Long one, to save future would-be victims...
Sell247:
Allfordomains uses Emetrix as their merchant account; I don't know anything about Emetrix. My partner and I have merchant accounts for a few sites, we use Verisign, who are pretty much considered the leaders in providing safe ecommerce transactions.
I've done some searching but haven't found any complaints about Emetrix. The closest was simply their mention on this site, possibly only coincidentally with the case:
http://www.ripoffreport.com/view.asp?id=20417&view=printer
You probably don't need to worry; ecommerce providers (Emetrix, Verisign) do NOT give out cc info to the company who rents their service. For example, if you were to buy something off one of our sites, it is Verisign who does the payment handling entirely, we are only notified that each payment has gone through. You can see the nightmare that would happen if the ecommerce account providers would actually provide this info to anyone who could afford their merchant accounts! But feel free to investigate this further. Go to
www.emetrix.com if you have a concern.
How did you find out about the scammer's location? I'm not that adept at computer backtracking. I found out his freemail provider, that's easy, and I Whois'd Allfordomains for address of who owns that domain name [my letter continued after the following:]
http://www.networksolutions.com
Registrant:
Forces, Soft
SForces
3041 S. 6th Street
Kalamazoo, MI 49009
US
Domain Name: ALLFORDOMAINS.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Forces, Soft
[email protected]
SForces
3041 S. 6th Street
Kalamazoo, MI 49009
US
509-271-0875 fax: 509-271-0875
Record expires on 28-Nov-2006.
Record created on 28-Nov-2000.
Database last updated on 26-Feb-2006 13:00:22 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS5.ALLFORDOMAINS.COM 212.23.76.201
NS3.ALLFORDOMAINS.COM 206.161.124.226
Registry Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
Back to me: but I wouldn't know how to find anything deeper.
Still looking for direct evidence of Allfordomains involvement. There's all kinds of things that POINT to them not being legit... or at least, point largely to them being set up to look legit, to just barely provide enough 'front' legitimacy in order to appear legit; and yet there are a dozen things on their site that don't make sense:
- No real contact info: where's a company address, or a person's name to contact, anywhere on this site? You only find these for anyone who advertises on site.
- where are all the 'affiliate' banners/logos? There isn't a single one. Very unusual, for a site that brags about how huge, popular, great it is. Even Emetrix doesn't have a logo placed there. Not a single affiliate to show credibility.
- spelling mistakes: there are spelling mistakes here and there throughout the pages. You just don't find that on a truly legit, popular site. Incidentally, the people doing these scam emails also make a lot of spelling mistakes when replying in person rather than their form letters.
- they make a point of saying they have the #1 information on 'scams' -- and yet they mention absolutely nothing about APPRAISAL scams, ha ha. In their list of scams for you to read about, not one is about how an appraisal scam works -- and it's one of the most popular scams out there in domaining.
- the appraisals: they advertise the 2-tier that's common: cheaper computer-generated appraisals, and more expensive 'human' ones. If you check into a lot of their appraisals - I mean the human ones - you'll find similar names are being appraised at identical amounts. If one 'money' name is appraised at an uneven number (as happened to my pard) and another was identical (like $497.00 - 625.00), you know that, even if a human is involved, he's just plonking the name into the same categorized price list sitting in front of him, and not sitting with a 'group of experts' all looking at the various aspects of your name, rather than just keywords, as they purport.
- sales/listings: they advertise they have over 7,000 names for sale... and that in January alone they sold over 3,600 names. I don't get it; my pard and I have been keeping up on this out of curiousity/investigation... and we see almost all the same names up there, month after month. Doubtless, to maintain some legitimacy, many of their names sell... but we think they're wildly stretching the numbers, and giving no proof or accounting for those numbers.
- listing price: costs you $20 to list a name. Down to $10 each by the time you list 31+ names. They say 'no fees later', it's a one-time cost. Now, maybe this is just me... but I see the price of double reg-fee to just list a name on a site that is questionable, and not well-known in the domaining industry, as rediculously astronomical; like they want their money NOW, fast, in case of what happens later...
Sure, we have to pay % upon selling a domain at Sedo et. al.... but we can also list 1,000 names for free, and only pay that commission/percentage on the few names that sell. And a LOT more people will see your name at sedo than at allfordomains.
- 'average selling price': they say the average selling price of a domain on allfordomains is almost $4,000!!! They make it very unclear with wordage whether this applies to the average 'asking' price on their list, or the average price a domain actually sold for. Very misleading, and, IMO, on purpose in order to get prospective new listers excited.
There's more; but I get so tired of writing about these guys.
There's no doubt allfordomains has some small legitimacy. But is it real, or front? Why would someone go through such a huge amount of time to send business their way, and through fraudulent means, if he's not being paid by them to do so? And why would a legitimate business pay someone to use fraudulent methods to bring in business?
I still have some more questions to answer... but everything about that site, and this scammer-guy, seems to point that they are one and the same entity. That he, or they, ARE allfordomains.
Hope all this writing today helps SOMEONE.
HTH
