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.

 

[Name Trader]

I got paid 2 days before the published date. I haven't experienced anything bad with this transition, at all.

I did take the advice of whoever it was who said to make sure my details matched my paypal details exactly. I can only assumed that helped. But the GoDaddy programmers who worked on this did an awful job and should be fired IMHO. Putting out untested or insufficiently tested code like that, is not a good image for the market leader, GoDaddy..

 

[Joe Styler]

ok I understand about human nature. I don't mind if it changes a bit.. but someone just said they got paid 20 days after their estimate date.. I think its a bit much no?

I also want to ask you for pro opinion whether I am wrong or afternic is wrong when they say I should wait for them to deliver to buyer before they release payments. ie: shoudln't payment be released once aftenic holds both domain and money in their account? and if so, then is this something you are also working to fix? thank you Joe! I was hopin for similar great service as iwth my gd auctions sales, but this is clearly something else and not in a better way.

It is something we are working towards. I have brought it up a few times and there are ongoing discussions on how to make this happen.

 

[Joe Styler]

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.

I am not sure who is telling you that you need to have all the information on your paypal account match perfectly like St. vs Street. This is incorrect. This is the info from the company we use to make PayPal Payments to non US based accounts -
"When a payee chooses PayPal payment method, we validate the Primary email address that is in PayPal, PayPal First Name, and PayPal Last Name. We use API to validate these 3 fields. On the payment method page they need to enter it in exactly as it is stated on their PayPal account for it pass validation."

 

[tonyk2000]

Joe, thank you for the clarification. My post was inspired by a quote from afternic support (earlier in this thread) which might be read as an address verification explanation.

There is another important issue though, on which you comment would be appreciated.

Auctions.godaddy still does offer an opportunity to submit bids of 65% or more on pure BIN afternic instant transfer domains, and it does not depend on whatever floor/min/etc pricing is entered or not entered in 3 extra afternic price fields. Which is incorrect. BIN is BIN.

Moreover, even the fist page of godaddy dot com says the following in "learn more" popup after an exact match domain is searched (and offered for instant purchase @ correct BIN):

quote begin

How does this work?
This is a Premium domain name for sale by the current owner, who may or may not be willing to negotiate on price. To make an offer on it, you’ll need to pay a one-time fee of $4.99 to become a GoDaddy Auctions member. Once you submit an offer, we tell the owner and he or she has 7 days to accept or counteroffer. If the seller agrees to your price, the domain name should appear in your GoDaddy account within 1-2 weeks of payment (timeframe is estimated).

quote end

Again, I see nothing in afternic domain setup that allows any partner, such as godaddy auctions, to guess that BIN-priced instant transfer domain may be negotiable, starting at 65% level (why did GD system suggests these 65% and not lets say 5% or 85%, btw?), or at any other level. Moreover, a potential customer may be misleaded by all this and they will pay $4.99 just to submit a bid - and for what? for nothing

 

[Joe Styler]

Joe, thank you for the clarification. My post was inspired by a quote from afternic support (earlier in this thread) which might be read as an address verification explanation.

There is another important issue though, on which you comment would be appreciated.

Auctions.godaddy still does offer an opportunity to submit bids of 65% or more on pure BIN afternic instant transfer domains, and it does not depend on whatever floor/min/etc pricing is entered or not entered in 3 extra afternic price fields. Which is incorrect. BIN is BIN.

Moreover, even the fist page of godaddy dot com says the following in "learn more" popup after an exact match domain is searched (and offered for instant purchase @ correct BIN):

quote begin

How does this work?
This is a Premium domain name for sale by the current owner, who may or may not be willing to negotiate on price. To make an offer on it, you’ll need to pay a one-time fee of $4.99 to become a GoDaddy Auctions member. Once you submit an offer, we tell the owner and he or she has 7 days to accept or counteroffer. If the seller agrees to your price, the domain name should appear in your GoDaddy account within 1-2 weeks of payment (timeframe is estimated).

quote end

Again, I see nothing in afternic domain setup that allows any partner, such as godaddy auctions, to guess that BIN-priced instant transfer domain may be negotiable, starting at 65% level (why did GD system suggests these 65% and not lets say 5% or 85%, btw?), or at any other level. Moreover, a potential customer may be misleaded by all this and they will pay $4.99 just to submit a bid - and for what? for nothing

That is a valid concern. It is something we know about. I am not sure if we will change it or not. That number (65%) is based on years of research with millions of domains and we found it to be the sweet spot where we can sell the most domains by mainly eliminating tire kickers and getting leads on the hook we can close for the expected sales price. We hear both sides from customers and do discuss it regularly internally. At this point it is not being changed but we do revisit it regularly.

