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.

 

[stewmath]

Since your update I had a sale and can only say it has been painful.

All of my Afternic sales have been quite small, and have been via PayPal, and I expected this latest transaction to be the same, but for some reason I was asked to set up a default payment? Afternic wanted me to set up a wire transfer so I did and there was a HUGE miss communication issue with many staff (I'm in the UK, email only) with mail being sent back and forth it took over 3 WEEKS to get things processed.

You can phone them, im in the uk too

Big tip for you. Install viber on your phone and you can call the 1-800 toll free numbers for free using viber out

 

[SpareDomains]

The top three things that annoy me with Afternic...

1) Add hundreds of domains to your account most go through and get listed. The handful that go to pending verification will literally stay that way for many months unless you email giving the impression that not enough employees are at Afternic to do their job in a timely matter. You wan't 20% do your job.

2) Why does every request I receive on make offer domains state the buyer is interested but not ready to make an offer yet. The form at Afternic requests an offer, the form at GoDaddy requests an offer so there should be an initial offer you received. Gives the impression your hiding that offer requesting the domainer price and then pocketing the difference if the domainers price is lower than the initial offer you received. Pass the initial offer along. Can see if someone called in you might not have an offer but 100% come to me like this and 100% of the interested parties didn't call in. Negotiations begin with an offer so let's have it. If there is no offer then let me know when there is one.

3) I get a GoDaddy transfer request at 11 P.M. at night giving the impression that someone is trying to jack my domain. Only reason I know it's pending sale is because I logged into Afternic and saw that. Shouldn't have to log in to see domains sold as domainers use more than 1 venue to sell domains. Makes sense to send an email from Afternic first stating "Congratulations your domain has sold be on the lookout for the transfer request" so I don't freak thinking I'm getting domain jacked. So zero communication that it sold, zero communication on any price requests as well, is it a go, did they pass, did they submit a counter, feel that if they were 90% there on my price and I was willing to come down the sale would never happen as their is literally zero communication and by the time I would receive any communication the buyer would have moved on.

Majority of my sales over the last 14 years have been direct by myself and honestly debated removing my domains from Afternic as I wrap deals complete in days. Don't get that time frame with any other market especially Afternic as total communication is lacking.

 

[anantj]

2) Why does every request I receive on make offer domains state the buyer is interested but not ready to make an offer yet. The form at Afternic requests an offer, the form at GoDaddy requests an offer so there should be an initial offer you received. Gives the impression your hiding that offer requesting the domainer price and then pocketing the difference if the domainers price is lower than the initial offer you received. Pass the initial offer along. Can see if someone called in you might not have an offer but 100% come to me like this and 100% of the interested parties didn't call in. Negotiations begin with an offer so let's have it. If there is no offer then let me know when there is one.

This irks me a lot too! I have no idea what is the meaning of Make Offer if we HAVE to add a price... So far, I've never been displayed a buyer offer on Afternic. @Joe Styler Can you shed some light on how Make Offer works on Afternic?

 

[Haykay2005]

The top three things that annoy me with Afternic...

1) Add hundreds of domains to your account most go through and get listed. The handful that go to pending verification will literally stay that way for many months unless you email giving the impression that not enough employees are at Afternic to do their job in a timely matter. You wan't 20% do your job.

2) Why does every request I receive on make offer domains state the buyer is interested but not ready to make an offer yet. The form at Afternic requests an offer, the form at GoDaddy requests an offer so there should be an initial offer you received. Gives the impression your hiding that offer requesting the domainer price and then pocketing the difference if the domainers price is lower than the initial offer you received. Pass the initial offer along. Can see if someone called in you might not have an offer but 100% come to me like this and 100% of the interested parties didn't call in. Negotiations begin with an offer so let's have it. If there is no offer then let me know when there is one.

3) I get a GoDaddy transfer request at 11 P.M. at night giving the impression that someone is trying to jack my domain. Only reason I know it's pending sale is because I logged into Afternic and saw that. Shouldn't have to log in to see domains sold as domainers use more than 1 venue to sell domains. Makes sense to send an email from Afternic first stating "Congratulations your domain has sold be on the lookout for the transfer request" so I don't freak thinking I'm getting domain jacked. So zero communication that it sold, zero communication on any price requests as well, is it a go, did they pass, did they submit a counter, feel that if they were 90% there on my price and I was willing to come down the sale would never happen as their is literally zero communication and by the time I would receive any communication the buyer would have moved on.

Majority of my sales over the last 14 years have been direct by myself and honestly debated removing my domains from Afternic as I wrap deals complete in days. Don't get that time frame with any other market especially Afternic as total communication is lacking.

