GoDaddy Automatic Bids...sigh

[dgmweb]

My fun story of the day...

I had no choice but to let a domain expire last month due to some asshat stealing my CC# at a restaurant. The grace period expired while waiting on my replacement card & had no other cards to use. Rather than pay the $80 recovery fee when my new card arrived, I figured I'd catch it on the auction for $12, lol (done this once or twice before).

So I bid my $12 today 2 minutes before it expired, and was the only bidder, with only 2 views (total) of the listing - both mine. 1 minute later, I was outbid by an "Automatic Bid", so of course I bid again. At first I was surprised because I've had the name for 11 years and it's specific to one of my projects - long story short it's the name of a fictional place in my scifi film & very obscure; not really of value to anyone else I would think.

Realizing I was likely bidding against a shill, I kept at it anyway since the name is important to me. Finally won after about 6 more bids, running it up to $46 plus a 1-yr renewal. So GD got most of that $80 out of me anyway. Pretty sure no one else is actually interested in the name. I'm still waiting to see if I actually get the domain back in my account...

Anyone else have any fun stories like this?

 

[GeorgeQuang]

It's funniest if you let the other bidder get your name and see who he/she is.
Nowaday, some big players set their systems/script/bot to bid domains automatically. Maybe they set "Bid a name that has extended time or domain that has bid(s) ".
I bid and get domains everyday on GD Expired Auctions. And i see tons of "Automatic Bidder" appear like a comet : they bid when the auctions already times up ( just 5-10 seconds left) or bid immediately after the 1st bid of a domain.

 

[Jasonn]

why didn't you just buy a 25 bucks pre paid card?

 

[creataweb]

why didn't you just buy a 25 bucks pre paid card?

Was thinking the same thing... that would work I assume.

 

[Kate]

Now you've got a free appraisal in the process But it's not high

 

[dgmweb]

why didn't you just buy a 25 bucks pre paid card?

Yeah, I definitely thought about that but had no option to - had no other card or even cash on hand. But I really didn't worry about it a lot since I figured I'd recover it pretty easy on the auction. Which I actually did, it just cost a little more.

 

[dgmweb]

Now you've got a free appraisal in the process But it's not high

Heh, yep. This does give me a bit more of a kick in the pants to finally develop this one though and at least get some ad revenue going. I've had plans for a while, so maybe it's time.