to Paypal, and sent Afternic a support request, in efforts to get a payment issued. Following was their immediate reply:

"Thank you for reaching out to us for assistance. We are sorry to inform you that your Afternic parking account has been suspended. It appears that at least one of the domains in your account exhibited one or several of the following issues:

- Suspicious or anomalous traffic patterns
- Click fraud
- IP fraud
- Continued low or poor quality traffic
- Chargebacks from our feed providers
- iFrame violations

Per the Afternic Terms & Conditions [afternic.com/legal], your parking account has been disabled due to one of the reasons above and earnings will not be paid out to you. Your Afternic seller account is still active and you can list domains for sale there, but they will not be parked with Afternic.

The Afternic Parking Team"

As with "roasty," all of my domains were legit, and I absolutely did nothing mentioned above. Here's what I believe happened. To test results, I recently switched my nameservers over to a uniregistry, so that I could test the results for potential domain sales. I think that they were not happy about me using a competitor, so they simply decided to keep all of my money. They had no problem with me parking the domains, with them, for over a year, until I asked to get paid, as well as switched to a competitor.

 

[kemjika11]

Hi,

I recently encountered the same situation. I parked over 500 domain names, with Afternic, for a year and a half. My total earnings was in the account was several hundred dollars. My earnings were set to check, but I was not receiving any checks. I switched the payment method to Paypal, and sent Afternic a support request, in efforts to get a payment issued. Following was their immediate reply:

"Thank you for reaching out to us for assistance. We are sorry to inform you that your Afternic parking account has been suspended. It appears that at least one of the domains in your account exhibited one or several of the following issues:

- Suspicious or anomalous traffic patterns
- Click fraud
- IP fraud
- Continued low or poor quality traffic
- Chargebacks from our feed providers
- iFrame violations

Per the Afternic Terms & Conditions [afternic.com/legal], your parking account has been disabled due to one of the reasons above and earnings will not be paid out to you. Your Afternic seller account is still active and you can list domains for sale there, but they will not be parked with Afternic.

The Afternic Parking Team"

As with "roasty," all of my domains were legit, and I absolutely did nothing mentioned above. Here's what I believe happened. To test results, I recently switched my nameservers over to a uniregistry, so that I could test the results for potential domain sales. I think that they were not happy about me using a competitor, so they simply decided to keep all of my money. They had no problem with me parking the domains, with them, for over a year, until I asked to get paid, as well as switched to a competitor.

Sorry about that. At least they only cancelled your parking account. Like i said before , my afternic acct had been "suspended" for many months, so i called afternic a month or 2 ago and asked why it was cancelled. the lady only told me i violated a terms and condition but she cant tell me exactly which one i violated. thats all! closed account and no good reason. ive been a member for many years now and did nothing obviously wrong.

 

[Dom456]

I will never sell one of my domains through them again. Over the past two years, Afternic made thousands off of my domain sales. They are truly not needed. The domains, that sold, would have sold without their help. Also, even though I listed over 500 quality domains, the parking revenue was low. The reason for this is simple... their parking system is terrible. I'm going to park my domains with another company. I still can't believe that Afternic stole my parking revenue money unjustly. I guess they know that someone is not likely to sue them over a few hundred dollars.