A good point raised here. Your make offer is useless if you are forcing us to put a BIN. I received a price request 3 days and I was force to place a bin. Up till now I don't know the position of the deal. Am just left in the dark. Every sales lead start with an offer. Telling us someone is interested but cannot buy due to the missing BIN is FRAUDULENT
We should have an idea of what the person is willing to pay. With that, I will know how to fix my price
Am very disappointed afternic is involved in this mess. How do you justify the huge commission you are collecting on deals? That is fraud mehn
It's possible you have received higher a BIN than you are disclosing on names. I can't trust you because you are not transparent enough to be trusted.

 

[bluebox]

I don't think there's any support left at Afternic anymore.
It's been a week since I contacted them to remove names I want to add to my account and still nothing.
If domain drops and registration date is later than date of adding by previous owner it should be added automatically - you can send email to whois email like at Godaddy marketplace.
In fact you should do this to every name that goes into "review" - I mean we all know there no review at all, it's stuck in that state for months/years.

Biggest commission and the worst service/support - a typical "too big to fail" company.

 

[anantj]

This irks me a lot too! I have no idea what is the meaning of Make Offer if we HAVE to add a price... So far, I've never been displayed a buyer offer on Afternic. @Joe Styler Can you shed some light on how Make Offer works on Afternic?

@Joe Styler Can you give insights on this?

 

[canswift]

Thank you @Joe Styler for offering to look into my Afternic payment issues. However, I have now received confirmation from Afternic support that my Paypal has been finally re-set in my Afternic account. What is confusing is that the Account Details dashboard does not correctly show this and my two recent sales payments are still showing as "Non-US-Wire" (for payment method). Also both payments are now past due.

The Afternic support email acknowledged that "there is a known issue regarding payouts and we are working to get this resolved immediately". So for those of you waiting in limbo for payment, it isn't just you. There is indeed an Afternic problem (after the recent site changes) with setting and receiving payments for some sellers.

 

[Joe Styler]

This irks me a lot too! I have no idea what is the meaning of Make Offer if we HAVE to add a price... So far, I've never been displayed a buyer offer on Afternic. @Joe Styler Can you shed some light on how Make Offer works on Afternic?

There are a lot of leads that come in that are not coming from Afternic or GoDaddy. We have a very big network which is the beauty of listing with Afternic, you list once and are distributed in well over 100 places people are looking to buy domains. So there are quite a few places where no offer is made but interest in buying the domain is shown from a buyer. At that point we need a price to negotiate a sale.
So for example if you are parking with us or using our for sale banner at another parking company, people express interest in buying the domain without a price being offered. For example check callingcoyote.com. Then click as if you are interested in buying it and you will see the form come up with the lead information we use to contact you to make a deal happen. As far as the network go to domaintools.com for example and look up callingcoyote.com in the whois. Right there front and center on the results page it will say that the domain is for sale. Click the link to buy it and there is a lead form. This is one example of a network site showing the sale banner that collects leads. If you have a Buy Now Price we can more easily display that and use different channels to sell the name with less friction which results in more sales if you do not want to use a Buy Now Price we take that lead and try and negotiate a deal for you. But if you only have a min offer filled in and no price you would take for your domain we cannot make a sale happen without asking you for a price.
We get an offer various ways and when we have one we need to know what you want for the domain in order to negotiate the deal for you.
We wont just take an offer from the buyer for a couple reasons as well. A great deal of people listing domains with us just put in $100 min offer on the domain listings. Which isn't very accurate as almost no one will sell the domain for $100. So we get an interested party in the door and tell them, yes the name is for sale and the seller wants an offer above $100 for the domain, OK how about $150 for newenglandsoccer.com? Great we will make the offer. Then you get back to the interested party and say ok they want $3,500 for that name. At that point the buyer gets mad and its a harder sale because they already had the $100 price in their head no matter how many times you tell them it is a min offer once someone hears a price it's human nature to think it is close to the final price. We would rather get your price and try and negotiate something for you to sell in your range. We have a great team of brokers and a tremendous amount of research on closing deals, we use all the skills and data at our disposal to try and close deals for you in a way that will result in the most sales.
This is why you get offers like this and why we ask you for the price.

 

[Shimmy]

Hey Joe, what is the deal with "Domains Pending Review" in afternic for years and years. They just will never get reviewed?

 

[Joe Styler]

Hey Joe, what is the deal with "Domains Pending Review" in afternic for years and years. They just will never get reviewed?

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].

 

[tonyk2000]

Joe, not only service @ afternic email does not respond in timely fashion (if at all). Auctions @ godaddy also stopped processing tickets related to auctions or premium listing issues.

 

[Joe Styler]

Joe, not only service @ afternic email does not respond in timely fashion (if at all). Auctions @ godaddy also stopped processing tickets related to auctions or premium listing issues.

