Bidding on your own names at NameJet...?

Andrew has a point to be made with free market and capitalism ... But the problem with that scenario is when you're bidding "not to protect your name" but to raise the bids higher then they would be if you didn't mess with the market, then there is clearly not something right about this scenario

Bidder A bids $50
Bidder B bids $60
Bidder C bids $70

Bidder D (owner) bids $250

Bidder A,B, and C are now in a box, do they bid more or do they walk away ... There's 3 bidders there that most likely one of them will bid above Bidder D because they believe the name is worth that much on open market ... Really it depends on names, but let's be honest here, why would you want to protect these names ? If you were the owner, are these the kind of names you protect ... I've known James for quite a while, he has been as straight as an arrow so seeing this news is a little bit unsettling and questioning, I guess with any industry, there will be greed eventually, it wouldn't be the first time we've seen a leader make headlines with their pants down ...

Banning them will not solve this problem or controversy, I think NJ should address this issue with a warning and track their IP address' that way they are unable to bid against each other or bid on their own names ...

The fact they are family does not give them the authority to bid on eachothers names, period. They know how this industry works.

I won't go any further into this but I will leave this note with some assurance that James is a good guy, and I hope his intentions were not to raise bets in hopes of scamming a bidder into paying more then they originally would have, plain and simple ...

* PS * I don't condone or advocate anyone to bid on their names, or have their family bid on their names ... And I don't really believe free market is a valid point in the domain industry as its faulty on so many levels ...

 

His position is specifically that the arrangement is made in the open that indeed the seller can bid for the domain and be the highest bidder if he thinks the domain is worth that plus commission fee.

 

No Reserve should mean no Reserve so disappointed in you. For all you newbies there are no Guru's in this industry Trust no one!!! this is such a disgraceful point of view. If you want a Reserve be transparent SET A RESERVE do not bid on your own names here in the UK you get prosecuted for doing so! I want to sell a property at no reserve but hey i will bid on it to set a reserve and in case I win pay myself nothing wrong with that as no other bidder will be influenced on how they bid yer right!. Give me a break!

 

Andrew has a point to be made with free market and capitalism ... But the problem with that scenario is when you're bidding "not to protect your name" but to raise the bids higher then they would be if you didn't mess with the market, then there is clearly not something right about this scenario

Bidder A bids $50
Bidder B bids $60
Bidder C bids $70

Bidder D (owner) bids $250

Bidder A,B, and C are now in a box, do they bid more or do they walk away ... There's 3 bidders there that most likely one of them will bid above Bidder D because they believe the name is worth that much on open market ... Really it depends on names, but let's be honest here, why would you want to protect these names ? If you were the owner, are these the kind of names you protect ... I've known James for quite a while, he has been as straight as an arrow so seeing this news is a little bit unsettling and questioning, I guess with any industry, there will be greed eventually, it wouldn't be the first time we've seen a leader make headlines with their pants down ...

Banning them will not solve this problem or controversy, I think NJ should address this issue with a warning and track their IP address' that way they are unable to bid against each other or bid on their own names ...

The fact they are family does not give them the authority to bid on eachothers names, period. They know how this industry works.

I won't go any further into this but I will leave this note with some assurance that James is a good guy, and I hope his intentions were not to raise bets in hopes of scamming a bidder into paying more then they originally would have, plain and simple ...

* PS * I don't condone or advocate anyone to bid on their names, or have their family bid on their names ... And I don't really believe free market is a valid point in the domain industry as its faulty on so many levels ...

 

I don't really care if it is open or not on namejet but the whole point of a no reserve auction will seem like a farce. Anyway this has been an eye opener.

 

When Mamma was working as a prison guard, and something went missing, she'd ask one question. What do we do when we find the guilty party? And if they said come down on them with that swift hammer of justice. Innocent. A clear conscience don't need no mercy.

 

True. Every veteran domainer who has been around since at least the early 2000s will probably have to agree: Whenever there was a new so-called "industry leader" emerging from nowhere in an established industry, which domaining certainly is by now, they usually turned out to be a fraud later on or there was a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that they wanted to hide from you. Questionable business ethics have sadly been a constant in this industry.

 

yer yer give me break!
How did you verify the listings just curious to know with a different whois. I only Buy domains on your platform and never a sell so interested to know.

 

Thanks for bringing this into the light...

