Domains sold by forum member repossessed by GoDaddy

[draco]

I bought two domains, 28924.com and 82742.com, that were advertised by Omer Doron on NamePros.

https://www.namepros.com/threads/82742-com-28924-com-350-each-sold.1101500/

I paid with PayPal and the domains were pushed to my GoDaddy account. Three weeks later, I was notified that the domains were repossessed by GoDaddy. They told me,

"The original purchases of the domains in question were charged to an invalid payment method, resulting in the repossession of products and subsequent refund for initial cost. If the seller reverses charges for the services they purchased on your behalf, we “repossess” the purchase meaning the products are removed from your account. The original price of the domains must be paid in full before they may be returned to your account. We offer you the option of purchasing the domains for the original price of $761.34. This price is the cost of the original receipts connected to these domains which has been refunded.".

The Seller is claiming that they bought the domains from someone, and they weren't the ones that paid with the invalid payment method or did the chargeback. The $761.34 GoDaddy wants is actually more than I paid for the domains. The Seller claims I'm trying to get a refund from the wrong person, because they didn't do anything wrong. I feel it's their responsibility, since they sold them to me. They should go after the person they claim they bought them from.

Originally he said he would give me a refund after he verified the information with GoDaddy. Then he said he wouldn't do it because he thought they were stolen. Then he asked me to post here anonymously and he would issue me a refund if he was convinced it was 100% the right thing to do. When I asked him what it would take to be 100% convinced, he wouldn't answer.

I opened a dispute with PayPal. He lied in the response, claiming GoDaddy told me there was something wrong with my account. GoDaddy never told me there was anything wrong with my account. They just gave me the option to buy the domains back from them. It's an option, not a debt I owe them.

 

[meslam479]

If you buy a domain on our auction we would eat the loss. If you make transactions outside our platform you do so at your own risk.

@Undeveloped next time you need to inform buyers of Godaddy's policy so if they decide to keep domain it's on their own risk

 

[Joe Styler]

But Joe if Draco did not get screwed Mr.Doron would have and he did buy on a legitimate platform @Undeveloped.

Again could you answer this, if @draco transferred names out when he bought from Mr.Doron, would you have asked that registrar to give you the names?

Perhaps we see them as stolen as we were not paid for them. Other registrars may do the same. Other platforms as well.
The buyer can contact the venue they bought the domains from and see if they have any policy in place to protect the buyer.

 

[joe849384]

Never leave your domains with original registrar. Always transfer out!

Also, check domain history and avoid all registrars where it was already registered once.

 

[Keith]

@Joe Styler

Was the initial sale made via expired auctions? If so, GoDaddy hasn’t really lost any money.

 

[Andish]

So, as I understand what the Representative is saying, GD can take from me all my domains at any time, that I legally bought elswhere, claiming these were once sold at GD and not properly paid for. They would not reveal details, just grab all my property.
I would have to be dumb to use service of such registrar.

 

[wwwweb]

in my case the domain that was repossessed from me was in my account for 3 months, I don't know how long the previous owner had it, but there has to be some limit on the over reach, this process is open to abuse, if godaddy does not need to provide facts, proof, or evidence to the person they are removing the domain from, they can essentially take any domain out of your account without any due course. There has to be a chain of evidence, or the burden of proof showing a chain of events. There has to be some sort of time frame, say the domain gets moved out of godaddy, sold to and end user 2 years later, and comes back to godaddy, are they going to repo it back 2 years later, there has to be some sort of internal statue of limitations.

As Keith said what if this is a 5 figure situation, this has only been stated stronger verification is needed on the auction platform, things need to be in place before the bid, not after the bid. I can assure you most here have paid thousands more than they needed to based on unqualified bidders using the system. I know this based on the amount of second chance offers I have received for 4 figure domains. These people may not have won all bids, but bid up other expensive names, when they had no business bidding at all. Better verification especially with liquid domains. I would say anyone who isn't Premier account, 2 years of account history, or less than 50 domains in their account verification should immediately be put into a higher level of verification.

 

[dncafe]

@Joe Styler

@draco It is in our terms of service that we can take the domains if the money is no good, no matter what account they are in..

