information Afternic Update

[Joe Styler]

There are several threads ongoing about Afternic so it was easier to start a new one here with the big picture of what is going on. A few weeks ago we had a major release which did away with the escrow process on Afternic and started a new service called Transaction Assurance. There are several main reasons why we did it, two of the big ones being:
1. Compliance - We are not an escrow company and using this new flow allows us to be compliant to all laws in the areas we operate which is very important for everyone.
2. Ease of use - Much of what we have done over the past 2 years around the Aftermarket is being done to reduce overall friction for the buyer and seller to allow domains to move to buyers easier and make managing your domains for sale easier.

There are other reasons for doing this which tie into a bigger picture of other projects we have in line for the coming year or so which also allow for better sales for our sellers such as faster payment times and more International payment options as well as better/easier domain management and some bigger improvements that have been asked for by customers for a while.

The project was not rushed or left untested. In fact we put in over 8 man years of labor on it and did extensive testing. Part of the project involved us integrating with two 3rd party providers to help with International payments and communications. These are big name companies with a track record of success and utilizing their tools behind the scenes will help everyone in the long run to be able to sell more domains easier.

Obviously things have not gone as well as we would have liked, but we are actively working on resolving the issues around communication and payments. We have had meetings at the highest levels to take care of this as a very high priority. As of today we believe most email communication issue are resolved.

We are not only meeting about things we are actively deploying new code and changes and other teams are working to manually jump in and help out so we can get answers for our customers and make sure they are being paid. I personally saw many people working late nights and over the weekends doing what they could to keep improving the processes because our customers are very important to us. We have a good team who have all pulled together to try and help it is not just me on the forum answering questions I couldn't do it without the help of our Aftermarket teams.

I think we are very close to having a smoothly operating process again with a better ultimate process for the future which will allow you to grow with us and continue to sell domains at a better rate of return. Thank you for your patience and for being a customer.

If you are waiting for payment the #1 thing I have seen resolve this the fastest is to login to your Afternic account and go to your payment settings. Make sure that you have a payment set up as a default option and that is correct. We migrated all the old payment information into the new system. If you are in doubt or cannot find a way to select a default payment option it is faster to create a new payment method (even using the same info you already have) and select that new payment method as your default. Doing this will tell the system to try and pay you for any outstanding balance you are owed.

 

[Joe Styler]

For each and every "Fast Transfer" @ BIN domain that I have with afternic, I promptly configured all 4 price fields (bin, makeoffer, floor... whatever) to have the same fixed BIN price.

With this configuration in place, auctions.godaddy.com, a GoDaddy website, presents my domains in the following way:

Enter Bid/Offer --> "Offer <65% of my price shown> or more" OR "Buy now for <my price shown>".

Accodingly, I did not configure any offers - neither with 65% limit, nor any other offers. BIN is BIN, thats all. Moreover, such a listing at auctions.godaddy.com is misleading to a potential customer, as they may think that the domain price may be somehow negotiable, which is in fact not the case.

Why this happens?

My portfolio is not unique with this problem, it appears that each and every afternic bin listing is affected when searched on auctions.godaddy.com

If you have a BIN price don't put in a make offer price unless you want offers to be made, just leave that field blank. If you need to do this in bulk then you can reach out to me and I can have someone assist you in editing the domains' pricing.

 

[tonyk2000]

If you have a BIN price don't put in a make offer price unless you want offers to be made, just leave that field blank. If you need to do this in bulk then you can reach out to me and I can have someone assist you in editing the domains' pricing.

I tried this. It does not work. What I mean:

IF I have ("Buy Now", "Floor", "Reserve", "Minimim Offer") fields all filled with the same fixed value, and try to remove "Minimum Offer" by editing it on "portfolio" - "all domains" screen, the system would not let me even save the result, as "this field is required" red popup appears each time I delete the content of "Minimum Offer" field.

Joe, please advise

And... even if the configuration I currently have is not actually supposed to produce the desired result (simply pure fixed bin everywhere), where 65% min. offer suggested by gd auctions comes from? Why 65% min.? I do not have anything in my current config that might allow any afternic partner to suggest that I am willing to consider offers of or above 65% of my asking price

 

[tomcarl]

Confirming I'm having the same issues others have mentioned.

Right now I have around 150+ domains pending review for weeks, some maybe even longer than that. I've tried deleting the domains and re-listing them thinking it could've been the tech issue, but same thing, they're still there weeks/months pending.

I requested domains to be removed that were listed by previous owner about 5 days ago, no response yet. (it usually takes about a week with previous requests)

And some of my afternic listings appear in GoDaddy's registration path with straight BIN/add to cart (how I want it), others show the "Get it" button where they can give an offer. I've tried setting the same BIN price in all 4 columns, floor, reserve, min, etc. to remove the offer option, tried setting same BIN price in only minimum offer. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's at random.