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.

 

[Joedin]

Hello @Joe Styler

Good to see you here. Can you tell me why Afternic staffs/support/Domain transfer department just do not send me the transfer confirmation link? They have sent Auth code 11 days after payment and now this is 5 days I am waiting transfer confirmation link to click on it but they don't send it to me. Sent several e-mails and no reply.
Even there is a guy named David m w... from godaddy in this process. No matter what, I haven't got any reply during past 5 days.

 

[tonyk2000]

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.

The numbers are looking promising. However, I have unactioned auctions@ ticket ( "Inquiry 32103887 Received") related to (un)delivery of a domain to your paying customer, even though we the sellers are right here and were always proud of delivering sold domains without any delays during 15+ years in domaining business. GD inaction makes us the sellers looking bad in buyers eyes, don't you think?

 

[Joe Styler]

Hello @Joe Styler

Good to see you here. Can you tell me why Afternic staffs/support/Domain transfer department just do not send me the transfer confirmation link? They have sent Auth code 11 days after payment and now this is 5 days I am waiting transfer confirmation link to click on it but they don't send it to me. Sent several e-mails and no reply.
Even there is a guy named David m w... from godaddy in this process. No matter what, I haven't got any reply during past 5 days.

I couldn't answer without knowing the circumstances. If you want to pm me the details I can look into it.

 

[1Darko]

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].

I can confirm for myself that some domains are pending for review for several months and nothing happens! This seems to be not an isolated issue.

Special thanks to @Joe Styler for helping and advising here on namepros!

 

[anantj]

There are a lot of leads that come in that are not coming from Afternic or GoDaddy. We have a very big network which is the beauty of listing with Afternic, you list once and are distributed in well over 100 places people are looking to buy domains. So there are quite a few places where no offer is made but interest in buying the domain is shown from a buyer. At that point we need a price to negotiate a sale.
So for example if you are parking with us or using our for sale banner at another parking company, people express interest in buying the domain without a price being offered. For example check callingcoyote.com. Then click as if you are interested in buying it and you will see the form come up with the lead information we use to contact you to make a deal happen. As far as the network go to domaintools.com for example and look up callingcoyote.com in the whois. Right there front and center on the results page it will say that the domain is for sale. Click the link to buy it and there is a lead form. This is one example of a network site showing the sale banner that collects leads. If you have a Buy Now Price we can more easily display that and use different channels to sell the name with less friction which results in more sales if you do not want to use a Buy Now Price we take that lead and try and negotiate a deal for you. But if you only have a min offer filled in and no price you would take for your domain we cannot make a sale happen without asking you for a price.
We get an offer various ways and when we have one we need to know what you want for the domain in order to negotiate the deal for you.
We wont just take an offer from the buyer for a couple reasons as well. A great deal of people listing domains with us just put in $100 min offer on the domain listings. Which isn't very accurate as almost no one will sell the domain for $100. So we get an interested party in the door and tell them, yes the name is for sale and the seller wants an offer above $100 for the domain, OK how about $150 for newenglandsoccer.com? Great we will make the offer. Then you get back to the interested party and say ok they want $3,500 for that name. At that point the buyer gets mad and its a harder sale because they already had the $100 price in their head no matter how many times you tell them it is a min offer once someone hears a price it's human nature to think it is close to the final price. We would rather get your price and try and negotiate something for you to sell in your range. We have a great team of brokers and a tremendous amount of research on closing deals, we use all the skills and data at our disposal to try and close deals for you in a way that will result in the most sales.
This is why you get offers like this and why we ask you for the price.

Spectacular answer and makes complete sense... Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed answer.

I have one question on the above, if a domain is listed as make offer, aren't your partners obligated to at least take an offer? Or just the lead? I understand your point about minimum offers and human nature to consider that as a near final price. I'm just asking to have full clarity for the scenario

 

[domainventure]

I was in the middle of managing my domains inside my afternic account when I suddenly got an account activation message in the control panel. (I have had the account for some time and have quite a few domains in there) Asked me to validate my email address. I did that, when I got back to my account, it's saying "We apologize, but something seems to have gone wrong...Our technical team will have a solution very shortly."

Frustrating!

 

[anantj]

I was in the middle of managing my domains inside my afternic account when I suddenly got an account activation message in the control panel. (I have had the account for some time and have quite a few domains in there) Asked me to validate my email address. I did that, when I got back to my account, it's saying "We apologize, but something seems to have gone wrong...Our technical team will have a solution very shortly."

Frustrating!

Just go back to the homepage (or go to https://afternic.com/dashboard). This is a weird error and appears randomly. You don't actually need to validate your account again

 

[domainventure]

Thanks @anantj. First time I experienced this, so I went through with the account validation. Will remember going forward.