Fast Transfer does not mean Fast Transfer at Afternic

[uglydork]

I sold a name on Afternic on 12/1 and I just received a notice today that payment is scheduled for 12/12. The buyer paid immediately when he purchased the name. I received confirmation of that.
I sent emails asking for a payment date and it takes days for them to answer and the dates are always different.
I spoke to a rep on the phone this morning who was just rude.

I finally received an explanation today:
"I apologize for your troubles and the frustration this has caused. Fast transfer sales are an option for customers to have a hand's off experience in the transfer process of the domain however these sales do not mean that you will receive a faster payment."

Why is it called Fast Transfer? Seems blatantly misleading.
Notice that the explanation says nothing about the process being fast, in fact, it says you will not see a faster payment. The name should be changed, its lying.

I can use Escrow.com and get a deal done in 2 days - why so long Afternic? Why would I wait 2 weeks for a hands off approach? I can transfer a name within seconds.

 

[boker]

With Afternic you'll always eventually get paid, I don't worry about the timeline with them any longer.

DynaDot takes a set something like 20 days.

And now you can see why some of us support dan or epik, and you don't understand why. My average payment with dan is around 17 hours, until the payment hit my account, my average payment time with afternic is 13 days(until the payment hit my paypal, than loose some through currency convertion and another day to hit my account), I don't even talk about godaddy(and looks like dynadot as well). I know, they have lots of buyers, but believe it or not, in my case, using my landing page at dan, brings more customers through whois than the afternic premium network(including godaddy), talking about exactly the same domains listed on both sides. So, dan, epik, escrow can do instant payment check, afternic needs one week(sometimes two), godaddy needs weeks and so on. How is that possible?

 

[Joe Styler]

I sold a name on Afternic on 12/1 and I just received a notice today that payment is scheduled for 12/12. The buyer paid immediately when he purchased the name. I received confirmation of that.
I sent emails asking for a payment date and it takes days for them to answer and the dates are always different.
I spoke to a rep on the phone this morning who was just rude.

I finally received an explanation today:
"I apologize for your troubles and the frustration this has caused. Fast transfer sales are an option for customers to have a hand's off experience in the transfer process of the domain however these sales do not mean that you will receive a faster payment."

Why is it called Fast Transfer? Seems blatantly misleading.
Notice that the explanation says nothing about the process being fast, in fact, it says you will not see a faster payment. The name should be changed, its lying.

I can use Escrow.com and get a deal done in 2 days - why so long Afternic? Why would I wait 2 weeks for a hands off approach? I can transfer a name within seconds.

Fast Transfer means Fast Transfer not Fast Payment. Although it is typically faster payment with that then the slow transfer.

I can give you the complete history here for everyone since I was closely involved with the project about 5 years ago where we came up with that name. The problem we encountered was that there is no standard industry term for these types of sales. Many people (us included then) used the term premium to denote a fast transfer domain. But Premium means a lot of things depending on who you are and who is selling it. Many other companies adopted that term to be used for domains but that made it even more complex. So it could be a Premium Listing with GoDaddy, not related to anything Afternic, or a Premium domain from the registry reserve inventory, or a Premium name meaning a higher tier new GTLD or a myriad of other uses.

This was leading to a lot of confusion for customers and for our front line support and confused buyers. Hi I bought or I sold this Premium domain and I want to know the status, what should I expect. Well... not sure there's a dozen or so types of premium domains which one are you talking about?

To keep it brief I will now move on to the Fast Transfer vs. Slow Transfer terms use. A Slow Transfer denotes what people typically think of as a transfer, unlocking the domain, corresponding with the new owner, giving them the auth code, etc.