One last thing I've been wondering about:

Any domain that is marked 'hidden' because it could be considered adult, is not showing up in the GoDaddy registration path or premium suggestions, is that right? I'm seeing other 'adult' domains being promoted in both places.

Thanks.

 

[Joe Styler]

I tried this. It does not work. What I mean:

IF I have ("Buy Now", "Floor", "Reserve", "Minimim Offer") fields all filled with the same fixed value, and try to remove "Minimum Offer" by editing it on "portfolio" - "all domains" screen, the system would not let me even save the result, as "this field is required" red popup appears each time I delete the content of "Minimum Offer" field.

Joe, please advise

And... even if the configuration I currently have is not actually supposed to produce the desired result (simply pure fixed bin everywhere), where 65% min. offer suggested by gd auctions comes from? Why 65% min.? I do not have anything in my current config that might allow any afternic partner to suggest that I am willing to consider offers of or above 65% of my asking price

Confirming I'm having the same issues others have mentioned.

Right now I have around 150+ domains pending review for weeks, some maybe even longer than that. I've tried deleting the domains and re-listing them thinking it could've been the tech issue, but same thing, they're still there weeks/months pending.

I requested domains to be removed that were listed by previous owner about 5 days ago, no response yet. (it usually takes about a week with previous requests)

And some of my afternic listings appear in GoDaddy's registration path with straight BIN/add to cart (how I want it), others show the "Get it" button where they can give an offer. I've tried setting the same BIN price in all 4 columns, floor, reserve, min, etc. to remove the offer option, tried setting same BIN price in only minimum offer. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's at random.

One last thing I've been wondering about:

Any domain that is marked 'hidden' because it could be considered adult, is not showing up in the GoDaddy registration path or premium suggestions, is that right? I'm seeing other 'adult' domains being promoted in both places.

Thanks.

You can both PM me and I will let you speak with Cameron who can help you list your names on Afternic in bulk and answer your questions as well as fix any issues with names being listed already etc.

 

[tonyk2000]

And some of my afternic listings appear in GoDaddy's registration path with straight BIN/add to cart (how I want it)

I've seen the same but for domains that have both godaddy premium listing enabled and afternic distribution enabled (GD-regged domains). It appears that for such listings GD elects to use premium listing setup on both godaddy homepage and auctions.godaddy.com which is a good thing. GoDaddys premium listings are not currently affected by "make 65% offer" auctions bug.

Joe: PM sent

 

[tonyk2000]

I've tried setting the same BIN price in all 4 columns, floor, reserve, min, etc. to remove the offer option, tried setting same BIN price in only minimum offer. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's at random.

Based on my preious experience, it may well be that some of the results you see on godaddy.com and/or auctions.godaddy.com are in fact inspired by somebody elses listings of your domains _outside afternic_, such as direct submissions to gd auctions.

You may try to temporary remove/disable problematic domains inside afternic account, wait for a couple of days to have everything synchronised, and search for these domains 1-by-1 on auctions.godaddy.com. Each and every domain you will still find as available with makeoffer of whatever on auctions.godaddy.com should be submitted for manual removal by gd staff, but for removal from auctions.godaddy.com exclusively - not from afternic, where you are already one and only correct owner

 

[campout]

All Afternic names with a BIN show up in GD Auctions with the ability to make an offer at 65% of the BIN, regardless of whatever else you put in other columns at Afternic.

 

[Shimmy]

If it has been years probably not. They should only be pending review for less than a day in most cases. If they are not moving out of that status they are stuck and need to be escalated via [email protected].

Maybe your email is getting lost somehow. I see their statistics weekly and they have 95% of the emails they get responded to within 2 days and over 90% within one day. There are always issues which need to be sent to other teams which can take longer to get resolved. If you are not getting an answer on an email that would mean they are not getting it.

I emailed them Wednesday afternoon after you suggested it. I never got a response and then I see your other post about 95% get responses after 2 days. I guess I'm in the 5%. And can't pretend they are not getting it, because they get my emails fine when my domains sold.

 

[nomen]

Haven't followed this thread that much but looks like the payment issues are gone. Completed a transfer and the payment was sent the same day. Alas.

 

[SpareDomains]

Afternic would be great due to GoDaddy reach. But what good is reach when the whole system is flawed and transactions take weeks to complete. Can wrap my own deals complete from start to finish in 2-3 days.

1) Add domains that fall into pending verification status and they can rot in that status for many many months. Email us and we'll get them listed? How about your pending review actually goes to a human to actually review them within a week or two.

2) Add domains already listed by someone else and ya can't even add them for manual review. Email us and we'll get them listed? Let the domains be added and reviewed by a human for new ownership changes.

Have a current sale that's been sitting for a week+. Let me guess email us and we'll get it going? I'll just wait till the buyer gets mad at you and requests a refund due to incompetence.

