auctions GoDaddy Expired Auctions can be tricked

[Furquan]

Twitter user and Chinese domain investor posted that Godaddy Auctions allows people to use two bidder accounts on the same name and a lot of people are using it for tricking the auctions.
 

https://twitter.com/x/status/1678228128194256896

 

 

[bmugford]

drop the ban hammer on them. Ban them from Dan / Afternic and GoDaddy

They also need to look back and figure out the people who have been scamming the system, and take action.

Again, a lot of these rollbacks seem to be in similar hands. Are they part of the scam itself, or are the scammers flipping domains to them?

Either way, GoDaddy has the resources and internal information to figure this stuff out.

Brad

 

[bmugford]

I have bid on dozens of auction venues over the years.

GoDaddy seems to be the only venue where all the bidding action happens as soon as the auction is listed, in an effort to block legitimate bidders.

This is only happening because it works.

The auction system has a serious design flaw.

Brad

 

[Embrand]

Maybe not related, but also strange:

Monti.com is currently at DropCatch auction as a dropped name. How is this possible when it was apparently sold at GoDaddy Auctions on June 12 for $28,500 as an expired name?

If the buyer didn't pay, wouldn't it be re-auctioned or sold to the second-highest bidder at GoDaddy Auctions?

 

[bmugford]

Maybe not related, but also strange:

Monti.com is currently at DropCatch auction as a dropped name. How is this possible when it was apparently sold at GoDaddy Auctions on June 12 for $28,500 as an expired name?

If the buyer didn't pay, wouldn't it be re-auctioned at GoDaddy Auctions?

I don't think GoDaddy has any mechanism to re-auction domains.

So basically it seems if the auction is not paid for, there is a rollback or the domain is just allowed to delete.

In this case the domain was deleted -

Creation Date: 2023-07-27



Brad

 

[Embrand]

I don't think GoDaddy has any mechanism to re-auction domains.

So basically it seems if the auction is not paid for, there is a rollback or the domain is just allowed to delete.

In this case the domain was deleted -

Creation Date: 2023-07-27



Brad

Maybe that is the case. Thanks.

 

[Omega Assets]

BQ․net from $37,500 to $1,630
7124․com from $14,000 to $5,100

Who knows for how many years this has been going on. Some people have gotten some incredible deals. No reply from @James Iles yet? or @Paul Nicks ?

 

[zomainhacks]

Who knows for how many years this has been going on. Some people have gotten some incredible deals. No reply from @James Iles yet? or @Paul Nicks ?

 

[DomainBarter]

Let's keep an eye out for rollbacks on the current top results.

It seems implausible that all these bids are actually legitimate.

Show attachment 243390

tais.com $14,750
98s.com $8,500
hx5.com $7,400

Brad

I bid on hx5.com until it hit $80 and thought it looked like shill bidding when the price rocketed up and why I'm here. 2 placer bids were put in right after my bid and the price raced from $110 to $7300 right after my bids by Bidder 9356533 and Bidder 9222866, I expect them to be shill bids and it would revert to this bidder below that's likely the real shill and using the other accounts as throw away accounts.

2023/08/02 01:07 PM (PDT)

2023/08/02 01:53 PM (PDT)

Bidder 1296206

$110

​

 

[Michael]

4172.com rolled back from $13,750 to $205

 

[bmugford]

4172.com rolled back from $13,750 to $205

What a bunch of nonsense.

The scammers continue to be rewarded by getting valuable domains for peanuts.

This is a real black eye for GoDaddy. It is hard to trust any of the auction results at this point.

Outside one comment by Joe on Twitter, I have seen nothing else from GoDaddy regarding this very serious issue.

@Paul Nicks @Joe Styler @James Iles

Brad

 

[Future Sensors]

What a bunch of nonsense.

The scammers continue to be rewarded by getting valuable domains for peanuts.

This is a real black eye for GoDaddy. It is hard to trust any of the auction results at this point.

Outside one comment by Joe on Twitter, I have seen nothing else from GoDaddy regarding this very serious issue.

