First off, re.
Wow So No Response from Flippa at all...
Is Flippa remaining silent on this? Sometimes not saying anything speaks volumes.
Delegate
Even if just for a temporary response "We're aware of this, an official response is coming soon" etc
Unfortunately, silence does speak volumes in problematic scenarios. Doesn't mean you don't have a good reason etc, but without it being public silence remains the response
Those of you who know me relatively well know that I'm in here a lot and I will always respond to any inquiry or statement about Flippa. If you do not hear from me after an hour, or 12, or even a day or two ...it does not mean that I'm avoiding the discussion. I have (a little bit of) a life that sometimes extends past being online all day. Thanks to those of you who understand that. ( i.e.
@wwwweb )
And please don't mistake this statement as dismissing these issues as unimportant. These are serious product issues. That said, the changes to these processes won't all be simple, and won't all be swift. There are reasons for all of this, and I hope a larger explanation will shed some light on where we've been with these things, where we are now and where we hope to be.
One last thing I want to add, before I start dissecting things...is regarding this:
Of course everyone's entitled to days off, but the
business never sleeps surely? And when there's a thread with the title "F*CK [YOUR_COMPANY_NAME]" in the most popular forum for the business' industry, and lots of people posting negative feedback, I would have expected someone to respond, fairly quickly.
The OP's title to this thread, while not the worst I've ever seen, is not the best way to start a productive dialogue with me.
I get how dissatisfied and frustrated many of you are, but if you have no respect for our company, an ounce of respect in here goes a long way -- I'm the one responding to you, and appreciate it.
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I want to break this down into a few different sections.
Pending Bids vs. Auto-Accepted Bids
The Bidder Alias Debate
Recap of Changes @FlippaDomains is pushing towards
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Pending Bids vs. Auto-Accepted Bids:
I was the highest bidder for a domain at the deadline. Why are pending bids allowed when the auction ends and seller is given up to 72 hours to accept? This is not "make offer" but this is a dang auction!!!! A deadline is a deadline.
A seller should have to set their requirements on who can bid before the auction even starts but not after each bid.
Thus if seller is not around you are screwed. The auction basically ended with me as the top bidder but people got approved after.
Who is working at flippa all these years and don't have the common sense to devise a simple working system???? I hear about them working on this and that but I don't see it...
The reasons behind this product decision came from a well-intentioned, and "legacy" place.
Given that Flippa is almost 7 years old and was predominantly a websites marketplace for more than half this amount of time, it's become quite clear to us that this rule is most apt in the websites marketplace.
The idea behind allowing sellers to "manually" accept their bidders was one of due diligence and security: if a buyer had no history and/or otherwise looked dodgy, the seller could reject their bid.
Our Director of Websites finds that those he interacts with consider this useful because it "encourages conversation between the buyer and seller and there are traditionally a lot of deal terms to be hashed out in advance of a website sale."
On the Websites side of the coin, there are bids *rejected* due to a seller not feeling comfortable with the buyer.
As you all reading this know, it's quite different on the domains side of the coin.
From my vantage point, the issues regarding bids being accepted post-auction far outweigh any benefits a domain seller may have in doing due diligence / rejecting someone's bid.
I'm in agreement that this is an outdated product choice, and should be revoked immediately. (please see my proposed solutions, below)
higher bids = higher commissions
So basically that seller didn't give an opportunity to other potential buyers to place their bids and as a result might lost some profit. Accepting bids after auction ends isn't good for both, sellers and buyers
I loathe that pending bid policy. I'll spend a month watching a domain and bidding and in that last minute I'll have to throw a Hail Mary of a bid, hoping I get the highest bid.
I imagine flippa is well aware of the policy, it's only because they know bidders have to bid more than usual if they really want to win an auction, which means more commission for them.
And how is the bidder supposed to know what are the amounts of the pending bids? He never gets a chance to beat that price and that is ridiculous.
Well - and if you are playing with proxy bid - as most do ? How can you know that the pending bid is higher ?
I happens with me for one of my auction. Someone placed Bid 2 minutes before cut off time. Auction ended and last bidder becomes winner. It is unfair for the highest previous bidder because it did not give them any time to place anymore bid.
I think people have grown too comfortable and acceptable with Flippa. We become aware of these pending bids and so we just overtime work with it. But it's bull and we need to call them out. Once bidding starts things should already be set.
Flippa needs to change bidding policy.
1) Pending a bid is bad. How can a seller verify a buyer? Flippa is in a better position to verify the buyer, not the seller. If a seller does not like the buyers first bid coz it is too low, they don't approve and even a no reserve auction remains unsold!
Another problem with pending bid is, if a seller is is not around to approve new buyer close to the closing time, the bid is not placed. Seller loses out the higher bid and buyer though willing to pay more, still does not win the auction.
What other auction platform has a seller approval process for bids? Flippa is not friendly to buyers. I don't even go there anymore. Make the platform better for buyers, and in turn it will become better for sellers.
Yes, I read you all loud and clear.
To clear a few things up --
@FlippaDomains (not me, but the product) is actually going against its own best interests with this rule.
It is true that a "solution" is to simply "bid the highest you can" in an attempt to break through the existing proxy in place, so that when a seller approves your bid
POST-auction, you actually win -- instead of seeing
"Your bid has been approved / you lost" messages that come through.
As has been stated above, the ability to
COUNTER would result in not only a better (and normal!) experience for the buyer, but potentially a better sales price for the seller.