What is the time frame on this? How many days after a domain has been purchased can you "take" a domain back?

I think this is a very important point to cover. I don't want to buy a second hand domain through GoDaddy, spend thousands of dollars developing it, ranking it in search and have GoDaddy take it away 3 months later

 

[Joe Styler]

Let me flip the script, and let me make clear I do not think GoDaddy would do this, I am not suggesting they ever did. But there are less reputable registrar's out there.

I asked you earlier if @draco would get the name of the person who scammed you? You said no. OK, that's up to Draco to pursue.

But with that mechanism in place I could be a registrar that says hey we are repossessing this beautiful 4L CVCV.com from you, because the person who bought it from us, 3 owners ago, used a bad credit card, we can't and won't tell you their name, but trust us they used a bad credit card.

This would be an easy way to scam people without transparency.

As you stated earlier you could easily sue us to get the info. He could pursue this several ways which would end up in court. The court would demand the records no doubt. The truth will always come out one way or another. It is not easy to hide.
I know you are not saying this, but it would make no sense for us to take something back unless we had a rock solid reason that could be verified. The impact to the business would be substantial. I also have trust in our leadership at the corporate and board level to lead with integrity which I have not doubted so far. They also are compensated in part with equity in the company and a lack of trust would certainly impact their wallets.

 

[000]

Yikes! This could happen to ANY OF US if using GoDaddy.......

Pretty scary when it could mean a 1K, 5K, 20K (or whatever!) loss. Not something you plan for!

I have 600-700 .com's at GoDaddy (customer since early 2000s), and will now start working on transferring out & reducing my dealings with GoDaddy as much as possible. It's not fair to MY customers to be putting them at risk of being stiffed by GoDaddy after I sell them a domain, when neither of us has done anything wrong, or even remotely questionable.

Joe says GoDaddy does "a lot of work up front to make sure the payments are good, and almost all of the time they are"........ why shouldn't THEY eat the loss, especially if it's such a rare occurrence? THEIR safeguards failed. The issue should be raised with the offending party, NOT subsequent holders of the domain. Until it's resolved, count on my business being diverted elsewhere!

 

[Joe Styler]

@Joe Styler



What is the time frame on this? How many days after a domain has been purchased can you "take" a domain back?

I think this is a very important point to cover. I don't want to buy a second hand domain through GoDaddy, spend thousands of dollars developing it, ranking it in search and have GoDaddy take it away 3 months later

First of all this is very rare. You've all been on this forum a long time. If this happened a lot you would be hearing about it on here frequently. It is really infrequent for someone to get past our payment team successfully, it is even less so for them to successfully move the domain to another party.
Secondly, this is why we give the party with the domain the ability to pay for the loss to us and keep the domain. Most times it is a reg fee. This is really unusual that the price would be this high. Again for this to even happen is extremely rare.
Thirdly to answer your question most credit cards give 90 days for a dispute from the time you see the charges. Most disputes happen very quickly. It is very rare that you get a dispute that is months rather than weeks.

 

[Keith]

@Joe Styler

Was the initial sale made via expired auctions? If so, GoDaddy hasn’t really lost any money.

And if it was an expired auction, was the next highest bidder given the chance to buy at their last, lower bid?

 

[draco]

@Joe Styler

I can hardly 'easily' sue you. It would cost me far more in legal fees than $700. Just to get a name. And since I don't have a direct transaction with them, I doubt I'd have any standing to do anything.

As I asked in a previous post in this thread, why doesn't GODADDY go after the person that paid you with the stolen credit card or did the fraudulent chargeback? You know who they are, and you have all the offices, attorneys, and law enforcement contacts. That would be the way to deter fraud. Because as of now, the scammer has their money and isn't facing any consequences.

 

[dncafe]

@Joe Styler

First of all this is very rare. ....It is really infrequent for someone to get past our payment team successfully, it is even less so for them to successfully move the domain to another party.

You say this is a rare occurrence and that someone did get past your payment team, doesn't GoDaddy need to share the responsibility in this? You have admitted that someone got passed your payment processing team with what I assume was a fraudulent purchase, yet GD is now demanding payment from a GD account holder who was not part of that first transaction.