Afternic - Home of 20% commission with no human interaction unless you email us

Think I'm willing to just delete 400+ domains from my account and throw away my current sale as I won't be emailing you to get things done. You wan't 20% find some humans to actually work there. GoDaddy reach may be stronger than Sedo but Sedo support actually have humans that review/respond in a timely fashion.

 

[canswift]

Haven't followed this thread that much but looks like the payment issues are gone.

Nope, the payment issues are still with us. I'm still waiting on payments that were due May 19th and May 23rd...

 

[nomen]

Nope, the payment issues are still with us. I'm still waiting on payments that were due May 19th and May 23rd...

Sorry to hear that. Sucks much. I guess I was lucky.

 

[Joe Styler]

There really shouldn't be any payment issues still lingering. If you are not seeing your money pease reach out to [email protected] so they can look into your sales and figure out what is happening.

 

[Joe Styler]

Afternic would be great due to GoDaddy reach. But what good is reach when the whole system is flawed and transactions take weeks to complete. Can wrap my own deals complete from start to finish in 2-3 days.

1) Add domains that fall into pending verification status and they can rot in that status for many many months. Email us and we'll get them listed? How about your pending review actually goes to a human to actually review them within a week or two.

2) Add domains already listed by someone else and ya can't even add them for manual review. Email us and we'll get them listed? Let the domains be added and reviewed by a human for new ownership changes.

Have a current sale that's been sitting for a week+. Let me guess email us and we'll get it going? I'll just wait till the buyer gets mad at you and requests a refund due to incompetence.

Afternic - Home of 20% commission with no human interaction unless you email us

Think I'm willing to just delete 400+ domains from my account and throw away my current sale as I won't be emailing you to get things done. You wan't 20% find some humans to actually work there. GoDaddy reach may be stronger than Sedo but Sedo support actually have humans that review/respond in a timely fashion.

If you have a large portfolio of domains we have people at Afternic who can be assigned to help you with the listings and make sure they work correctly. We are working on a few new things to help with some of these issues as well.

 

[anantj]

If you have a large portfolio of domains we have people at Afternic who can be assigned to help you with the listings and make sure they work correctly. We are working on a few new things to help with some of these issues as well.

How large is large in this scenario? I've faced similar issues as @SpareDomains too...

 

[canswift]

There really shouldn't be any payment issues still lingering.

Sorry Joe, but there are still payment issues. On May 30th I received confirmation from Afternic that our Paypal information was now re-set correctly in our account, and payment would shortly follow.

Today, I received an email from Afternic saying this: "Our system last attempted to payout on June 4th and failed. The system that pays out to international accounts and PayPal must have an exact match with your payee and PayPal info. If there is a character that is incorrect, it will fail".

So this means (as example) that if Paypal shows your address as "Street" and you have put "St." in your Afternic profile, it will fail. And so on , and so on... I have spent some time today combing through our Paypal profile and deleting much information we had as back-up (home address, home phone etc). Because there's no way to include this information in the Afternic account, so there never would be an e-x-a-c-t match.

I have used this Paypal account for YEARS, including some years with Afternic. I have never, ever, encountered this level of problem before. No wonder some people on this forum were repeatedly advised to re-set their Paypal information again and again. It's only when by luck or accident that they entered an exact character match that they got paid. At least this Afternic rep. let me know what the issue might be so I could hopefully address it.

Since the telephone formats on Afternic and Paypal are slightly different, I'm not holding my breath that I've managed an exact character match between profiles. What a recipe for future disaster in the Afternic payments system... If anyone changes address or phone numbers or even one character in their Paypal profile, do they get kicked to Afternic's kerb again??

 

[tonyk2000]

After recently starting using afternic, I'm waiting for my 1st paypal payment from Afternic at the end of this week, and it would be non-US paypal similar to what is mentioned above. I can explicitly confirm that there is NO WAY to enter address details in exact the same way in both places, such as for example province field is not in afternic setup, but exists in paypal setup. Moreover, paypal, and with some good reasons, allows to maintain >1 different addresses inside paypal account, like home-business-pobox etc. Which reasons are not applicable to afternic config, and should not be, and there nothing in afternic terms that might force me even to think about it...

The last but not the least, last time I checked masspayment option with paypal, they are asking to upload a csv with appropriate fields like amount - currency - email-description and appropriate separators. Nothing more. They do not ask to upload any address. Accordingly, it is unclear on what stage this address is verified, by whom, and, most importantly, why. The whole idea of paypal is pay-by-email-address, and this idea is well maintained in masspay option paypal offers and afternic is using. So, Joe, can you please advise what is that address thing about????

