Afternic - Official Thread

[GoDaddy]

Hello NamePros!
By popular demand, we have launched a dedicated feedback thread for Afternic, the GoDaddy-owned domain name marketplace.

We have created this thread as a way for you to tell us what works, what doesn't work, and what features you'd like to see at Afternic (please be constructive with your feedback). We're looking forward to hearing from the domain investment community to help us shape the future of Afternic.

We will also be sharing Afternic product updates in this thread.

Please note that this thread is not meant for support. Please email our support team at [email protected] for assistance.

 

[DomainRecap]

I agree with this as well. There is really no reason Afternic/GoDaddy should not have some 24/7 staff.

But it goes far beyond just increasing hours, as how can you be sure those extended hours guys will actually work on your negotiations and transactions?

I'm also concerned about prior GD comments relating to the "self-brokerage system", in that the Afternic brokers will still be the front-line for offers. Not sure exactly what that entails, but it could be that offers/counters will not appear on your Dashboard until the brokers approve them.

I don't think Afternic will ever offer the freewheeling format we had at Dan, which was full control over negotiations, the ability to chat and converse with potential buyers, and immediate notification of any new offers and counteroffers.

I feel that Afternic will maintain some limitations (no chat) and a level of control for brokers (approving offers/vetting and contacting leads), which means additional obstacles to making the sale and greater delays compared to Dan.

 

[DomainRecap]

Really need another marketplace this is costing me money.

The entire design of Afternic will cost domain investors money.

Do you think buyers want to wait 2-3 days to get an offer forwarded to them, and then days more for each subsequent step?

Do you think motivated buyers are willing to wait weeks to close a simple "offer + acceptance" transaction?

Are potential buyers willing to put up with the myriad bugs and crashes on Afternic, just to buy a domain?

If you answered NO to any of these questions, you just lost money.

 

[D Haynes]

I'm up to a cool 80% of my portfolio "in review" lol what a joke. What makes it even worse is that you get no notification. Surely there should be an email saying such and such a name have entered review status so you can do something about it. They rely on you logging in to see. How many people are unaware their names are not listed?

Another thing is that every time I log in and go to my "portfolio" page the whole page is greyed out with a small info light box trying to tell me something about BINs I think but the "close" button for this box is below the screen and the screen doesn't scroll. If my laptop wasn't touchscreen with a rotating screen I'd never be able to close the light box and never be able to do anything to my portfolio!

It's laughable how bad Afternic has become.

@GoDaddy any plans on making Afternic usable any time soon?

 

[Kyle Tully]

GD messaged me when I had 83 names in review and sent it off to AN product manager as an example of the issue… I’m now up to 105 names in review

 

[Name2go]

Another thing is that every time I log in and go to my "portfolio" page the whole page is greyed out with a small info light box trying to tell me something about BINs I think but the "close" button for this box is below the screen and the screen doesn't scroll. If my laptop wasn't touchscreen with a rotating screen I'd never be able to close the light box and never be able to do anything to my portfolio!

Confirmed. The frozen screen is the result of both the info box at the bottom and the tax data box on top of the page IMO. The latter I already worked several times though there was nothing to add or change. But it shows up with every login.
And the newbie info boxes should be subject to deactivation in the setup; same with GD Auctions site.

For the user score: My under review/all domains ratio is 38,87%.

Most of my under review domains are related to the deactivation of FT on DD. FT didn´t work most of the time so what. And with the latest "evolution" of AN it seemed to become a possible security risk.

 

[D Haynes]

Confirmed. The frozen screen is the result of both the info box at the bottom and the tax data box on top of the page IMO. The latter I already worked several times though there was nothing to add or change. But it shows up with every login.
And the newbie info boxes should be subject to deactivation in the setup; same with GD Auctions site.

For the user score: My under review/all domains ratio is 38,87%.

Most of my under review domains are related to the deactivation of FT on DD. FT didn´t work most of the time so what. And with the latest "evolution" of AN it seemed to become a possible security risk.

Glad I'm not the only one suffering the frozen screen. Been that way for a couple weeks now. I would say I'm surprised it hasn't been sorted but I'm not.

 

[DomainRecap]

@GoDaddy any plans on making Afternic usable any time soon?

Apparently not, as they're 12 days late migrating users from Dan to Afternic and that plan was announced long ago.

Everything at Afternic takes 3X as long as you would expect it to, and those are the parts that work.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Fixing the "in review" problem should be one of your top priorities right now @Afternic.

If it's algorithmic, something is broken in the algorithm. and hopefully easily fixed.

If it is AI you are using, it is completely untrustworthy as implemented.