On the PayPal thing. I appreciate the feedback as well thank you.

 

[tonyk2000]

Joe, since afternic in fact allows to setup extra pricing fields for negotiation purposes - what prevents afternic-GD from simply respecting this setup? As soon as I am ready to consider offers on some of my domains that are also available for immediate purchase @BIN - I will of course enter appropriate min-floor-whatever pricing right into appropriate fields afternic offers for this exact purpose, taking in account your recommendations of 65%, and in this case I will even expect auctions.godaddy to offer an opportunity to submit bids - with appropriate min. bid as per my config - as the result. However, for domains where I am not looking to accept offers - this whole thing has a bad taste if we think about it, I mean a bad taste for a potential customer, as GD will charge them something (small $4.99, but still) for nothing

 

[Joe Styler]

It takes more work than you would think to do it on the GoDaddy side. It is as I said something we routinely discuss but have not decided to change at this time. We are looking at other ways to list domains for sale that may address it at some point in the future.
We have eliminated the need to have an auction membership on almost all the transaction types over the years I have been here and we are continuing to scale that back so hopefully that will not be a concern in the future as well.

 

[EmotiveDomains]

I have just discovered today that I have received bids at GoDaddy auctions on a domain (and potentially more that I'm not aware of) that I have listed through Afternic, but that I have received no notification of.

The domain isn't registered at GD and I have no way of responding as the bid doesn't show up in my Afternic account.

Has anyone else had this issue or know of a way to fix it? Who knows how many sales users could be missing out on.

 

[canswift]

I am not sure who is telling you that you need to have all the information on your paypal account match perfectly like St. vs Street. This is incorrect.

@Joe Styler : I was the one who posted about the exact match needed between your Afternic account and Paypal account. I had several emails from Afternic on this and this is from the Afternic email of June 5th:

"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. Please confirm that your payee info and PayPal info match exactly or it will continue to fail".

I thought this information from Afternic was very clear and precise, which is why I spent some time stripping out additional addresses and back-up phone numbers from our Paypal account. I am frankly ticked off to understand now that this was not necessary.

 

[Joe Styler]

@Joe Styler : I was the one who posted about the exact match needed between your Afternic account and Paypal account. I had several emails from Afternic on this and this is from the Afternic email of June 5th:

"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. Please confirm that your payee info and PayPal info match exactly or it will continue to fail".

I thought this information from Afternic was very clear and precise, which is why I spent some time stripping out additional addresses and back-up phone numbers from our Paypal account. I am frankly ticked off to understand now that this was not necessary.

I don't blame you for being upset. if you can forward me the email that you got instructing you to do that I can figure out where it came from and make sure that the correct information is given next time by them. I sincerely apologize for any time you wasted as a result.

 

[alcy]

It takes more work than you would think to do it on the GoDaddy side. It is as I said something we routinely discuss but have not decided to change at this time. We are looking at other ways to list domains for sale that may address it at some point in the future.
We have eliminated the need to have an auction membership on almost all the transaction types over the years I have been here and we are continuing to scale that back so hopefully that will not be a concern in the future as well.

Joe, I am stil waiting for my payout
believe it or not I talked to couple agents and they all made it very clear that the reason I am not getting paid yet is:

afternic is holding my dn after transfer in their gd account.
they are also holding buyers paymetn
they have requested several times and continue to do so, buyer's gd account info so they can push the domain to them.
the buyer is not responding. though frankly I have my doubts as to how hard they are tryign to get that info.. cause logically, if buyer paid dn on the spot pretty much, why would he now delay giving push info?

this is just an awful experience. and I will never use afternic broker again and keep fingers crossed all my sales are on gd auctions and not on afternic.

when I pointed out to the agent how come them being owned by gd, they cannot just initiate the pusgh themselves after gettin from gd the push info.. they started to come up with some things like.. well.. what if buyer has multiple accounts... or that they haev no legal rigth. and yet gd auctions is more than able to begin transfer on buyer behalf after sale, if buyer for some reason accidental or not, decides to delay things for too long.

can you help me? I feel like stuck in an infinite loop that goes nowhere.

