Another "Bidding on your own names" ???

[offthehandle]

Anybody else see this just now?

This nonsense is beyond palatable. The Bidder 1, Bidder 2, Bidder 3 stuff- please....

Read the latest tweets Rick Schwartz has written about expired auctions.

 

[Ategy]

This morning, a few hours ago

Thanks .. I got mine an hour ago ...

Nor do I .. I don't want my minimum proposal .. but even still .. you can't deny 5 days is not as bad as 7! That is very doable without on a thing!

Then maybe ..
- Trim 1-2 day of closeouts ..
- Trim 1-2 days from redemption period ..
- Gain 1-2 days at end being a little more efficient
- Ask Verisign for an extra 1-2 day grace period ..

Then wam bam ..

- Your auctions end at 40 days and redemption ends at 40 days ..
- Your clients have less integrity concerns about auctions
- Most importantly your aftermarket clients are no longer mad and frustrated at losing auctions they won ..
- Closeouts can become instant transactions ..
- World peace ..
- @Joe Styler gets a ton of free beer/drinks from domainers at the next NamesCon!

MANUALLY ADDED TO QUOTE AFTER THE FACT: Drinks for @Paul Nicks too .. lol)

Anyhow .. as usual I'm glad to say *I* was not quiet about this either ... lol

Also mentioned this issue and suggested modifications several months ago with the development team at GoDaddy charged with putting together the next generation of the auction platform.

So yeah .. you're welcome everyone! lol

Seriously though .. my guess is that this was something planned a while back to be implemented "at some point down the road" (likely due to feedback from a bunch of people) .. and the recent tweet was the extra boost needed (because I'm pretty sure such significant change would have likely needed to go a few rounds through their legal department) .. Maybe @Paul Nicks or @Joe Styler could shine a bit more light on this!

 

[richface]

Premier Services accounts for our largest account holders. We didn't think the notice would make sense for a majority of the millions of customers we have, so we narrowed it just to the largest which are most likely to be impacted. That's also why I'm here today to help address issues and answer questions. If I thought y'all were "plebbs" I wouldn't frequent this board.

Send an email to all your customers is a pretty big change no excuse to just email premier service accounts only avoids any future issues with clients such a simple thing to do.

 

[Paul Nicks]

Thanks .. I got mine an hour ago ...




Anyhow .. as usual I'm glad to say *I* was not quiet about this either ... lol

Also mentioned this issue and suggested modifications several months ago with the development team at GoDaddy charged with putting together the next generation of the auction platform.

So yeah .. you're welcome everyone! lol

Seriously though .. my guess is that this was something planned a while back to be implemented "at some point down the road" (likely due to feedback from a bunch of people) .. and the recent tweet was the extra boost needed (because I'm pretty sure such significant change would have likely needed to go a few rounds through their legal department) .. Maybe @Paul Nicks or @Joe Styler could shine a bit more light on this!

We've been planning and developing for over a year. The dev work is not trivial, and neither is the training of 3k+ support reps. The tweets did not move delivery date a bit, we are not a reactive company.

 

[equity78]

We've been planning and developing for over a year. The dev work is not trivial, and neither is the training of 3k+ support reps. The tweets did not move delivery date a bit, we are not a reactive company.

But to be fair Paul, people here and the interview I did with you 5 years ago started talking about this. http://tldinvestors.com/2012/08/quick-chat-with-paul-nicks-go-daddy-aftermarket.html

I am sure this took some time, instantaneous transfers on auction wins will be a big deal. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

 

[Grilled]

The tweets did not move delivery date a bit, we are not a reactive company.

I'm confused.

Does GoDaddy appreciate the business [partially depend on] shill bidders, and questionable bidding practices as much as it appears @NameJetGM does, or was part of the decision to make this move [in part] to discourage shill bidding, and other questionable practices?

The timing of everything is what confused me. I had thought it was related. But come to find, it is not related, in any way?

 

[Ategy]

We've been planning and developing for over a year. The dev work is not trivial, and neither is the training of 3k+ support reps. The tweets did not move delivery date a bit, we are not a reactive company.

Yeah .. I figured it wasn't spur of the moment for obvious legal verification etc .. just wasn't sure if it was something already planned for say January but then advanced to today just to avoid further useless talk and debate because it was going to happen anyways. Anyhow .. good to know.

I'm confused.
Does GoDaddy appreciate [partially depend on] shill bidders business like it appears @NameJetGM does, or was part of the decision to make this move [in part] to discourage shill bidding, and other questionable practices?

I'm thinking it's simply that they wanted their customers who won their auctions .. to ACTUALLY win their auctions! It's a pretty huge customer service issue when you let people bid on something that theoretically could still belong to somebody else.

