Afternic.com - Surprised and disappointed at their attitude

[k5000]

Ok, so my Afternic.com renewal was up round about last September. I decided not to renew, as I'm busy with other commitments, hadn't had any sensible offers for a while and am not actively selling domains at present. In October they sent me an email saying I could renew for free - I'm not sure they offer that deal to everyone, or people who've had sales through them. But anyway I had to ring them or something to take advantage, but I was busy and wasn't fussed, so I didn't bother.

Anyway, in January I get an email from Afternic, informing me that another member has offered me a four figure sum for one of my domains, even though I'm no longer a member. Unfortunately, although I'd have been interested, I was on holiday at the time, and as I'm not actively selling, was checking my email address for domain selling infrequently, so missed the offer. The actual offer itself is lower than I was asking for and a little lower than I'm prepared to accept. I'd probably be prepared to deal at around a figure 20-25% higher. So I think there's a fair chance that a deal could be struck between me and the interested party.

So I as I figured the seller would still probably be interested, as about only three weeks had past since the offer had ended, I decided a week or so ago to email Afternic (via their web interface, a they don't seem to supply an emaill address these days), suggesting it might be a good idea if they would allow me to take up their offer of a free membership renewal, I could talk to the buyer, we could probably do a deal, and Afternic would get a rather tasty comission of a few hundred bucks.

Have I had a reply? NO. Rather bizarrely, in my opinion, figuring potientially it's a very easy few hundred bucks for them, they don't seem to be fussed enough to send me a reply. It's doubly strange, considering I have a successful track record of completing fairly swift sales on Afternic and earning them commission. Something I could also do again this time round, now that I'm aware of a buyer.

To be honest, the $19 renewal fee didn't bother me that much, it's more the principle. I didn't really feel why I should have to pay them a fee if I was also about to make them a few hundred dollars, especially when they'd previously offered me a free renewal. But also add in the fact that I'm not actively selling at present, and this would probably be a "one off" deal, so if the seller has gone away, I'd end paying Afternic for nothing, something I don't like doing, no matter how small the sum is. Add to this now the fact that Afternic has quite angered me with their curious lack of interest and won't even do me the courtesy of a reply, and I'm more determined than ever not to pay. I'd rather redirect the name servers to a website, telling the potiential buyer I can sell them it at sedo.com, such is my annoyance at Afternic's attitude.

Anyone else find Afternic's lack of interest a bit strange?

Anyway, perhaps I an get more joy via here. So if anyone from Afternic is on these boards, please could you take action on this, so I can talk to the seller and you can earn a nice commission, thanks. My Afternic username is also k5000.

 

[tricolorro]

k5000,

You should have accepted their offer of free membership renewal
when you had the chance.

It's not clear (to me) from your lengthy posting if you ever received
a reply from Afternic.

If I were you I'd call Afternic and ask them if they will try to revive the sale.

Don't mention your membership at this point unless they bring it up.

If they do, simply tell them you had received an offer to renew your membership for free.

You thought your membership was renewed (free).

Play dumb. :lol:

Explain that you were not able to respond to the offer to sell your
domain at the time and to offer your apologies to the Buyer and that
if the Buyer is still interested in the domain you are:

Ready to accept the offer...or...ready to negotiate.

You can reach Afternic's Sales dept here: 866-829-9361

Ask for a Supervisor or Manager if you have to.

 

[Damion]

I didn't renew either, i feel like they pulled a Bait & Switch on me.

I signed up because i found the idea of a sales force ready to work with you promoting your domains very promising:

Originally Posted by David at NameMedia
Our goal is to provide our seller's with the greatest opportunity to reach the highest number of potential buyers. We believe that by reaching the greatest number of potential buyers and by having a world-class sales team promoting your names, the end-result will be the truest market value (highest price point) for our customers.

Soon after i had signed up i contacted my sales manager and asked him if he could get in touch with some prospect end users, i had the contact details of the prospect end users ready and send it to him.

He "said" he had send out emails, but never heard anything from it.
The reason why i put the word: said - in quotes is because recently when i contacted my new sales manager concerning a few domains that are a perfect fit for the end users i had in mind and asked her if she could reach out to them...i got this response:

Unfortunately, because of the volume of leads we get daily from
all over the world, we do not do "outbound" cold calling. This is the one area that we ask owners to do their own legwork.
IF You end up reaching out to someone and they are interested in discussing purchasing the domain and you need someone to handle from there, I can certainly step in to negotiate etc.