Using Fast Transfer as a term vs. Premium is more helpful because it's less easy to use in multiple ways, e.g. a registry reserve name or higher priced tier premium name is not going to transfer to you so Fast Transfer doesn't work for that. What Fast transfer means on the Afternic side is that you opt in with your registrar in advance so that when the domain sells it moves automatically without any further action on your end, (in most cases). It specifically means it is part of the Afternic Premium Network vs the Standard Network, https://www.afternic.com/sell-domains. The big benefit of having a name as Fast Transfer is that it is in the Afternic Premium Network which is an expanded network of over 100 reseller sites (registrars, etc) vs 32 sites on the Standard Network. More eyeballs = more sales. Also end user buyers have less to do on Fast Transfer, the name comes into their account with in most cases no additional work compared to a new registration which is what they are most familiar with, the name just shows up in their account. The less friction we have in the process the higher the sell through rate for your domains. These are the big advantages of Fast Transfer and why we chose to call it Fast Transfer vs. Premium or making up a new term. We never mention anything about payment.

We are looking at ways to speed up payment, but we need to balance that with the needs of partners, fraud concerns, and also with keeping less friction in the process. The more friction the less sales commence. So we could use a third party to help mitigate fraud or help with the processes of the partner site the domain is sold on, but that introduces more friction which causes more sales to stall or not take place. The end result is a mix, some sales are paid faster, some slower, and some never complete as people drop off at various points of friction, the more hoops to jump through the more chance someone will give up. We haven't gotten 100% there but we have consistently over the years reduced the friction and added more partners to help improve the sell through rate for our customer's domains.

We do pay faster on GoDaddy Auction sales, many times the day after the domain moves to the buyer. We could technically do this on Afternic, but I personally have pushed back on it until we continue to refine the auctions process and get a very good balance on customer experience, speed to payment, and fraud mitigation. We are getting there and we have been making progress towards paying faster on Afternic. There are also some accounting and regulatory things we need to work within the constraints of when making payment changes.

We do not want to hold the money any longer than we have to, but there are many things that come into play. Some partners take longer to clear the funds for fraud than others, sometimes the fast transfer breaks, and sometimes we are concerned with fraud. It is relatively easy to get a domain back when there is fraud, but it is not as easy to get your money back once it is paid out. So we pay you for a sale and three days later find out the guy who bought it hacked an account somewhere be it email or whatever logged into an third party account and bought your domain using a credit card on file and then the real card holder calls his bank and they reverse the charge. We are out that money. It is a big benefit to using a marketplace like us, in that we take on the risk for the sales, but it also comes at a cost in some added time for payment.

We also continue to work on speeding up payments across the board. For example when I started in auctions a decade ago it was a 20 day payout window on any sale. That continues to improve over time to in many cases the next day now. Afternic was the same, we have redone the back end way transactions work in an effort to pay faster, we also just hired another person in that department that deals specifically with payment transactions to help make sure we are able to handle any manual things faster as they come up.

Sorry for the long explanation but it seemed that many people were confused. Which is kind of why we decided to use new terms vs Premium to differentiate what exactly we mean when we say Fast Transfer.

Also please PM me the domain you sold. I am sorry to hear about your job so close to the holidays especially. If there is anything I can do to speed up your payment I will certainly try.

 

[BuyBrandWeb.com]

This happened to me. They hold the funds up to 5 business days to confirm ( maybe less but most of the cases). And they schedule the payment after one week from the sale completed date.

@Joe Styler Is there any way to speed up the process since DAN and other Escrow companies are much better?

 

[CJ6]

Transfer is fast. Payment is not. "Fast Transfer" is not misleading.

 

[uglydork]

I think fast transfer refers to how fast the acquisition is for the person buying the name, not, necessarily, the speed of payment (or am I wrong?). I have never bought a name on fast transfer through Afternic. How long typically does it take for the person buying to have the domain name in their account? If that was not fast, I would agree it is perhaps misleading. But otherwise, it never occurred to me that fast transfer means fast payout.
Bob

The transfer happened today after me complaining for days - 10 days to transfer
Not fast at all

 

[xynames]

With Afternic you'll always eventually get paid, I don't worry about the timeline with them any longer.

DynaDot takes a set something like 20 days.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I guess I am used to other areas of life where you get paid long after the product is sold or the service is provided. Like I used to sell framed photos by consignment at craft/art shops and would do well to get paid 9 months after they sold products. Or I have done professional work and got paid like a month or even two after. I do understand that many in this industry expect, and need, much faster payout. I have not been in it long enough to know, but it seems to me that speeds have improved from five years ago? (or am I wrong?) I recently sold one at Sedo and the money was in my PayPal a couple of days after transfer which I found pleasantly fast. My DAN sales have always paid out within days and once I think even within 24 hr which is super fast. Yes Namecheap hold for 5 business days and Dynadot for (I forget exactly how long) but they are known time periods so just plan around them. I understand from this and other threads that Epik payout is usually amazingly fast. While I understand some delay, it is, I agree, best if there is clarity re the process like we pay out after x days.