As a staff member for GD, wouldn't it be the right thing to do, to waive this fee to the current domain holder and consider this a loss for GD. People put their trust in your brand and expect you to take the liability in such cases

 

[Internet.Domains]

@Joe Styler

I can hardly 'easily' sue you. It would cost me far more in legal fees than $700. Just to get a name. And since I don't have a direct transaction with them, I doubt I'd have any standing to do anything.

As I asked in a previous post in this thread, why doesn't GODADDY go after the person that paid you with the stolen credit card or did the fraudulent chargeback? You know who they are, and you have all the offices, attorneys, and law enforcement contacts. That would be the way to deter fraud. Because as of now, the scammer has their money and isn't facing any consequences.

Due to the amount you can dispute this in Small Claims court. I can assure you a victory. Due to the fact that you have no direct transaction they are, in essence, stealing from you. They are defrauding you the same way that they were defrauded by the chargeback. They are trying to reconcile their loss and have burdened you with it now. The difference is they have agreed to take the risk of fraud when they entered into an agreement with a merchant service company to accept credit cards online.

Reconciling a chargeback by taking from an innocent third party is not an acceptable business practice. When merchants agree to the merchant account ToS they are accepting the risk of such occurences, the liability is solely on them.

 

[wwwweb]

And if it was an expired auction, was the next highest bidder given the chance to buy at their last, lower bid?

Agreed the bid was a fake bid, if it was a fraudlent bid, so why would godaddy make the person who was repo'ed pay the winning bid? It should remove all bids by the high bidder, and the last landing point by the second highest bidder should be the purchase price, otherwise godaddy is profiting by fraudlent bids if they are charging repo'ed accounts this fee. When someone fails to pay for a winning bid, a second chance offer is presented, and the person is suspended from the platform, what about all the other bids that day they placed, or caused harm to other bidders, are those bids discounted back also, especially if proxies were engaged? It is one big circle, and that is why unqualified, or unverified bidders are very dangerous. Most local authorities do not have the resources to follow up on 3-4 figures of financial issues, they will tell you this is a civil matter, and take it up in court for financial recovery, or hire a collection agency. In the case of a charge back, what recourse does godaddy undertake before repo'ing a domain from another party? Collections would probably need about 120 days before write off.

 

[Internet.Domains]

We would have exhausted all efforts before coming to this. The original purchaser would have also been contacted for another way to make payment. It could also have been a stolen card or another issue where the payment was pulled back. I am not a lawyer but we have a lot of them on staff and since this has always been our policy I doubt it is illegal.

Also we do not know if the person who has the domains is an uninterested 3rd party. Of course it seems so in this case, but we are not a court. We do not know. We also cannot set a precedent that if someone buys a domain using bad funds and moves it that the gaining party can claim ignorance to the fact that the domain was not paid for and keep it. If so we open ourselves up to a tremendous amount of fraud. All I would have to do is open a bunch of accounts with stolen credit cards and sell the names to myself using aliases and simply claim I bought it legitimately outside GoDaddy somewhere. We are not willing to do that. As everyone knows on this forum domains are valuable. It does not take many "sales" of this kind to impact us significantly.

We do have a couple teams of experts who verify payments. Very few bad payments slip past us. This is a rare occurrence. We do a lot of work up front to make sure the payments are good, and almost all of the time they are.

Thanks Joe!

I respectfully disagree with the handling of this.
Regardless, Thanks for coming on here and discussing.

 

[1Darko]

@Joe Styler

I can hardly 'easily' sue you. It would cost me far more in legal fees than $700. Just to get a name. And since I don't have a direct transaction with them, I doubt I'd have any standing to do anything.

As I asked in a previous post in this thread, why doesn't GODADDY go after the person that paid you with the stolen credit card or did the fraudulent chargeback? You know who they are, and you have all the offices, attorneys, and law enforcement contacts. That would be the way to deter fraud. Because as of now, the scammer has their money and isn't facing any consequences.

Hi draco,
you probably should report this fraudulent trade activity at the Federal Trade Commission:
https://www.usa.gov/stop-scams-frauds#item-35157
Nobody should take your property without a court order!
I hope you will get your property back soon!