It's good news for those of us who buy at GoDaddy Auctions. It actually goes even further than I was hoping for .. as to me I would have been totally fine with Renewal being available to the original owner right up to the day before the end of the auction (day 34 if I calculate correctly).

The only reason I never dreamed as far as Day 30 is because I thought they'd want it to be "more" than a month in case businesses with monthly account checks/updates missed something (so 32 or more days).

Anyhow .. thanks for the info @Paul Nicks .. I'm pretty vocal on some issue with GoDaddy ,, but credit where credit is due .. this will certainly save a few fists and computer screens of fellow domainers!

 

[Joe Styler]

I'm confused.

Does GoDaddy appreciate [partially depend on] shill bidders, and questionable bidding practices as much as it appears @NameJetGM does, or was part of the decision to make this move [in part] to discourage shill bidding, and other questionable practices?

The timing of everything is what confused me. I had thought it was related. But come to find, it is not related, in any way?

We do not allow shill bidding on our platform and never have. We make this clear in our terms, we also have machine and manual checks done each day on each auction to make sure that there are no shill bids. We have other things in place as well such as bidder verification etc to help prevent bad bids. This change in the renewal deadline has nothing to do with shill bidding.

 

[Name Trader]

Excellent news. A fair system, their fast reaction. No more clawbacks. Real auctions. I don’t see the downside, except for weeding out the underfunded portfolio holders moving to other platforms and registries. Hopefully the entire industry of expired names follow suit.

Next they should take a leadership role to ID the sellers and bidders to clean up what they can control that goes on behind the scenes.

It's only a fair system if you are participating in their auctions. It's completely unfair taking away 12-15 days of the owners rights, given to them by ICANN.

 

[Grilled]

We do not allow shill bidding on our platform and never have. We make this clear in our terms, we also have machine and manual checks done each day on each auction to make sure that there are no shill bids. We have other things in place as well such as bidder verification etc to help prevent bad bids. This change in the renewal deadline has nothing to do with shill bidding.

Thank you for the FAST response @Joe Styler - You've developed enough cred on the forum over the years to take your word for it. Please pardon my comment, as in part, it stems from @NameJetGM reaction [or inaction] to the uncovering of shill bidding on their platform, and how poorly (IMO) they have handled it.

For safe measure, can you provide me [or the NamePros community] with an email or contact to the department that monitors shill bidding? Given the extent of some questionable bidding may have occurred on NameJet, I am concerned (among other things) that it may have spread to other platforms during the time of the CHIP boom. I have seen no evidence of this happening on GoDaddy, but I haven't looked either.

 

[tonecas]

It's only a fair system if you are participating in their auctions. It's completely unfair taking away 12-15 days of the owners rights, given to them by ICANN.

on the spot. ICANN RAA stipulates that there should be a renew grace period but does not set a minimum for it. If a registrar states that a owner has X days for renewing after the expiration date there should be NO auction on the domain during that period. Anything else is abusing the owner's rights.

this should be simple to understand and comply, but it seems it is not. and in the lack of a proper monitoring and enforcement entity, which ICANN refuses to be almost in a way that seems on purpose by letting loopholes open for years, this leads to behaviors like this from registrars.

 

[Name Trader]

on the spot. ICANN RAA stipulates that there should be a renew grace period but does not set a minimum for it. If a registrar states that a owner has X days for renewing after the expiration date there should be NO auction on the domain during that period. Anything else is abusing the owner's rights.

this should be simple to understand and comply, but it seems it is not. and in the lack of a proper monitoring and enforcement entity, which ICANN refuses to be almost in a way that seems on purpose by letting loopholes open for years, this leads to behaviors like this from registrars.

Right On!

 

[Joe Styler]

Thank you for the FAST response @Joe Styler - You've developed enough cred on the forum over the years to take your word for it. Please pardon my comment, as in part, it stems from @NameJetGM reaction [or inaction] to the uncovering of shill bidding on their platform, and how poorly (IMO) they have handled it.

For safe measure, can you provide me [or the NamePros community] with an email or contact to the department that monitors shill bidding? Given the extent of some questionable bidding may have occurred on NameJet, I am concerned (among other things) that it may have spread to other platforms during the time of the CHIP boom. I have seen no evidence of this happening on GoDaddy, but I haven't looked either.

you can email [email protected]

 

[Joe Styler]

on the spot. ICANN RAA stipulates that there should be a renew grace period but does not set a minimum for it. If a registrar states that a owner has X days for renewing after the expiration date there should be NO auction on the domain during that period. Anything else is abusing the owner's rights.

this should be simple to understand and comply, but it seems it is not. and in the lack of a proper monitoring and enforcement entity, which ICANN refuses to be almost in a way that seems on purpose by letting loopholes open for years, this leads to behaviors like this from registrars.

There is no loophole here we are in full compliance with ICANN rules and that is something that is very important to us as a company.