So if i have a list of direct phone numbers of Brand Managers/Marketing Executives... my sales manager who is supposedly part of a "world-class sales team" could follow up on, with a sales potential of 10K+ it's not something they are interested in doing?

I think you'll find the team here to be very experienced and committed to assist our customers.

Right David, indeed very committed...

My spoken English isn't as fluent as my writing, so making phone calls is rather something i stay away from, if i was able and comfortable doing that i would have picked up the phone and negotiated price on my own... i don't need Afternic to do that for me once i have the decision maker on the phone!

So just so you guys know, there is no sales team or sales manager interested in working with you selling your domains to end users.

Your "Sales Manager" just sits at his/her desk waiting for incoming lead calls from parked pages being forwarded to them...

You could waive a piece of paper of decision makers all day long, wrap a twinky inside...they're not interested!

 

[anservice]

CS response to k5000

K5000,

My name is Tim Bonehill and I am the Customer Service Manager for both Afternic.com and its affiliate, BuyDomains.com. First, allow me to apologize for not responding to your email about engaging this potential buyer. As you astutely mentioned, it behooves us to vigorously pursue every potential transaction.

Our CS reps have combed every archived email that came through our service inbox, and could not find your message. We have a ticketing system that monitors these messages to ensure issues are addressed promptly and effectively. If you could please forward me the message you sent, I will immediately follow up to find out how it slipped through the cracks.

For future reference, our contact information (service, service email, sales) can easily be found under the ‘Help’ tab at www.afternic.com. Our in-house goal is to respond to all inquiries and concerns within 24 business hours.

With regards to your membership expiring, we rarely offer free renewals. It is unfortunate you were unable to take advantage of this limited-time opportunity. Apparently we reached out to a particular group of expired members in an effort to renew business based on your history with us and the strength of your portfolio. At this time we are not offering free memberships.

However, should you decide to renew your membership, we’ll happily have a sales rep re-engage the potential buyer to see if they are still interested in your domain.

If you have any further questions please feel free to call me direct at 781-839-7984, or via email at [email protected].

 

[midnight251]

I let my membership run out a few months ago as well. Quite a while ago, maybe a year or so I received an email from Afternic stating that I had some interest in one of my names, an If I could enter a floor price. so I did. That was the end of that. I did not hear back from anyone. I though I might get a response like "price too high" or "are you willing to negotiate on price", or something like that. I guess they weren't "that" interested in the name.

 

[napa]

I was a member at Afternic for years and also sold many domains through them. I let my membership expire as I felt that they didn't really offer me anything that I could't get elsewhere for free.

 

[tricolorro]

So just so you guys know, there is no sales team or sales manager interested in working with you selling your domains to end users.

Damion,

Based on my experience with my sales rep at Afternic,
you are 100% right.

 

[mwzd]

I mostly get 'price enquiries' at Afternic.

Or non-paying bidders :lol:

I did have one small sale recently so its not like I'm out money on the membership. My logic for sales is list wherever you can, why reduce chances for the sale?

 

[dotnom]

My membership expired in June 2007
I didn't renew

I received an email from afternic for free membership or/and another for a free featured homepage ad spot with the membership
I didn't go through any of these options

I confirm that the interest from users there was extremely low.
I'm surprised that still so many years they keep the paying membership model, so much that i'm thinking that their primary income are the $20 bucks per member and not the sale commissions.

With so many options to sell but at the same time so few people that are reliable and make decent bids these platforms must start think how they can grow the membership base and not the yearly membership.

However i must say that i would use them again if they would offer free membership.

 

[MicroGuy]

My last experience with Afternic was horrible with a capital 'H'. _\|/_

I'd rather not relive the ordeal in detail, but after dealing with probably the rudest customer service representative of all time (no exaggeration), I canceled my account and have never looked back.

 

[Domainate.com]

If I sent an email to them on something like that with a potential 4-figure sale hanging in the balance and I didn't receive a reply back within 24 hours, I would call them. They could have missed the email or simply not received it (which looks like what had happened) and I think a phone call causes action more than an email anyways, and you want them to act quickly given the time that had passed just in case the buyer would still be interested.

Just my 2 cents - hope everything works out! Glad someone from Afternic responded to the post.