I am glad it finally paid out for you, @uglydork (BTW have you thought about changing your UN? I really hate referring to someone as ugly or a dork! ) and I hope you don't think those of us who have somewhat disagreed with the post were not sensitive to the matter. I understand if one is in the middle of a sale, especially if a major one, the payout time can be critical.

Bob

 

[loredan]

The service should be renamed "Fast Transfer - Slow Payment". Afternic is currently the crappiest marketplace in terms of paying the seller. They're always fast when it comes to grabbing the money from the buyer and the domain from seller but when it comes to paying, they keep verifying the payment for days or weeks no matter it's $500 or $5,000.

 

[CamMK27]

I had a similar experience recently. I got my payment 2-3 weeks after the transaction. I had to call 3 times before it was resolved. Every time I called there was always an excuse and the reps didn't even know what was going on.

 

[boker]

It don't see it that misleading. It's fast Transfer (to customer), not fast Payout (to seller). And the advantage is you don't have to get and send domain auth and codes, unlock domains and whatever. It's done automatically as you probably know already.

Each platform has its pros and cons. The most important factor is, howewer, not payout time, but number of sales and average sale value, minus % commision and purchase/reg value = PROFIT. That's what matters most.

Afternic sells my domains for best value AND also provides the best volume, even with their larger commission factored in. With Dan and others I get mostly lowball offers, the $100-200 sorts.

So it depends. I have nothing against their 2-3 weeks payout schedule as long as the money keep coming in. But if you don't have a money pool to rely on, I understand it can be frustrating.

Perhaps you should focus on the good part of the situation instead - the sale you've made. And make more of that.

It's misleading, but in another way, not regarding fast transfer-fast payment. In my case 90% of the transfers at afternic are fast(sometimes instant, sometimes in 1-2 hours). The misleading part is that i the moment the transfer is done, their system is saying that the payment will be automatically disbursed in the next 7 days. So, not the 7th day, it could be 1,2-5. So, you are waiting all these 7 days and then , the 8th day you start contacting them asking what's wrong. You get an answer on the 10th day(if you are lucky) that you will be announced when the disbursement will take place, usually around 13-14 days after the domain left your account So it's misleading, you will never get paid in the first 7 days, usually it's between day 11 and day 17.

 

[loredan]

Sometimes a deal hits a transfer snag, like if the buyer wants it at netsol or something, but not really their fault.

This shouldn't be seller's problem. Why would the seller wait 7,10,14 days for the buyer to confirm the transfer when fast transfering? The domain leaves your account right away, it's Afternic's problem to ensure the buyer receive the domain fast and smooth... in the end they are domain brokers not just payment processors and we all know what fees they charge.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Regarding terms...
It must be renamed to something like AUTOTRANSFER (because it actually means: without seller's participation).

 

[uglydork]

This happened to me. They hold the funds up to 5 business days to confirm ( maybe less but most of the cases). And they schedule the payment after one week from the sale completed date.

@Joe Styler Is there any way to speed up the process since DAN and other Escrow companies are much better?

I guess it upsets me because its a blatant lie - they use the phrase "Fast Transfer" on purpose to trick you into thinking its fast when in reality, it isn't any faster than selling through Afternic without that option. In fact, I could sell it faster on my own!

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I think fast transfer refers to how fast the acquisition is for the person buying the name, not, necessarily, the speed of payment (or am I wrong?). I have never bought a name on fast transfer through Afternic. How long typically does it take for the person buying to have the domain name in their account? If that was not fast, I would agree it is perhaps misleading. But otherwise, it never occurred to me that fast transfer means fast payout.
Bob

 

[uglydork]

Transfer is fast. Payment is not. "Fast Transfer" is not misleading.