 

[tonyk2000]

Joe, this is from paypal help page about masspayments:

quote begin

1. Add money to your PayPal account
When you're ready to send a mass payment, transfer money from your bank account to cover your payment.
Or you can set up an automatic transfer to your PayPal account to save time.
2. Create a list of recipients Learn More
Include the following information in a text file like Notepad, or a tab-delimited file like Excel.
Email addresses for up to 5000 recipients.
Payment amounts and currency.
One currency type per file.
See a sample file
3. Upload the file
Log in to your PayPal account and upload the file.
4. Send your payment
After you review your payment information, just click Send. You receive an email when the payment is complete.
5. Your recipients get paid

quote end

Also, there is a help section about payment api, which indicates that one can use "Mobile phone number of recipient" instead of email in api calls.

As you see, there is nothing in paypal help that suggests that receipients physical address can or should be submitted, or verified, or retrieved from paypal system for any purpose.

 

[canswift]

@tonyk2000 - thanks for your posts on the Paypal issue.

I have heard nothing back today from Afternic, so I've no idea if my editing of our Paypal information worked or not. Like you I'm puzzled about Afternic's need for all address information to match exactly, to the character. I have frequently received Paypal payments from companies and individuals using nothing more than our valid Paypal email.

I hope that @Joe Styler could post some updates on this payment issue soon.

 

[alcy]

I do most sales on gd auctions which is great but made one recently on aftrnic and do not find it great at all. nor smooth.
I am not getting paid and when I asked why even though it says transfer completed.. it seems they will not pay seller until they actually get name to buyer.. should we sellers wait for that? I thought escrow was all about making sure aftrnic gets their doamin into their account which it did.. and then I get paid.. and then rest is between them and buyer.. shouldn't it be so @Joe Styler ......... here is their TA reply:

"
The estimated payout date is a fixed date from time the transaction starts. It is not dynamic based on the transaction events. We are currently working to get the domain name to the buyer. Once the buyer has the name, we will release payment."

they also say pay date not dynamic.. but I've seen it go up from june 3 to now june 6.

they leave me with no choice but to memorize and remember well the experiences with their payment processors and payout.. so when it comes to deciding which sale house to use in future.. or if i need broker, then these folks would not be my first choice.

 

[Joe Styler]

I do most sales on gd auctions which is great but made one recently on aftrnic and do not find it great at all. nor smooth.
I am not getting paid and when I asked why even though it says transfer completed.. it seems they will not pay seller until they actually get name to buyer.. should we sellers wait for that? I thought escrow was all about making sure aftrnic gets their doamin into their account which it did.. and then I get paid.. and then rest is between them and buyer.. shouldn't it be so @Joe Styler ......... here is their TA reply:

"
The estimated payout date is a fixed date from time the transaction starts. It is not dynamic based on the transaction events. We are currently working to get the domain name to the buyer. Once the buyer has the name, we will release payment."

they also say pay date not dynamic.. but I've seen it go up from june 3 to now june 6.

they leave me with no choice but to memorize and remember well the experiences with their payment processors and payout.. so when it comes to deciding which sale house to use in future.. or if i need broker, then these folks would not be my first choice.

We are working on both of those things, paying people faster based on when they move the domain to us, and fixing the date shown for payout. They are both high priority things we are working on.

 

[alcy]

We are working on both of those things, paying people faster based on when they move the domain to us, and fixing the date shown for payout. They are both high priority things we are working on.

ok thanks
I understand
but I see no reason why seller should wait for afternic to get hold of buyer and give domain to him. once aftrnic holds payment+domain in their hands, which it does now, I think payment should be released.
thanks

 

[canswift]

As of today, I have still not received payment for my two recent sales. After some intermittent communication with Afternic on this, I have received an update today (which I appreciated):

"There were some changes made on our end recently creating some delays for many payouts for our customers. We have corrected the problem and are now trying to clear up the delayed payments as quickly as possible."

I have been given new scheduled payout dates for next week, and will keep my fingers crossed on this..

 

[alcy]

We are working on both of those things, paying people faster based on when they move the domain to us, and fixing the date shown for payout. They are both high priority things we are working on.

well after TA telling me how the payout date there is not dynamic.. I saw it go up 2 times. june3 to june6.. and today from june6 to june12...

I must say this isn't good at all.. and it does make one wonder how many more times this supposedly non changing eatimate payout date, will change in future.

I made this sale by callign afternic agent to take care of lead for me, and call client. which was done properly and professionally.. however, until afternic gets their act together with post sale payout and processes, I will be giving my leads to other brokers now.. or just redirecting buyers to godaddy. which is fantastic for payouts and post sale support.

 

[canswift]

Well, finally, some Afternic good news! After multiple changes to the scheduled payout date (like @alcy), I was expecting a much delayed payout the middle of next week. However, a welcome email from Paypal just arrived and both payments have been sent as a lump sum.

This has been a stressful few weeks trying to figure out how to fix this, with somewhat differing information from Afternic on the issue but I'm happy that at least these current payments are sorted.