Freemarket experience

[Electric-Shadow]

Hey all,

I thought I'd share this brief experience with Freemarket.com (owned by Freelancer) for anyone who's thinking of selling on there.

So I listed a 5 character domain for sale just to test things out. The listing process was straight forward and simple and best of all it's free, already a tick against Flippa and the upgrade costs seemed fairly reasonable in comparison too.

The domain sold for $1, okay no big deal. It happens sometimes with no reserve listings. The sale process itself was actually very smooth as sales go through their own Escrow automatically. However I found the handover chat feature a little bit clumsy as there's no reply button, you have to hit enter to send the text, the same on mobile. This makes sending more than one sentance/paragraph more difficult than it needs to be.

Apart from that the sale was completed without any problems. That sadly, is where the positives come to an abrupt end. After completion of the sale and release of funds I went to the withdraw section where much to my dismay, I saw they applied their commission even to my $1 sale! Something which Flippa did not do. Still legit enough though, since I did agree to that when listing afterall and 5% is very reasonable.

So I decide to cut my losses and withdraw my cash. Much to my dismay I saw there was a 15 day hold on the first withdrawal, this WAS NOT mentioned during the listing process. I find this unnecessary when a transaction has already been SECURELY through escrow. On top of that they neglected to mention the fact that there is a $30 minimum withdrawal, which would be fine for sales over $30.

I find it unethical not to mention these important restrictions during the listing process, regardless if it is in the T&C's or not. I will thus not be using Freemarket again unless these restrictions are removed, at the very least the 15 day hold.

 

[JyotiG]

Thank you for sharing your experience. I am sure some of us who wanted to list our domains there would now think it through. Transparency is the key to any successful business and if freelancer is resorting to such methods then it's better to stay away from them. I have my doubts about Escrow as well now!

 

[domainerfella]

@Electric-Shadow I think most of the people who frequent there are domainers and are low ballers. One advantage is that you get bids when compared to no bids at GoDaddy public auctions. But the bidding stops after reaching XX$.

 

[domainerfella]

@Electric-Shadow What the withdrawal options they have? Looks like they get money from the buyer in a safe way and hold it in our account. To paypal or bank account? How does it work?

 

[Electric-Shadow]

They have both but minimum withdrawal is $30, which as I said they never mentioned anywhere until the withdrawal page

 

[Stefan Hogan]

Hey all,

I thought I'd share this brief experience with Freemarket.com (owned by Freelancer) for anyone who's thinking of selling on there.

So I listed a 5 character domain for sale just to test things out. The listing process was straight forward and simple and best of all it's free, already a tick against Flippa and the upgrade costs seemed fairly reasonable in comparison too.

The domain sold for $1, okay no big deal. It happens sometimes with no reserve listings. The sale process itself was actually very smooth as sales go through their own Escrow automatically. However I found the handover chat feature a little bit clumsy as there's no reply button, you have to hit enter to send the text, the same on mobile. This makes sending more than one sentance/paragraph more difficult than it needs to be.

Apart from that the sale was completed without any problems. That sadly, is where the positives come to an abrupt end. After completion of the sale and release of funds I went to the withdraw section where much to my dismay, I saw they applied their commission even to my $1 sale! Something which Flippa did not do. Still legit enough though, since I did agree to that when listing afterall and 5% is very reasonable.

So I decide to cut my losses and withdraw my cash. Much to my dismay I saw there was a 15 day hold on the first withdrawal, this WAS NOT mentioned during the listing process. I find this unnecessary when a transaction has already been SECURELY through escrow. On top of that they neglected to mention the fact that there is a $30 minimum withdrawal, which would be fine for sales over $30.

I find it unethical not to mention these important restrictions during the listing process, regardless if it is in the T&C's or not. I will thus not be using Freemarket again unless these restrictions are removed, at the very least the 15 day hold.

Hey Electric Shadow,

Thanks for posting this feedback. The $30 withdrawal limit is an unfortunate carry over from our parent company- we will look into a solution ASAP.

Also regarding your withdrawal wait time, this is used to prevent fraud and will only effect you the first time you withdraw. Again we recognise this is not ideal and will look into a solution.

Thanks,
Stefan

 

[Electric-Shadow]

Hi,

Thanks for taking the time to go over it and respond.

I do hope you're able to come up with something. The main issue that made me not want to return is the fact that these policies are not made clear until you visit the withdrawal page when it should be highlighted whenever you list. If it's to be replaced by something more user friendly and less inconvenient I hope that you take this into consideration.

Thanks again

 

[Stefan Hogan]

I'm not sure if its necessary to be shown when you list. However since reading the terms and conditions of a site is good before using it, I'll work on getting this posted up on there.

 

[xynames]

Is freemarket auctions only, or static for sale listings too? Must you have a BIN price, or is make offer alone enough?

Also, from this page
http://blog.freemarket.com/2015/03/bulk-listing-explained/
it looks like it isn't so easy to upload thousands of domains.