The transfer is not fast either - this the misleading information

 

[uglydork]

The transfer happened today after me complaining for days - 10 days to transfer
Not fast at all

And - I don’t get paid for 3 note days!

 

[boker]

Yeah they should adjust that in their text.

But whoever is used to them is also used to the 2 weeks payout. To me that is of no real importance.

It's a matter of principle and trust. If your company sells something to another company and they are saying that your invoice will be paid in the next 7 days, and you get paid constantly 2 weeks latter, you will think twice next time when you deal with them.
Also, it could not be a problem for you, but if your business model it's to flip them fast and repeat, a thing like this can ruin all your business model. The idea is that you can't counton them even on that 13-14 days payout, you never know, it could take even 3 weeks(sometimes, 2 months, as I heard, but never happened to me), so it's not something you can rely on.

 

[boker]

I don't disagree, but as a long-time entrepreneur I see the issue from a different angle. To me it looks like not an issue with the model (the model is good) but a management issue.

Instead of fighting the mountains I plan to build a ladder. There are tons of such hurdles in business that you can mitigate. I deal with several on a daily basis. Everyone has a problem with any platform, I do have my own with each.

There's a 3 weeks cashing cycle with this provider. That shouldn't be an issue in any normal business. You should plan around it. Fortunately (it's) it should be easy - put aside some of the profits (not necessarily the biggest part, say $50 or $100 etc) until you have saved and have a cash pool that you can rely on for new purchases. ( Edit: I do understand that many domainers have cash constraints as well, so it is not always that easy )

Yet again, the critical question is whether they bring the most money on the table.

If so, see my point above.

If not, then don't stress too much and list elsewhere - probably the best way to penalize a firm is to no longer be their customer. I doubt anything else will have any impact whatsoever, including this thread.

I could agree with most, less with the last part. Afternic network is great(hundreds of registrars selling for you) but afternic itself sucks. So, instead of leaving them, because it's hard to find another good network, you can try to push them to get better. It worthless for them If I don't list with them(loosing only one customer) but because of this thread another hundreds, thousands tens of thousands could start delisting, than we can change something.

 

[boker]

They can't release payment until they confirm the buyer has taken possession of the domain.

That is the catch, the buyer has to receive the domain, once they confirm this if it is early enough in the day, your payment can hit within the same day via paypal, or 1-2 days via bank. The key is they have to confirm the transfer is with the buyer. Now you will get paid maybe Wednesday via paypal, or Wed/Thurs via bank. Someone should have auto expressed it so it didn't take 5 days to countdown the transfer.

This is what I've told them, showing the whois screenshot with the buyers details, The answer was that they still need to verify the payment for 7 days, so it doesn't have anything to do with the buyer receiving the domain.

 

[boker]

So all your payouts are held for 7 days? I have never had that issue, I think others can probably confirm some pretty fast payouts out of afternic also. Sometimes a deal hits a transfer snag, like if the buyer wants it at netsol or something, but not really their fault.

Not 7, between 11 and 17. I've heard about some fast payouts, usually when the domain is at godaddy and goes to godaddy, but I've heard about 2 months payouts as well, so you never know. I will not start using godaddy just to make afternic happy.

 

[iGreen]

it took almost 15 days for the payment to hit my bank from the date the domain was sold. Though the domain was removed just immediately at the time of BIN.

 

[xeroox]

Same experience here, the domain was out in a few hours while the payment took almost 10 days to my bank and there are people here that complain if they don't receive their payment in 24 hours

 

[uglydork]

I was paid this morning- maybe they are starting to listen?

 

[boker]

Fast Transfer means Fast Transfer not Fast Payment. Although it is typically faster payment with that then the slow transfer.

I can give you the complete history here for everyone since I was closely involved with the project about 5 years ago where we came up with that name. The problem we encountered was that there is no standard industry term for these types of sales. Many people (us included then) used the term premium to denote a fast transfer domain. But Premium means a lot of things depending on who you are and who is selling it. Many other companies adopted that term to be used for domains but that made it even more complex. So it could be a Premium Listing with GoDaddy, not related to anything Afternic, or a Premium domain from the registry reserve inventory, or a Premium name meaning a higher tier new GTLD or a myriad of other uses.

