Atom / Atom.com - Marketplace (formerly Squadhelp)

[JudgeMind]

Hey Folks,

I've just started using squadhelp.com to list some of my brandable. So far I have 76 domains listed, there is no fee to list. I've had some decent action so far in the way of interested buyers but no sales as of yet. I've only been with them for 1 week now.

A bit of a summary review of SquadHelp:

PROS

• No Listing fee
• No Logo design fee
• Ability to submit your names to end users holding naming contests
• Ability to chat directly or send a message directly to end users.
• Stats of your marketplace domains are shown in the marketplace dashboard.
• Their customer service and support has been great, 24hr a day chat.
• Ability to increase or decrease the list price of your domains or to show a discount. You can decrease or increase the price yourself by $200. If you want to lower more, you can contact support.
• End users can shortlist your domains before they make a decision on which they want to purchase. The number of shortlists is shown in you marketplace dashboard.
• When you submit your names you get to set the price you wish to get. Because their commissions are high I recommend listing at a higher price to offset the commission costs.
• Their landing pages are fairly basic but they work. Because the marketplace is fairly new, I'm sure we will see style improvements in the future.
• One thing I really like is they accept multiple extensions. I have listed .co and .io along with .com
• Each seller gets a direct link to their marketplace portfolio, HERES MY PORTFOLIO. It is handy if your trying to p[promote your portfolio through social media.
• I like that their marketplace doesn't have tens of thousands domain listings like BB. They are fairly strict on the domains they accept to list and so this helps keep the number of domains in the marketplace down and gets your listings more exposure.

CONS

• Their commissions are very high, depending on the domain name they are usually between 30% and 35%. However, there are no listing fees, no logo design fees, so in the end their commission is very similar to brand buckets.
• Their logos are not top quality, in fact I requested to have some of my logos remade.
• I think they have a big backlog of logos to design, the wait time for logo design has been around 1 week, but your names are still listed while the logos are being designed.
• After your names are accepted you need to agree to their commission rate, at this point you also need to apply your own keywords, descriptions etc. I found this was very time consuming.

 

[jk23]

Can we get a little more leeway on the pricing of our domains once they are accepted and published? Thanks.

 

[griff]

have made various requests for logo changes, pricing changes for multiple names over the last 3 months but have received no responses to any of them, despite the fact the dialog says it should only take a few days. anyone else?

 

[NameWell]

have made various requests for logo changes, pricing changes for multiple names over the last 3 months but have received no responses to any of them, despite the fact the dialog says it should only take a few days. anyone else?

I just checked and found out that I have a logo redesign request pending since 5th Aug, 2020

 

[cillx]

Is it possible to refrain from listing SH names on Sedo?

 

[cillx]

My experience with SH

There were 62 decent domains listed on SH for the last 2 years. They generated zero sales for me.

Hence decided to move all those names out of SH, No worries about the last two years. With all the low-quality logos, I don't think I can expect more.

Now all my domains are out of SH, but they keep them for sale on Sedo marketplace. It has been 5 days now, still waiting for a reply from their very busy team.

The biggest issue is not about these domains, but Sedo doesn't verify my new submission automatically now. This was not a thing before those SH names. Now I have to email Sedo and ask to check my pending ownership verification domains. What a hassle thanks to SH!

 

[ArielT]

My experience with SH

There were 62 decent domains listed on SH for the last 2 years. They generated zero sales for me.

Hence decided to move all those names out of SH, No worries about the last two years. With all the low-quality logos, I don't think I can expect more.

Now all my domains are out of SH, but they keep them for sale on Sedo marketplace. It has been 5 days now, still waiting for a reply from their very busy team.

The biggest issue is not about these domains, but Sedo doesn't verify my new submission automatically now. This was not a thing before those SH names. Now I have to email Sedo and ask to check my pending ownership verification domains. What a hassle thanks to SH!

Do you use your sedo verification id?

 

[cillx]

Do you use your sedo verification id?

No, I have set nameservers to Sedo. As far as I know, there is no way to change DNS in bulk. I have to add verification id one by one.

 

[ArielT]

No, I have set nameservers to Sedo. As far as I know, there is no way to change DNS in bulk. I have to add verification id one by one.

