Escrow.com is now a waste of time for domainers

[PAKB]

On 4th of january My buyer and i (seller) Reached an agreement for a domain name at 1550$ , Buyer paid on 5th of january , Now escrow.com says me that they do not support payments for Pakistan , why didn't they mention it while i was agreeing to An agreement as they already got My address which belongs to Pakistan ?

Buyer has already paid on 5th of January and asking me to push domain to his account while escrow is still sending me emails to add bank account details from other country than Pakistan, How is this possible ?

@Escrow.com Support You guys Have my address which belongs to Pakistan then why did you waste my buyer and my time?

 

[MapleDots]

How do you do proof of delivery for a domain? And what if he is claiming to be someone else, signs everything as needed, takes control of the name, then you get chargeback from someone else, who is the real owner of the card?

Due diligence... the delivery proof I was talking about previously was a tangible item and I had a courier signature.

I am willing to take a chance on domains in the 5k range, with all the proper due diligence I'm sure the odds are pretty low I get burned. Personally I will probably be looking more at Epik once they get their feet wet a bit more in Canada. I will process the small stuff 5-10k myself and if I get anything bigger I will go with Epik.

The other thing is.... as a registered company losses like this could be written off.
As someone doing business as a hobby it is a straight loss.

That is something I often tell businesses when we talk about 5 or 10k, technically they can toss that domain into their advertising budget and write it off.

When I ran my Mercedes franchise the I had a sign refaced (just the lettering) and the accountant was going to depreciate it over 5 years. I moved it into the advertising account and wrote it all off on the same year.

So the domainers running businesses have some perks over the hobby domainers.

 

[MapleDots]

All he had to do was say it is not his signature on the bill of sale meaning some third party signed it, and never authorized anyone to use his card and he will win, guaranteed. In fact, there's nothing preventing him from even keeping the product because the credit card bank does not require it be returned.

The bill of sale was sent registered mail and delivered to his house, then returned. All id was logged and accounted for. You see all is possible if you really do diligence. Chances are nobody will ever go that far to defraud for 5k. Or so it has not happened to me.

 

[xynames]

Let him think that he could win a fraud / unauthorized claim for a card not present purchase of a virtual product on a standard merchant account. Looks like he even thinks that he could win such a chargeback for a foreign transaction.


So MapleDots, (1) do you have your domains listed in the Afternic marketplace, and if so, (2) if you get a price inquiry at Afternic you just ignore it hoping that the buyer will then land on your own landing page and contact you directly? That is your idea of a good marketing program?

Or else what do you mean by

Yup there is always a choice..... you can ignore the afternic offer and wait for the client to hit your lander. Chances are the client will eventually punch it into the address bar. If he gets no answer at afternic he may decide to hit you up via the lander.

 

[MapleDots]

In general we won't get anywhere discussing anything with MapleDots once he has his mind made up. I gave up on that long ago. Let him think that he could win a fraud / unauthorized claim for a card not present purchase of a virtual product on a standard merchant account.

So MapleDots, (1) do you have your domains listed in the Afternic marketplace, and if so, (2) if you get a price inquiry at Afternic you just ignore it hoping that the buyer will then land on your landing page and contact you directly? That is your idea of a good marketing program?

Or else what do you mean by

Hypothetical my good watson

PS. I could give you the info of a good lawyer if you like

 

[namemarket]

The bill of sale was sent registered mail and delivered to his house, then returned. All id was logged and accounted for. You see all is possible if you really do diligence. Chances are nobody will ever go that far to defraud for 5k. Or so it has not happened to me.

You have just been lucky MapleDots. Because the bill of sale was sent registered mail to his house does not verify the signature is his in any way. All the diligence in the world means nothing if he says in writing it was UNAUTHORIZED and someone else must have signed and paid. Also not correct about the 5k threshold for dishonesty. Years ago I had that done to me a few times for only 1k.

 

[MapleDots]

Well I guess, I've been luck then, I don't see a lot of that in Canada.
My outbound is pretty limited to my home market so I am probably a bit shaded by all of this.

That said, 5k is not that big a deal given it can be written off. I'm willing to take my chances, given my track record I have had no issues so far (knock on wood). If I have to eat one once in a while it won't be the end of the world.

 

[xynames]

Okay so mapledots is just posting theory. Untried unproven. “Hypothetical” as he put it.

I post based on empiricism. Personal experience!

 

[MapleDots]

Not really, I use my merchant account for 4 businesses with little to no losses. If and when I realize losses then I might switch. Until then I am happy saving on fees and my diligence has been spot on so far. One can always argue worst case scenario but it does not always have to come to that.

PS. And that is from my personal experience, just like yours.