This was leading to a lot of confusion for customers and for our front line support and confused buyers. Hi I bought or I sold this Premium domain and I want to know the status, what should I expect. Well... not sure there's a dozen or so types of premium domains which one are you talking about?

To keep it brief I will now move on to the Fast Transfer vs. Slow Transfer terms use. A Slow Transfer denotes what people typically think of as a transfer, unlocking the domain, corresponding with the new owner, giving them the auth code, etc.

Using Fast Transfer as a term vs. Premium is more helpful because it's less easy to use in multiple ways, e.g. a registry reserve name or higher priced tier premium name is not going to transfer to you so Fast Transfer doesn't work for that. What Fast transfer means on the Afternic side is that you opt in with your registrar in advance so that when the domain sells it moves automatically without any further action on your end, (in most cases). It specifically means it is part of the Afternic Premium Network vs the Standard Network, https://www.afternic.com/sell-domains. The big benefit of having a name as Fast Transfer is that it is in the Afternic Premium Network which is an expanded network of over 100 reseller sites (registrars, etc) vs 32 sites on the Standard Network. More eyeballs = more sales. Also end user buyers have less to do on Fast Transfer, the name comes into their account with in most cases no additional work compared to a new registration which is what they are most familiar with, the name just shows up in their account. The less friction we have in the process the higher the sell through rate for your domains. These are the big advantages of Fast Transfer and why we chose to call it Fast Transfer vs. Premium or making up a new term. We never mention anything about payment.

We are looking at ways to speed up payment, but we need to balance that with the needs of partners, fraud concerns, and also with keeping less friction in the process. The more friction the less sales commence. So we could use a third party to help mitigate fraud or help with the processes of the partner site the domain is sold on, but that introduces more friction which causes more sales to stall or not take place. The end result is a mix, some sales are paid faster, some slower, and some never complete as people drop off at various points of friction, the more hoops to jump through the more chance someone will give up. We haven't gotten 100% there but we have consistently over the years reduced the friction and added more partners to help improve the sell through rate for our customer's domains.

We do pay faster on GoDaddy Auction sales, many times the day after the domain moves to the buyer. We could technically do this on Afternic, but I personally have pushed back on it until we continue to refine the auctions process and get a very good balance on customer experience, speed to payment, and fraud mitigation. We are getting there and we have been making progress towards paying faster on Afternic. There are also some accounting and regulatory things we need to work within the constraints of when making payment changes.

We do not want to hold the money any longer than we have to, but there are many things that come into play. Some partners take longer to clear the funds for fraud than others, sometimes the fast transfer breaks, and sometimes we are concerned with fraud. It is relatively easy to get a domain back when there is fraud, but it is not as easy to get your money back once it is paid out. So we pay you for a sale and three days later find out the guy who bought it hacked an account somewhere be it email or whatever logged into an third party account and bought your domain using a credit card on file and then the real card holder calls his bank and they reverse the charge. We are out that money. It is a big benefit to using a marketplace like us, in that we take on the risk for the sales, but it also comes at a cost in some added time for payment.

We also continue to work on speeding up payments across the board. For example when I started in auctions a decade ago it was a 20 day payout window on any sale. That continues to improve over time to in many cases the next day now. Afternic was the same, we have redone the back end way transactions work in an effort to pay faster, we also just hired another person in that department that deals specifically with payment transactions to help make sure we are able to handle any manual things faster as they come up.

Sorry for the long explanation but it seemed that many people were confused. Which is kind of why we decided to use new terms vs Premium to differentiate what exactly we mean when we say Fast Transfer.

Also please PM me the domain you sold. I am sorry to hear about your job so close to the holidays especially. If there is anything I can do to speed up your payment I will certainly try.

A long story, but it's more like a marketing story than one trying to explain issues. The issues can be deal't in a couple of phrases, answering questions like: Why undeveloped and epik can pay in hours and afternic needs 10-15 days or so, they don't deal with the same buyers/sellers/domains? Why it takes 3 days or more to get a reply from afternic support, when at others takes minutes? They are simple question and some simple answers will suffice.