I know that, but I think It's better to use the personal id on the dns txt

Try that

Remember that you have to use the registrar's dns

And also, wait at least 1 hour

 

[tomcarl]

Anyone experiencing slower-than-usual reviews recently? (Names sitting 2-3 weeks)

 

[NameWell]

Anyone experiencing slower-than-usual reviews recently? (Names sitting 2-3 weeks)

I am. That happens from time to time. Usually, it gets back to normal in a while.

 

[ecomslice]

.I think they are throttling to keep listings to a realistic level vrs sales.

makes sense, I'm sure they run a ad budget in proportion to sales, and why let sellers grow to large that sales are not realistic.

I have slowed down on submissions drastically myself, but maybe im just lacking quality lately, who knows. owell.

 

[gtldomainer]

Hi friends, I need to some help regarding payout at SH. When I added my names at SH, I didn't realize that it allows only Paypal and Payoneer as payout methods. Then I had a sale. It was about 7 months ago. I asked SH support if they could wire the money or if they could send the money to a paypal email that I give them. They said that's not possible and I would have to add my paypal to SH account and verify it. I couldn't do that and my money(~ $2K) is stuck there at SH since then. It's been almost 7 months now.

I am curious if anybody here has experienced any similar issue and how they handled it? Also, I wanted to request if @GrantP could do something about it.

Thank you all,

 

[loredan]

Hi friends, I need to some help regarding payout at SH. When I added my names at SH, I didn't realize that it allows only Paypal and Payoneer as payout methods. Then I had a sale. It was about 7 months ago. I asked SH support if they could wire the money or if they could send the money to a paypal email that I give them. They said that's not possible and I would have to add my paypal to SH account and verify it. I couldn't do that and my money(~ $2K) is stuck there at SH since then. It's been almost 7 months now.

I am curious if anybody here has experienced any similar issue and how they handled it? Also, I wanted to request if @GrantP could do something about it.

Thank you all,

Bloody hell mate, so in 7 months you never bothered to find a friend or someone who has Paypal?

 

[JudgeMind]

Hi friends, I need to some help regarding payout at SH. When I added my names at SH, I didn't realize that it allows only Paypal and Payoneer as payout methods. Then I had a sale. It was about 7 months ago. I asked SH support if they could wire the money or if they could send the money to a paypal email that I give them. They said that's not possible and I would have to add my paypal to SH account and verify it. I couldn't do that and my money(~ $2K) is stuck there at SH since then. It's been almost 7 months now.

I am curious if anybody here has experienced any similar issue and how they handled it? Also, I wanted to request if @GrantP could do something about it.

Thank you all,

why not setup a payoneer account?

 

[gtldomainer]

Bloody hell mate, so in 7 months you never bothered to find a friend or someone who has Paypal?

Yes, I did but it appears it needs to be signed up and verified by SH which people are not willing to do.

 

[gtldomainer]

why not setup a payoneer account?

Just sent you a DM, @JudgeMind ,

 

[Peak.Domains]

Heads up -

I had 3 names disappear from my account a couple of weeks ago.

I initially reached out to SH because I was *pretty sure* I had a few more names in my account, than were showing up in the total.

They told me nothing was wrong, there were no signs of names being removed, none of my names had been delisted...

So, I went through and audited every name in my registrar accounts to cross-reference to every name in my SH account, and found that 3 names had, indeed, gone missing from my SH premium listings.

After about 10 days of back and forth and "having our tech team look into it", SH finally asked me what those names were. I had previously told them the names days prior, and they said they were looking into it...

I'm not sure what they could have been looking into for 10 days without even knowing the names in question... but alas...

It turns out that somebody was sending SH fake proof of ownership of domains, and SH was transferring those listings to them without even contacting the rightful owners of these names, and without giving any warning or notification that they were transferring the listings, and without even leaving any type of note or sign that it had happened.

They were just shadow-transferring listings from one account to another, based on one person showing fake ownership.

I don't blame the support staff for the fact that it took so long to sort this out, but it's absolutely ridiculous that Squadhelp will transfer ownership of listings so flippantly, without any warning, without any notice, and without any log that it had even happened.