 

[Joe Styler]

I have just discovered today that I have received bids at GoDaddy auctions on a domain (and potentially more that I'm not aware of) that I have listed through Afternic, but that I have received no notification of.

The domain isn't registered at GD and I have no way of responding as the bid doesn't show up in my Afternic account.

Has anyone else had this issue or know of a way to fix it? Who knows how many sales users could be missing out on.

If your domain is getting offers on GD those go to the broker team at Afternic and they work those and try and make a sale for you. If the buyer is way off and they cannot bring him up to a decent offer they will not tell you. So say you have a domain for sale for $1,500 and the offer comes in at $200 they will try and call the bidder, if they can't get in touch with them they will also try emails. They will educate the buyer on why the name is valuable and try and close the deal for your asking price. If the buyer won't come up from $200 and that is below your floor price on Afternic, you will not hear from them. If $100 is your floor price they will close the deal if they cant get them closer to the 1500 asking price. If your floor is say 300 they will call you and say we have an offer for 200 and we cant get the guy any higher would you consider 200? If you are not hearing from them the bids are not anywhere close to your floor pricing or BIN price.

 

[Joe Styler]

Joe, I am stil waiting for my payout
believe it or not I talked to couple agents and they all made it very clear that the reason I am not getting paid yet is:

afternic is holding my dn after transfer in their gd account.
they are also holding buyers paymetn
they have requested several times and continue to do so, buyer's gd account info so they can push the domain to them.
the buyer is not responding. though frankly I have my doubts as to how hard they are tryign to get that info.. cause logically, if buyer paid dn on the spot pretty much, why would he now delay giving push info?

this is just an awful experience. and I will never use afternic broker again and keep fingers crossed all my sales are on gd auctions and not on afternic.

when I pointed out to the agent how come them being owned by gd, they cannot just initiate the pusgh themselves after gettin from gd the push info.. they started to come up with some things like.. well.. what if buyer has multiple accounts... or that they haev no legal rigth. and yet gd auctions is more than able to begin transfer on buyer behalf after sale, if buyer for some reason accidental or not, decides to delay things for too long.

can you help me? I feel like stuck in an infinite loop that goes nowhere.

You can send me the info and I will see what is happening.

 

[canswift]

if you can forward me the email that you got instructing you to do that I can figure out where it came from and make sure that the correct information is given next time by them

Thank you your response and I've PM'd you the full email.

 

[Haris]

@Joe Styler

Hi, I sold a domain name at AfterNic 10 days ago, funds were approved a week ago and I was asked to provide auth. code as the domain is at MyDomain.com and I think they don't have fast transfer. I provided the auth. code asap but the transfer hasn't been initiated yet.

I have sent multiple emails/messages to [email protected] and TA but I have not received a reply yet. I am afraid that due to this delay of initiating transfer by AfterNic team, the buyer may ask for a refund. The domain is unlocked and I recently sold a domain registered at Mydomain.com at Flippa and the transfer was swift so the problem is not with the registrar or the domain.

Please let me know what is wrong, I have PM'd you the domain name.

Thanks.

 

[Joe Styler]

I will have someone look into it for you.

 

[JB Lions]

My recent sale went smooth. Sold on 7/6, Est,. payment date was 7/13, payment arrived today, 7/10.

 

[70ym]

"When a payee chooses PayPal payment method, we validate the Primary email address that is in PayPal, PayPal First Name, and PayPal Last Name. We use API to validate these 3 fields. On the payment method page they need to enter it in exactly as it is stated on their PayPal account for it pass validation."

I make sure the information I enter are correct, but it still shows: "The account information could not be validated by PayPal. Please verify that your details are exactly as they are in your PayPal account (name and email address)."

 

[70ym]

I have sent many emails to support but it is useless. They only tell you that the information you enter is wrong.

 

[Joe Styler]

"When a payee chooses PayPal payment method, we validate the Primary email address that is in PayPal, PayPal First Name, and PayPal Last Name. We use API to validate these 3 fields. On the payment method page they need to enter it in exactly as it is stated on their PayPal account for it pass validation."

I make sure the information I enter are correct, but it still shows: "The account information could not be validated by PayPal. Please verify that your details are exactly as they are in your PayPal account (name and email address)."

Those are the only fields they look at to validate the account. You can contact [email protected] to have them look into your specific account.