 

[xynames]

You can't compare online sales of tangible product shipped to a person's house, which is what you do, with online sales of an intangible product like a domain, especially if sold to someone using a foreign credit card.

 

[Recons.Com]

Godaddy, uni, Dan sell domains via merchant account all the time.

I guess they are all dumb and should be using escrow.com

 

[MapleDots]

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[wwwweb]

Godaddy, uni, Dan sell domains via merchant account all the time.

I guess they are all dumb and should be using escrow.com

The difference on the register side is they lock the domain down for 60 days. That is why we have seen quite a few instances where someone bought a domain via godaddy auction with a stolen cc/chargeback, and then came here to sell it, and try to cash out bitcoin. The buyers get their domain seized 30 days after, and they are left holding the bag. I haven't seen such actions in a few months now which is good.

The thing about afternic, for some people they achieve amazing BIN prices that landers, or contact forms can't achieve, simply based on the fact some buyers will pay more to make sure they get the deal done via someone they can absolutely trust. At which point they earn their 20%.

 

[xynames]

They get burned sometimes too but then they have direct ins to get the domain back. We don’t. And to keep the domain from being transferred away for a period of time (60 day lock, etc.).

I’ve fought all kinds of chargebacks include fraud ones I know about this sort of thing.

The tangible product mapledots sells is low risk not the kind of product fraudsters would go after, is all.

 

[MapleDots]

The tangible product mapledots sells is low risk not the kind of product fraudsters would go after, is all.

I guess you can say that but I do about 1.6 million annually on cards from one online store and just opened my western division where I expect to do similar. That does not include the volume from my other businesses and in the whole time I have had no significant losses.

I have also sold a number of domains and processed the payment right through my merchant account.

Yes there is always a risk of fraud but in most cases people purchasing domains own viable businesses and once you have all that information the risk of fraud is almost non existent.

Personally I won't be selling domains to anyone I don't know. I usually get all the business details from the website of the business trying to purchase my domain. I cold call them and ask for the person I am dealing with by name and ask what he does. I do not take the contact information off their website, I google the name and make sure they have a google presence with the same contact information just in case the site is faked.

By the time due diligence is done the risk is very low.

So my circumstances are not typical of what the average domainer does but I'm also not scared of an occasional loss so for me the convenience of in house processing trumps the risk.

 

[Recons.Com]

The difference on the register side is they lock the domain down for 60 days. That is why we have seen quite a few instances where someone bought a domain via godaddy auction with a stolen cc/chargeback, and then came here to sell it, and try to cash out bitcoin. The buyers get their domain seized 30 days after, and they are left holding the bag. I haven't seen such actions in a few months now which is good.

The thing about afternic, for some people they achieve amazing BIN prices that landers, or contact forms can't achieve, simply based on the fact some buyers will pay more to make sure they get the deal done via someone they can absolutely trust. At which point they earn their 20%.

So they get to keep the domain. But the money is gone and the name could be something with 10 dollar wholesale value.

They are still exposed to risk of losing money

 

[wwwweb]

So they get to keep the domain. But the money is gone and the name could be something with 10 dollar wholesale value.

They are still exposed to risk of losing money

I think Rob of Epik mentioned something like this they caught a few months back out of India, that tried to get them for $10K. If two parties work together, that is a pretty evil scheme, as you stated with a worthless domain for high value, if the original party gets their money back, and the exchange is left with a worthless domain then yes that is an issue, and will only cause commissions, and prices to increase for all other users of that platform.

Funny story, I once had a guy do a paypal chargeback because he claimed he was not informed domains had annual renewals, I disputed the claim, as I was able to show the transfer happend, and he lost, I managed to catch the domain back a year later as I guess he really wasn't feeling renewals.

 

[Recons.Com]

I think Rob of Epik mentioned something like this they caught a few months back out of India, that tried to get them for $10K. If two parties work together, that is a pretty evil scheme, as you stated with a worthless domain for high value, if the original party gets their money back, and the exchange is left with a worthless domain then yes that is an issue, and will only cause commissions, and prices to increase for all other users of that platform.

Funny story, I once had a guy do a paypal chargeback because he claimed he was not informed domains had annual renewals, I disputed the claim, as I was able to show the transfer happend, and he lost, I managed to catch the domain back a year later as I guess he really wasn't feeling renewals.

Right. They have real exposure to large amount of loss. For a domain investor, though, the real loss would be replacement cost to get similar name, very often 1/10 to 1/100 of the sale price. And in the rare instance, when the name cost a lot, you can be picky and do an extra step of verification with the buyer, including request of id and video chat.

 

[Escrow.com Support]

This is the matter of public interest. If you are not serving a country, why did you allow for the transaction with that country shown to be set up and accept the payment, while denying the payout?