 

[tonecas]

There is no loophole here we are in full compliance with ICANN rules and that is something that is very important to us as a company.

no loophole? you must be joking. you are auctioning a domain that has a owner. you are not the owner until the renew grace expires. you are not entitled to auction a domain name because you have no rights whatsoever on it. only in a unscrupulous and uncontrolled business this is allowed.

i know that this is very important to your company. that's the point. money talks.

your business and other Registrars business is registering domains for your clients and cross sell other services (email, hosting, etc), not taking domains from your clients.

you are only allowed to do this because ICANN makes a blind eye to it.

same as Registrars warehousing expired domains and not releasing them to public. again, a loophole on the rules so it is legitimate business, but totally unethical.

you are in a difficult spot, to defend your company on such a clear issue. I don't envy your position but things must be said like they are.

please give your reasons why you are entitled to auction a domain name to which an owner can renew, thus have rights over it? the only reason is: your are allowed to by ICANN because they to not address this issue and leave the loophole open to this and any other scheme.

 

[Joe Styler]

We have a pretty big legal team. They are the ones who figure out compliance. I go by what the lawyers say which I believe is the smartest way to proceed as I am not a lawyer and don't think I should be interpreting the obligations. I know ICANN compliance is very important for us and any project we do passed through the legal and compliance teams among others as this one did. Also we are a public company and on our quarterly earnings calls we are among other things asked if we are compliant to ICANN. We are also audited by outside companies who act in the interest of protecting their investors and not in our interest, they are a neutral third party. I listen to these earnings calls and have not heard us say we are not in compliance once. You're welcome to listen in the information is as gddy.com. I do not believe saying we are acting against ICANN regulations is correct as we have more than one party checking on this.
So bottom line is my statement that we are in compliance with ICANN is not based on my opinion but on the word of many lawyers both inside and outside this company.

 

[Name Trader]

no loophole? you must be joking. you are auctioning a domain that has a owner. you are not the owner until the renew grace expires. you are not entitled to auction a domain name because you have no rights whatsoever on it. only in a unscrupulous and uncontrolled business this is allowed.

i know that this is very important to your company. that's the point. money talks.

your business and other Registrars business is registering domains for your clients and cross sell other services (email, hosting, etc), not taking domains from your clients.

you are only allowed to do this because ICANN makes a blind eye to it.

same as Registrars warehousing expired domains and not releasing them to public. again, a loophole on the rules so it is legitimate business, but totally unethical.

you are in a difficult spot, to defend your company on such a clear issue. I don't envy your position but things must be said like they are.

please give your reasons why you are entitled to auction a domain name to which an owner can renew, thus have rights over it? the only reason is: your are allowed to by ICANN because they to not address this issue and leave the loophole open to this and any other scheme.

GoDaddy have changed their renewal procedures so that you now only get 30 days to renew a domain. ICANN don't stipulate a registrars renewal procedure. This is why Joe can claim they are still in full compliance of ICANN rules. No consideration of their existing customers previous rights, which have just been trampled on.

 

[offthehandle]

ICANN RAA stipulates that there should be a renew grace period but does not set a minimum for it. If a registrar states that a owner has X days for renewing after the expiration d

Help me out here. I am confused here between what you and Stub are stating. The 30 days is ICANN maximum, so now that is the date and no auction prior to release of the name on day 31 which status changes to pending delete.

http://archive.icann.org/en/registrars/gtld-lifecycle.jpg

I posted the infographic earlier in the thread, straight from ICANN.. Seems simple to me, the registrant loses rights on day 31. That is the maximum date of renewal grace period.

 

[tonecas]

@Joe Styler, of course your are legal compliant. I am the first person to say that !

the issue is you are compliant because of a legal subterfuge that is allowed by ICANN. and I even go the extra mile by saying this is intentional on their part as they are only there to protect big company's interests.

they are not publicly accountable, and operate on a laissez-faire framework, not giving a damn for the regular Joe.

GoDaddy is operating under a legal framework, but an unethical one, and exploring a legal loophole. there is no way GoDaddy can deny this, however you may try to embezzle it.

of course I am not also expecting that you or anyone else on GoDaddy will recognize this.

but to give you a candy and be fair to your company, you are probably the only big registrar that hasn't done warehousing of domains. that is another loophole and the most unethical one, even illegal because not all laws are legal. you went straight buying portfolios.

 

[Joe Styler]

Anyone is free to sign up for an ICANN working group as an individual or company. You are able to do this and get your voice heard when they are coming up with policy decisions. If you are unhappy with the way the policies are now you can be part of the process. You can find more information on ICANN's website. I signed up and it is very easy to get started.

 

[Joe Styler]

I'm heading out for Thanksgiving. I will see you all next week. Have a good holiday or rest of the week.