 

[Joe Styler]

@Joe Styler

I can hardly 'easily' sue you. It would cost me far more in legal fees than $700. Just to get a name. And since I don't have a direct transaction with them, I doubt I'd have any standing to do anything.

As I asked in a previous post in this thread, why doesn't GODADDY go after the person that paid you with the stolen credit card or did the fraudulent chargeback? You know who they are, and you have all the offices, attorneys, and law enforcement contacts. That would be the way to deter fraud. Because as of now, the scammer has their money and isn't facing any consequences.

By easily I meant there is nothing to stop the information from coming out if you wish to pursue it. As I stated above in the thread, we have pursued every option before taking the domains. We may be working with law enforcement or other agencies I cannot comment on other people's accounts.

 

[Joe Styler]

Hi draco,
you probably should report this fraudulent trade activity at the Federal Trade Commission:
https://www.usa.gov/stop-scams-frauds#item-35157
Nobody should take your property without a court order!
I hope you will get your property back soon!

I understand. I appreciate everyone's dialogue and point of view. I do not usually spend so much time on a thread because I have other work to do during the day but I think this is something worth the time it takes to hash out and hear from everyone. I also want to share our policy because it is important everyone understands they "why" behind it. Also as I stated several times, personally, it is something I feel badly for @draco about. I've been scammed before and probably everyone else has at one point or another.
The best advice I can give is use a reputable marketplace with protection and a payment method that protects you. Keep in mind us taking back a domain for failed payment is also pretty rare.

 

[offthehandle]

In the limited free Whoxy listing shows only 100 out of 95,000, some are now registered obviously, old records, some must be mistaken no renewals, but there are some interesting repo's- perhaps UDRP's?, etc. Some are available for sale.

berniesandersadministration.com
veganmealrecipes.com
creatingfinewoodworking.com
superdreamtravel.com
oilwelldocs.report
undivided.ltd
agiledeliveryservice.com
mizuus.com
lineshoe.com

[email protected]

 

[Internet.Domains]

Also as I stated several times, personally, it is something I feel badly for @draco about. I've been scammed before and probably everyone else has at one point or another.

Yes, I think all of us feel bad for Draco. Godaddy was scammed by a criminal and Draco was scammed by a public corporation. Maybe its possible for Godaddy to offer a concession in this case?

 

[000]

I expect GoDaddy has the 'right' / is within their terms to do what they did..... but they will be losing significant business once it's widely known that this is how they handle such situations (not to mention that abuse attempts will increase with publicity). It's yet another sign that GoDaddy is too big now and customer satisfaction is becoming less and less a priority.

This really attaches a whole new red flag to not just GoDaddy, but the industry as a whole. As buyers, this HAS to be a concern now when considering purchasing a domain. It's a whole new layer of risk. You might drop 20k on a "sweet deal" just to have GoDaddy repossess it six weeks later, and hold it captive unless you pony up another 10k or 50k that GoDaddy was allegedly scammed of. What if you've already spent another 10k on development in that time? What if you were using them for email? What if you were using them in irreversible marketing campaigns?

GoDaddy (and other registrars/marketplaces) MUST be the one to eat the loss,
or the ENTIRE INDUSTRY SUFFERS.

 

[Andish]

94.000 domains taken by force from owners accounts by Godaddy?

First of all this is very rare.

Am I dreaming?
That might be the biggest scam in domaining history.

 

[offthehandle]

94.000 domains taken by force from owners accounts by Godaddy?

No, I don't believe that is the case "Taken by force". You have to look at the big picture, a large company with millions of transactions that is a small number. There are probably many bad credit cards, expired credit cards and non-renewals due to old credit card info, no way to contact by past owner, etc. lot's of those sorts of payments are buried in that number.

 

[000]

Imagine if you walked into your local hardware store and bought a $300 generator.

You take it home, use it for WEEKS, and then one day someone just drives up and seizes it.

"Sorry bud, turns out someone's payment along the way was fraudulent, and we're actually the rightful owner now. Trust me on that!"

"Hey I spent $300 on that! I've got my receipt right here!"

"Sorry bud. Really a shame that happened to you. If you want a good generator, I'll sell you one for $300."