 

[Gm0]

AFTERNIC FAILED - SALE LOST. Change a price of any domain that is pointed to GD BIN landers. Price at lander never updates to shopping cart.

Purchaser got fed up and thought I was playing games.

AFTERNIC IS THE WORST.

So, I surmise, that any price updates of the last few days (and who knows how much further back) have yet to update to correct price at shopping cart.

WHAT A TOTAL CLUSTER AFTERNIC IS!

So, after waiting 23 seconds for shopping cart to appear, the shopping cart price is wrong.

How does Paul Nicks still have a job?

 

[DomainRecap]

After reading the many technical issues that users are having with *existing* Afternic technology, are we all being fools in believing that GoDaddy will actually add in NEW features that work?

It's that like that deadbeat friend who's always asking your for a loan, yet never pays you back. At a certain point, you stop giving him money.

 

[DrJacoby]

How does Paul Nicks still have a job?

How does GoDaddy's CTO still have a job? In a normal company he/she would have been fired a long time ago.

 

[DomainRecap]

AFTERNIC FAILED - SALE LOST. Change a price of any domain that is pointed to GD BIN landers. Price at lander never updates to shopping cart.

Afternic exists in an alternate universe where time progresses 3X as slow as it does here in the real world. So what takes us a day to complete, takes them three days.

If you understand that, then dealing with Afternic becomes a lot easier.

 

[Jannes]

reputation flushed down the toilet:

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/afternic.com?sort=recency

 

[phaethon]

One day I received an email from the AN sales department that they would like to talk to me about my portfolio or something. I replied with a day and time to talk, but never heard from them again.

 

[411domains]

Heads up @GoDaddy /Afternic!

I pulled my entire portfolio shortly after the "Boost" announcement.

Yesterday I decided to re-add them and this is one of the many issues I discovered.

There is a massive sync failure on the Afternic side.

Newly added domains are not generating internal Afternic marketplace sales pages.

Visiting the internal sales page (afternic.com/domain/domainhere.com) results in the following error:

The BIN and Custom landers appear to be fine. However, when you click next, you'll see that buyers are not being directed shopping carts.

Instead, they are being directed to inquiry forms as shown in the example below:

If that's not bad enough, when there's total sync failure on the Afternic side, the only partner network who receives a feed is Godaddy.

For all you investors using the BIN and Custom landers, you might want to rethink it until they get this sync under control.

Again, this only affects new Afternic listings. If you delete and re-add, those will be affected as well.

Anyone using BIN and Custom landers should easily be able to duplicate this with their new listings.

Note: The example I used here is not from my portfolio, which is why it's redacted.

 

[End User King]

Oh my god those reviews are horrible

 

[Jannes]

The thing that puzzles me most is how tone-deaf Afternic representatives are. Now is the time for crisis management due to myriad bugs, instead of sporadically announcing how excited they are to introduce some basic feature that was already working on Dan or is commonplace at other marketplaces.

 

[DomainRecap]

reputation flushed down the toilet:

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/afternic.com?sort=recency

I still can't believe the execs at GoDaddy thought they could move all the Dan customers (who enjoyed a fast, current, accessible, flexible, and relatively bug-free sales platform) to Afternic and they would all somehow adapt to selling in Afternic Colonial Times, where life is slow and transactions are even slower.

I have a feeling some heads are going to roll on this one, as it was an absolutely insane decision to pick Afternic over Dan. The main problem was that the decision was made long ago, by those with equity in the Afternic brand, and it will come back to haunt them.

 

[D Haynes]

The thing that puzzles me most is how tone-deaf Afternic representatives are. Now is the time for crisis management due to myriad bugs, instead of sporadically announcing how excited they are to introduce some basic feature that was already working on Dan or is commonplace at other marketplaces.

They should be taking advantage of this thread at the very least. They have a huge userbase here basically carrying out free testing and reporting bugs, glitches and other wrongdoings and yet they seem to be doing nothing. Bugs have remained unfixed for months and sometimes years. It's baffling.

 

[DomainRecap]

Bugs have remained unfixed for months and sometimes years. It's baffling.

It's not Baffling, it's Afternic!

The Afternic platform was an extremely simple site when GD bought it, and all they've done since is add some bubblegum and binder twine to keep things together so the whole platform doesn't melt down.

At a business with true leadership who had the corporation's best interests at heart, Afternic would have been properly retired and Dan would be their main domain sales platform. Even if they just changed the Dan.com visuals a bit and added the Afternic logo it would have been fine.

Remember, ALL of the features users are asking for were ALREADY at Dan.