Namejet: Do the right thing!
I wonder how many auctions/transactions/domainers were affected by thi$ fraud, (or any other we might don't know about it as "other domainers" doing it as well)

not so different from the infamous Halvarez-Gate

 

But it is still shill bidding.

noun
(on an online auction) the illegal practice of a seller or a seller’s acquaintances placing bids on his or her goods in order to drive up the price
Source: Definition of shill bidding from the Collins English Dictionary​

noun [uncountable] shill bidding pronunciation in British English /ˈʃɪl ˌbɪdɪŋ/
the practice of bidding for something that you are selling in an auction in order to increase the selling price
Shill bidding is against the law.
Source: Definition of shill bidding from the Macmillan Dictionary​

What you're saying here is that it's ok and not shill bidding as long as it's done openly (under your own alias) but it is completely wrong. You are gaming the system. Whether you're doing it openly or covertly is somewhat of a moot point.
If you're not seeing the legal and ethical problems here it is unfortunate.

There is a fundamental flaw in this reasoning. In a forfeiture or tax sale (forced sale) you no longer own and control the asset, thus you are deprived of the opportunity to manipulate the market price. The distinction is fundamental because it makes the difference between (prosecutable) fraud/insider trading and bona fide auctioning.
It's the same thing with corporate stock buybacks. You are buying back something that you used to own, but the market price is no longer dictated by you.

It's not a free market when you're shill bidding on your own assets. It is the Wild West. You are bidding against your potential buyers. A free market has to be fair.
What you are performing is not even a true no-auction sale because:

But I enjoy these threads because you get to see which domainers have ethics and common sense and which do not. No screen caps necessary for me, I have a good memory. Keep posting folks.

Exactly right. Allowing or tolerating bids from sellers raises suspicion that impropriety may be going on and undermines trust in the marketplace. You don't bid on your own sales period.

 

enough for someone to go bankrupt probably

 

@MediaOptions , I don't care what your arguments are (right or wrong), I do care if you read this or not

from @NameJetGM ?

 

Not me...But at least you for sure are blind as well stupid to judge as you don't see others getting ripped off..

Good people don't bid on their own auctions and they don't go against a platform's TOS. Simple as that...

 

I agree. Caveat emptor but being ripped off has nothing to do with your intelligence when the platform promises one thing and delivers something different. That's why there are laws on fraud.

 

I did a little digging myself into the featured seller account mentioned initially. These featured pages seem to all be Oliver Hoger's:

http://www.namejet.com/featuredauctions/6ifd5lvs
http://www.namejet.com/featuredauctions/8fyd9zfl
http://www.namejet.com/featuredauctions/9rev0pcj

So I can also check which auctions run through those featured pages were bid on by "seek" which is Oliver's known NJ alias.

Take a look at this (click for larger):




Auctioned by Oliver, bid on by Oliver above the min back order, and confirmed by WHOIS history to have been owned by him at the time.

So I dug deeper. It turns out for the first featured seller account above, user "seek" bid in 18 of those auctions and was the runner-up in three. For his second featured seller account he bid in 17 auctions and was the runner-up in four. For his third featured seller account he bid in 46 auctions and was the runner up in one. Didn't win any though, that's some fancy shilling! I can provide proof of all this if you need more than the above screenshot.

Here's where it gets REALLY interesting:

IAOR.com | Ended 2016-12-13 & Re-auctioned 2017-01-17
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3866603&lt=reports
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3879552&lt=reports

Seek bid in the first auction which is how it got my attention. Picked up from Domain Capital around April 15, 2015. Switches to privacy a few months later as part of a move to eNom (but the NS never changes) and is then auctioned by Oliver. Then a month after the first auction WHOIS switches back to his name, is re-auctioned, and then stays in his name another four months before he sells it to another domainer. The same alias won it both times and it never changed hands.

Auction doesn't show as cancelled, so this could be an example where he won by accident and ate the commission, and warrants further exploration. Checking "winner8888" this alias has bid in 318 of Oliver's first featured account (a quarter of all of them!), was the winner in 6 of them, and was the runner up in 17 of them. In fact, all six of Oliver's auctions that winner8888 won are still owned by Oliver, or were owned by him months after the auction completed successfully before being re-sold:

http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3880556&lt=reports
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3879552&lt=reports
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3866603&lt=reports
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3864440&lt=reports
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3862385&lt=reports
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3862353&lt=reports

What are the odds that all six domains won were paid for (we know because it wasn't cancelled and the user wasn't banned) but the winner never once updated the WHOIS? I'm not a betting man, but I'd be willing to wager that winner8888 is (one of) Oliver's shill account(s). So I spot checked a bunch of other domains won by this account, and all that I checked had WHOIS in Oliver's name. Seems this account belongs to Oliver, unless I'm missing something.

