Afternic requires phone call and appeal application before a domain can be listed...

[Arca]

I tried to list a domain that has the same WHOIS as a few hundred other domains I already have listed with Afternic, but to my surprise, it was rejected. It appears they have implemented an ownership verification system. At least I have not encountered this email before. I received this message:

Thank you for submitting your domain name(s) to Afternic for listing. All names submitted to Afternic are run through integrity checks before they are made live for bidding in our extensive domain marketplace.

Afternic verifies the registration of each listing. Unfortunately, we cannot determine proper registration of the following name(s) due to inaccurate data (WHOIS data) associated with their domain name registration:

MyDomain.com

The domain names above have been removed from your Afternic portfolio due to these WhoIs issues.

You may request an appeal for any of the domain names we have removed. Please contact our customer service department at the phone number below.

As I am located outside of the US, to call their customer service department every time they incorrectly reject a domain I try to list is both costly and inconvenient. Does anyone else have any experience with this? Is this going to be the norm going forwards, that we'll have to call Afternic every time we want to list a domain?

I understand that Afternic wants to improve their previously non-existent pre-listing verification, but this new solution has been implemented in an incredibly poor way. Considering Afternic's international user base, requiring users to call them whenever Afternic wrongly rejects a listing is an expensive (due to international call rates) and inconvenient (due to time zone differences) way of asking their users to seek an "appeal" for a rejected listing. Besides, I am not sure how calling verifies the ownership of a domain. It seems a call is required just to start the appeal process, and further steps probably have to be taken after that. A better solution would be to request a screenshot of the domain in our registrar account, the same way sedo does it. Or a system where you can verify certain email addresses you use for WHOIS, where Afternic would accept listings of domains where WHOIS email has been previously verified with them.

Has anyone tried to call Afternic to seek an "appeal" after Afternic rejected the listing of a domain you own?

 

[boker]

I've had something similar with godaddy, I don't know if they are using the same system. You can try and ask mydomain.com to refresh the whois of the domains rejected, sometimes it's working. After godaddy system update from 2 months ago, I have had a lot of issues with whois checks and transfers. I have sold a domain to an end user on monday and he has started the transfer to godaddy, but after four days I still didn't received the security codes and godaddy live chat were saying that it takes up to 7 days until I should receive the codes, when usually should be a few minutes. Also, if they try to do a whois check manually it's working, just the automatic whois check gives errors from time to time.

 

[Arca]

Thanks for sharing your experience, and just to clarify, I changed the rejected domain name to "MyDomain.com" - it's a GoDaddy registered domain.