If someone reaches out and says "Hey, I'm the person who owns this domain, please move the listing to my account," at the VERY LEAST squadhelp needs to contact the current owner of the listing - right? You'd think so!

And if not, at the VERY least, they need to keep some record of this having happened that support staff can easily see when the rightful owner reaches out, right? You'd think so!

And if none of that is possible, at the VERY VERY VERY least, they should send some sort of notification like "We've removed this listing from your account because somebody else provided proof of ownership."

But it turns out, it's none of the above.

The listings just get removed from your account, and if you don't notice it yourself - you're out of luck.

The names that were removed and transfered to another user's portfolio had been purchased by me very recently directly from SH's marketplace, I sent payment to SH for these names, I verified they had been transferred and received, yet all it took for someone else to claim ownership was sending in fake proof of ownership.

Squadhelp has assured me that this won't happen again because the seller who was claiming ownership over other people's names has had "action taken against them," but I don't see what prevents anyone else from doing this to any SH seller, unless the system in place is changed to prevent this from happening.

I suggest that Squadhelp does the following:

- If someone claims ownership of someone else's listing, contact BOTH parties. Don't just communicate with the person claiming ownership, communicate with the person who currently holds the listing.

- NEVER EVER transfer ownership of someone's listing without sending them a heads up, a notification, a quick email. Anything.

- Keep notes about when you're moving names from one account to another based on another seller claiming ownership, so that it doesn't take weeks to get it sorted out.

Be really careful out there folks, especially if you have fast transfer enabled on your names with SH, because if you have a lot of listings and you aren't paying super close attention to ensure that all of your names are still in your account, every single day, then anyone can come along and claim to own your SH listings with a fake screenshot and you might never even notice.

 

[Atom.com]

@Peak.Domains Thanks for your feedback. We have looked into this closely and are re-evaluating our processes. Here is some additional context about our current policies and what we plan to do going forward:

1. We often have situations where a domain was previously submitted for review by another seller and is now owned by a new seller. In those cases, we ask the new owner for some proof that they are the current owner and we transfer the listing to their account (as long as the current listing is in a Rejected or Delisted status). The new owner must point the name servers to SH in order for their listing to remain active.

2. We typically do not transfer currently live listings to other sellers unless we reach out to the previous owner. It looks like in this particular instance, we did not follow that process, so that is certainly a miss on our part.

3. We have kept the ownership verification process straightforward because frankly we do not see how a seller could financially benefit by falsely claiming that they are the new owner. Even if they go to the extreme of producing a fake screenshot of their registrar account, and the listing is transferred to their name, they still would not have access to the actual domain. So if that domain sells in future, they would not be able to transfer it, and therefore will not get paid for it, and will likely get their account suspended. Even if the domain has fast transfer enabled, the domain is still held in the registrar account of existing owner, and therefore any sales via Fast transfer will happen under the original owner's registrar account. Therefore, until now we have found that the current simple ownership verification process works well.

What we plan to do going forward?

1. We will perform additional training to ensure that our team reaches out to the existing owner before transferring the listing to the new owner in case the domain in question is a live/published listing.

2. For long term, we will move towards a different verification process where the new owner will need to add a unique TXT record to demonstrate that they in-fact have access to the domain before we will transfer the listing over to them.

We are sorry that it took several days to get to the bottom of this situation, and we certainly agree that we should have handled the communication of listing transfer more proactively in this situation.

 

[ecomslice]

is anyone else bothered by the fact that an accepted offer on a domain
that happens friday evening will not get responded to or finalized till monday.

that is alot of time for a buyer to have buyers remorse or change mind.

I would think @GrantP you might have one staff on weekends to close the most important factor of a sale.

 

[Atom.com]

I would think @GrantP you might have one staff on weekends to close the most important factor of a sale.

@ecomslice we have a 24x7 team that engages with buyers during night and weekends as well. Typically we do not let any offers go unresponded for the entire weekend. In case of Standard listings, the sellers also have the ability to communicate directly with the buyers via their offer center. For premium listings, we monitor any offer activity during the weekends as well, and respond to the buyers as quickly as possible. If an offer requires a routine followup, we typically only do those types of followups during weekdays during business hours.

If you have an example where it has taken longer than expected to respond to a buyer, please feel free to DM me, and we will look into it.