So I checked Oliver's two other featured auction pages to see what kind of damage winner8888 is doing. This account bid in 286 auctions run by his second featured account, won one, and was the runner-up in 14. And it bid in 217 auctions for his third featured account, won two, and was the runner-up in three.

In total it seems that he has bid in at least 902 of his own auctions from two different aliases, and that's just the accounts we know about.

Anyway, it's harder to do this kind of deep dive for the Booth brothers since they don't have their own auction page, and they likely legitimately bid in many of Oliver's auctions since all three guys are into short domains. But let's check.

Bid on by "boothcom":

6ifd5lvs: Bid on four, won one, runner-up in two.
8fyd9zfl: Bid on 0.
9rev0pcj: Bid on 0.

And for "bqdncom":

6ifd5lvs: Bid on eight, won two, runner-up in one.
8fyd9zfl: Bid on 0.
9rev0pcj: Bid on one, runner-up in one.

I blew through all my WHOIS history queries for the month (ouch!) but if anyone wants to look into these 13 auctions to see if any were owned by the Booth brothers at the time they were bidding on them shoot me a PM and I'll get you the list. EDIT: Someone is running this for me now, no need for further assistance. Thanks.

Time for me to be black-balled, lol These views are my own, and I'm not speaking on behalf of any company I work for and the respective company owners are not aware of this post. I have to run out for a few hours so might be slow to reply to any follow-up questions.

 

It's becoming more and more surreal that we have to defend what it's ethically and legally correct in front of such people that call themselves "outside of the box" thinkers because they are questioning what is generally accepted as being right!

And it's more and more troublesome that there are other persons around here that agree on such outrageous practices or indirectly supporting these felons by trying to disrupt our moral principles!

 

I'd like to see Namejet reply to this. Every domain blogger should be writing a post and pointing it to this thread to put pressure on them. I haven't blogged in many months but I'll do it because it is important.

 

Oliver Hoger (seek) is the seller of moviezone.com at namejet, and presumably he bought it from Andy Booth prior to listing it (that is what is being claimed by Andy Booth). However, Andy Booth (boothcom) was still the owner of MovieZone.com while the domain was in auction according to WHOIS.

Both seek (oliver) and boothcom (andy) bid on MovieZone.com, and they had the two highest bids in the auction. The "notadomainer" bid handle almost fell victim to their shill bidding:

 

Folks this truly a sad state of affairs that someone can not initiate an intellectual & theoretical discussion about industry practices. Again, I chose the wrong place and time to initiate such a discussion, but that does not excuse the comments and accusations being made.

Its up to Namejet to decide how they approach the Booth situation. That is a totally separate topic from the discussion I started about an open bidding process at auctions. You folks are much too quick to jump to conclusions and throw out wild accusations. Most of you probably never even read my initial post in its entirety. I proposed a theoretical argument that I believe would lead to a MORE transparent market with better pricing and more liquidity. I welcomed contradictory arguments based on logic. Instead I got a witch hunt. I guess I should have known better.

The reason the domain industry offers very little liquidity is precisely the reason why you all are afraid of an honest debate and contradictory argument to popular belief.

You say you want an open and transparent market but really you just want a closed garden operating by your rules and cheap under valued domains available at auction. I love buying under value as much as the next guy...probably more! But that does NOT lead to industry growth. It does NOT elevate the market. It does NOT lead to price appreciation. It leads to wild speculation and wild market turbulence as we have seen over the last few years.

Efficient and effective markets are the key to growth. #1 thing holding back the domain industry. My proposal was just that. A theoretical proposal meant to be debated.

Anyhow, I've learned my lesson and will no longer offer my opinion or offer advice here ever again.

 

I'm pretty sure that their feet are more than a bit shaky at this moment. If this story, which apparently is supported by clear facts, will reach the mainstream media, it could possibly put them on their knees. For good.

 

Thanks for your hard work.
NJ, and all auction sites, should be doing these types of compliance investigations on a routine basis to ensure that they are clean. If they already do, maybe they can enlighten us.

 

Good! But what about the MediaOptions situation? How they will handle this one? I'm pretty sure I saw a screenshot in this thread where MediaOptions placed bids in a "no-reserve" auction where they were the seller...

 

Most get advertising revenue from them, so they won't.

 

I don't know guys, to me there's a HUGE difference between what Andrew is saying and what has transpired at NJ. The timing couldn't have been worse to talk about theories when people are being ripped off. But that shouldn't negate the crux of his argument that more competition (even with the seller bidding) in an open auction produces a truer market value of that asset.

 

Stop it, man. Just stop it, please. Personal greed could alter your judgement permanently.