Our product team is working on features for the website where parties will know immediately if the payment can be accepted or not as long as both parties have finished their account registration and their profile details are complete.

Currently, we have a feature in place in which the Buyers are asked where the funds will be coming from so if the Seller selects a disbursement method from a country that we don't support, they will be notified.

We appreciate everyone's interest in this and we'll take note of all the suggestions mentioned here. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance on any transaction specific concern.

 

[xynames]

Right. They have real exposure to large amount of loss. For a domain investor, though, the real loss would be replacement cost to get similar name, very often 1/10 to 1/100 of the sale price. And in the rare instance, when the name cost a lot, you can be picky and do an extra step of verification with the buyer, including request of id and video chat.

Right...even though I paid almost nothing for the domain twenty years ago and I just sold it for $20,000. and just got burned all I care about is my original cost.

Or are you saying that we domainers are often selling domains for 10 to 100 times more than we could replace them for at any given moment. Really? So the domains we sell today for thousands of dollars are in your opinion easily replaceable at any given moment for 10 to 100 times less? And you are saying that we wouldn’t really care about getting burned other than for replacement cost. Have you taken a look at the long threads people create here at NP over getting burned for piddling amounts of money?

So you’re still claiming that you think deeply about these posts of yours? Or is your thinking just different from all the rest of us.

 

[namemarket]

Well I guess, I've been luck then, I don't see a lot of that in Canada......

Funny you say that because the only payment plan money I ever lost was when I sold a domain to a Canadian (and stupidly transferred it to him because Adam the DNF owner was also from Canada and got involved somehow saying because buyer is Canadian it implies he can be trusted). After making a few payments he went silent and never paid the 1k balance and kept the name. Later I sent him lots of emails and PayPal invoices over a few years time, all of which were ignored.

P.S. I know that was an extreme exception and most all Canadians are very honest.

 

[Recons.Com]

Right...even though I paid almost nothing for the domain twenty years ago and I just sold it for $20,000. and just got burned all I care about is my original cost.

Or are you saying that we domainers are often selling domains for 10 to 100 times more than we could replace them for at any given moment. Really? So the domains we sell today for thousands of dollars are in your opinion easily replaceable at any given moment for 10 to 100 times less? And you are saying that we wouldn’t really care about getting burned other than for replacement cost. Have you taken a look at the long threads people create here at NP over getting burned for piddling amounts of money?

So you’re still claiming that you think deeply about these posts of yours? Or is your thinking just different from all the rest of us.

I know you love getting personal in your posts and utterly lack any sense of tact.

I dislike that kind of communication, but I can speak the language you can relate to, obviously.

I am going to type it really slowly so that you can understand.

I used the word "replacement cost". A good hand reg of 20 years ago cannot be replaced by another hand reg today. I hope you can take few seconds off, think, even if superficially, and grasp this otherwise simple concept. I hand registered manat/com long time ago. It is official currency of 2 countries. Even GD values it at 5 figures. Its replacement cost to get a currency of another middle size country would be 5 or 6 figures.

Most of the names sold at $1K-5K range, i.e. 90%+ of all sales are names that you can restock at $xx to low $xxx. And, then, again, you might have hit a gem that might be difficult to replace. Then treat it accordingly and ask for extra verification and do extra admin work. For the rest, the added cost/effort of admin or, even worse, paying third party extra fees would be higher than occasional loss here and there, especially if it just another brandable.

I bought today 15 names at GD closeouts, paid around $220 total for those, if someone snatched any of those few seconds before, I wouldn't have lost sleep over it. And if I lose one of those in a fraud transaction, I can go and buy another name for another $15 and restock.

Oh, and I hate to break it to you, but you are not "the rest of us", you are you, unless you are one of those Star Trek shapeshifter guys living in liquid state in a lake or one of those Borgs, that is )) "Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated" )))))))

 

[xynames]

You have your own way of thinking, and I haven't really seen anyone here follow it on most of your thoughts, but if that is what you really think on this particular subject, then wishing you the best. It takes all different kinds of opinions to make the world run round.

I disagree with what you are trying to say, is all.

 

[PAKB]

Update:

Its 3 weeks since i pushed the domain to buyer but escrow has not paid me yet , They are just making hurdles in my each step taken so i cannot get paid.

1- They first let the transaction happen , after i pushed the domain to buyer they told me we will not pay you in your Pakistan Bank account.
2- They keep sending me email's that open your bank account outside Pakistan, I used my Australian bank account details then they told me we will not pay you in AUD.
3- They told me to open an Business account in USD outside pakistan and i just did. They asked to send me Authorization letter from Company CEO which i did , now they are keep declining verification process.

Will you pay me or not @Escrow.com Support ? I just have sent verified Authorization letter from CEO of registered company why my verification is declined now ?