 

[Keral_Patel]

I never visit afternic since last year when I had already made an offer on a domain name. Paid for it and then the domain name got sold on sedo. Afternic did nothing. It was just a waste of time for me.

 

[goodkarmaco]

Auction house's have no idea how to reach end users. They have no idea how to market to them.

They had a long time to place into motion a marketing plan to address the issue of getting names in front of Americas small and medium sized business owners. They missed the boat. Now that the economy has slid off the cliff the odds of them doing so are now close to nil.

 

[tech4]

I think its understandable that they contacted you on buyer's behalf several times. You did not respond. They were willing to offer you free membership. You allowed the time to elapsed.

The point is they have a right to say no to free membership.

 

[goodkarmaco]

Membership to sell domains is not a bad idea. Saying that it is not a good idea when the auction house inventories over 4 million names and they only sell two or three a day. Paying for a membership in a auction house with that kind of low sales to inventory is not even close to smart.

Thats why most of us have names in Moniker, Sedo, etc. They have millions of names too, yet listing them and having their team on your side is completly free! Still those places have no bigger daily domains selling.

None of the auction houses have marketed properly for domainers. They all have strengths and areas they could do better. Not one of them are knocking out the competition with domain sales for private domainers. Afternic sells alot of names that they own. Taking those sales out of the reporting will prove this out.

 

[DotWeekly]

Auction house's have no idea how to reach end users. They have no idea how to market to them.

I can't say I agree with this totally. You hold a much better shot at selling to an end user using a service like Sedo or Afternic with your domains set up properly. Both services have end users at them!

BuyDomains.com sells to end users all the time, so saying they do not know how to reach them is false. Are BD's domains sold to end users more then member listed domains on Afternic? Most know where I stand on this...


It's also important to set yourself up so an end user CAN contact you as a seller. No Price, No Category, No Contact link on a domain leads to many lost "chances" via Parking or at Sedo and Afternic.

 

[k5000]

K5000,

My name is Tim Bonehill and I am the Customer Service Manager for both Afternic.com and its affiliate, BuyDomains.com. First, allow me to apologize for not responding to your email about engaging this potential buyer. As you astutely mentioned, it behooves us to vigorously pursue every potential transaction.

Our CS reps have combed every archived email that came through our service inbox, and could not find your message. We have a ticketing system that monitors these messages to ensure issues are addressed promptly and effectively. If you could please forward me the message you sent, I will immediately follow up to find out how it slipped through the cracks.

For future reference, our contact information (service, service email, sales) can easily be found under the ‘Help’ tab at www.afternic.com. Our in-house goal is to respond to all inquiries and concerns within 24 business hours.

With regards to your membership expiring, we rarely offer free renewals. It is unfortunate you were unable to take advantage of this limited-time opportunity. Apparently we reached out to a particular group of expired members in an effort to renew business based on your history with us and the strength of your portfolio. At this time we are not offering free memberships.

However, should you decide to renew your membership, we’ll happily have a sales rep re-engage the potential buyer to see if they are still interested in your domain.

If you have any further questions please feel free to call me direct at 781-839-7984, or via email at [email protected].

Thanks for your response Tim. I did actually send the "email" via your web interface under your help link, it wasn't a true email. So I was unsuccessful using your web interface contact last time round.

See the problem I have is, is that you say "IF I renew, you'll talk to the buyer." So I'm having to pay when there might be no sale there, where as the way I see it, is that it's probably a "win, win" for both of us if you renew me for free, because you'll get a few hundred in commission if the sale goes through.

Add to that I'm quite annoyed about getting no response (far more annoying than getting a simple "no" reply) and I'm now quite determined to not pay now.

So I'd be prepared to offer two deals now, either you could renew me for free for 3 months instead of 12, which would give enough time to talk to the buyer and sell the domain, if they're still interested. Or alternatively, renew me for free for 12 months, and then take an extra $20 off in commission if the sale goes ahead. I think they're both fair offers in my eyes. I'll leave it up to you. You should have my email address on record if you want to email me a response. If you were prepared to do me a deal, I'd be ok about keeping it confidential, if you feel it could impact on subscriptions.

Anyway, thanks for your reply.

Thanks for everyone who replied too. I'll try and reply better tomorrow if I have time.

Regards

 

[Archangel]

Ugh I don't like Afternic, never had a sale there other than the sorry Bazaar and I won't renew my membership