And guess what, more commission for Flippa.
Another possible solution to this -- instead of deciding pending bids POST auction -- was to have the pending bid be "cancelled" if it wasn't decided before auction's end.
Would you appreciate this instead of the *chance* to actually win?
I wouldn't.
I think the ONLY solution is to auto-accept all bidders for a domain auction. If you feel safer utilizing the "manual accept" option, that should still be available to you. As a last resort, you can message our support team and request we monitor the auction for you.
I know asking for patience is a futile request with many of you -- but it's important for me that you know that I'm really trying to get it pushed through. Prior to responding to this post, I spoke to an Australian colleague who's getting this spec'd out as I type.
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The Bidder Aliases Debate
I have been vocal about our exploration into doing this, and I think we're getting closer to enacting it. I agree with the following:
Anyone know why flips hides usernames but gives clues to total spent beside the name, what's the big secret?
I really think they should introduce bidder usernames like namejet and others have.
That is why usernames are super important, but they are still absent from the platform. It will open up alot of bidding reform.
...and yet, I do very much appreciate
@Joe Styler 's comments below:
I would say in many cases it is pretty easy to see who is bidding against you by simply watching the whois for the new owner. Some use privacy but many bidders do not and it is fairly easy to see who the winners are after the fact if you watch their patterns.
We know because it happens at other marketplaces, and they get complaints for having the usernames exposed
My personal leanings are to highly encourage our userbase to utilize an alias, though am unsure as of yet if this will be a compulsory change. I can see some disliking the removal of anonymity, though I personally feel it's a step in the right direction for transparency and increased trust within the marketplace. It's part of our User Verification revamp, which I'll mention below...
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Recap of Changes us at @FlippaDomains are pushing towards
I've stopped posting product roadmap/changes preemptively on this forum, because I know people get frustrated with me - feeling like I'm always in here posting about all the great changes we'll soon be making. But where are they?
If I could tell you I know when everything is going to happen, I'd be lying. But what I can tell you is that there is a reason you haven't heard from me as often. The things we are working on behind the scenes are going far beyond fixing bugs, outdated product issues or enacting feature requests. We're scratching at the very core of the marketplace, its current state with all its flaws, and how we can transform it moving forward.
I don't think it's fair to speak about things that I don't have a timeline on yet, but I am hoping that all of the following will be addressed in the second quarter of this year. We have a new, and very solid, team in Australia making product and development changes -- and I am confident we're going to be addressing these in a more timely manner.
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Domain auctions need to default to auto-accept all bidders. If a seller wishes to manually accept, they can toggle this in their listing settings. Website and app auctions will remain defaulted to manually accept bidders.
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"Pending" bids decided post-auction will be a thing of the past. This change will kill the instance of a bid being accepted *after* the end of an auction.
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The 60 minute extension time for an auction is being reviewed.
Good suggestion:
2) Extending the auction by one hour is way too long...Extending the auction by 5 minutes is sane. How long are most buyers going to wait around if auction is extended by an hour every time. Seller loses out again if buyers leave the auction due to such long extensions.
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When you click "Buy it Now," it means "BUY IT NOW" ! In other words...I'm hoping that the rule of a seller being able to *reject* a BIN offer rides off into the sunset. A reject on a BIN basically means...it's not a BIN.
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User Verification & Bidder Aliases:
- The former is something we're going to be completely re-doing. We're at least 3-4x better than where we were a mere two years ago, but we must - and will - do better with how we onboard and verify new users. I'm hoping to see a publicly visible "score" or marker of sorts, that shows the transacting party just how "verified" the other one is. An alias is one such step a buyer or seller can complete to become further "verified."
This - our user verification revamp - is in progress.
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Employee Involvement Clarifications: I have teased about this, but it is coming very soon.
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Some final thoughts:
1. Flippa let's after auction bidding and if you win, you don't know if you won and you don't get chance to bid higher.
- Addressed above.
2. Flippa ignores ticket from seller that it has removed reserve by mistake and that results in $60K sale not going through. Ref L7.com
- The sale did not complete and was reversed. That's really all it comes down to.
3. Flippa sells a name for $40K, the buyer doesn't honor the deal, but instead of the name going to the second highest bidder, it goes to a new non-participating bidder that was on "waiting list"? Ref. Nerdy.com
- There is no such thing as a "waiting list." Again, lots happening behind the scenes with this one.
4. Flippa let's obvious fraud listings like vodka.life be. And someone claimed that they have reported similar deals and moderators have told him they are fine.
No one reported this to our CS / Marketplace Integrity teams, nor myself. Not even on the other thread, which I found via a Google Alert. I brought it to the attention of our team and it's since been suspended.
We cannot monitor the hundreds of auctions that sprout every single day, so in these instances, a quick note to
[email protected] (or if you feel you're not being listened to / you do not agree with the decision they responded with, reach out to me directly).
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And finally:
I have joined Flippa couple months ago; but after hearing so many negatives from this company I never visited their site anymore. Peace of mind and stress free are better than few bucks gain. This company it need of some serious transformation; and it will start from top to bottom. Get rid of those trouble makers, they are toxic for the business. Auctions should be clean and be managed by people with clean hand. Just a thought..
I encourage and invite you to speak to one of us personally. If there's something you're looking to buy, we can assist in due diligence. If you're seeking to sell, we can help with best practices. With so many product changes forthcoming, if we aren't able to ease your concerns at this very moment, I will be back when more has transformed to see what we can show you then.