@Paul Nicks @Joe Styler @James Iles

If they don't want to react, a list of GoDaddy Analyst contacts is on this page:

https://aboutus.godaddy.net/investor-relations/stock-information/default.aspx

 

[pb]

4172.com rolled back from $13,750 to $205

Not a bad deal, I might try it myself... (jk)

 

[OIO]

Hi all, does anyone know why a domain name on godaddy auctions could be showing (pending) on the majestic, backlink and referring domains columns? Is there a way to remove those (pendings) ?Thanks

 

[zomainhacks]

Still haven't they solved the issue?!?

I mean, even a temporary solution might work for now... Signals are important and GD isn't sending a good signal to the market.

Is it so complex re-auctioning the most dubious rollbacks? Why aren't they doing it?

Edit: This issue impacts market prices and damages the whole domain market participants, hope everyone is aware of it.

 

[Omega Assets]

Still haven't they solved the issue?!?

I mean, even a temporary solution might work for now... Signals are important and GD isn't sending a good signal to the market.

Is it so complex re-auctioning the most dubious rollbacks? Why aren't they doing it?

Edit: This issue impacts market prices and damages the whole domain market participants, hope everyone is aware of it.

Maybe its an inside job like back in the day with Adam Dick

 

[nametrekker]

Yes, it would be great if they can find a way to get the shill bidders off the sites -- it wouldn't be that difficult.

Also, I'm getting tired of these so called "up bidders" who wait 5 seconds before end of auction to keep adding on to the final price - as well as an extra 5 minutes, to the bill if you placed a proxy bid. Sometimes they get caught and they "win" the domains, but then they don't pay.

 

[scithe]

Last minute bidders and the popcorn timers are annoying (I've lost a few dozen domains to them) but those are working as GoDaddy intended.

The fake bidders are not. $5/year is a good start but requiring photo IDs for all active accounts ought to solve the problem. I had to share mine with Snapnames and I haven't heard of any scandals there.

 

[alcy]

I guess more sale fee cash for the greedydaddy huh... do u seriously think stuff like this would not get fix if it was bad for gd cash register.

 

[alcy]

Still no official comments by GD ?

they have too much profit to count.

 

[bmugford]

4172.com rolled back from $13,750 to $205

@Michael

So the auction price is reported as a sale in the NameBio database?

If there is a rollback, it is not corrected?

The problem is either way, it basically skews the market data.

There is a recorded sale price which is fake, that possibly inflates the market value especially on certain formats.

If you correct them, there will be a bunch of sale prices that are absurdly below market value.

Brad

 

[bmugford]

@Michael

So the auction price is reported as a sale in the NameBio database?

If there is a rollback, it is not corrected?

The problem is either way, it basically skews the market data.

There is a recorded sale price which is fake, that possibly inflates the market value especially on certain formats.

If you correct them, there will be a bunch of sale prices that are absurdly below market value.

Brad

I just noticed NameBio now actually has the rollback in the system.

4172.com

205 USD

2023-07-04

GoDaddy

Obviously that is way below market value, where the original "sale" was way above market value.

No win situation.

Brad

 

[dr manos]

This is what Dynadot are trying to combat by offering the domain to the 2nd bidder for their top bid instead of retracting all the top bidders bids. Shill bidding will always be a problem but I'm not sure there's a way to combat it and make everyone happy

100% correct but imo is wrong to go to 2nd bidder at top bid, not only for this registrar but for all, how do u know if the first bid is not from an employee, if payment order goess to next bidder has to be as the high bidder did not participate at auction at all

 

[dr manos]

I'm not sure what you're driving at. I understand exactly how it works and the repercussions it has. That's why I'm saying a re-auction is the only way to do it. To be clear I mean an open re-auction, not just between the bidders of the failed auction.


Sure they can, they just pay to renew it. Even if 100% of them get no bids in the re-auction, I'm pretty sure they can swing $65 a day. And within a few weeks it'll stop happening entirely because it will be impossible to game.

Imo It is not legit a registrar to renew a name in a way like they are owners of it. If someone wins it at auction they renew it at the name of the winner. And if they renew upfront the auction and noone takes it at auction, then registrar will become the registrant? Not legit

 

[Michael]

@Michael

So the auction price is reported as a sale in the NameBio database?

If there is a rollback, it is not corrected?

The problem is either way, it basically skews the market data.

There is a recorded sale price which is fake, that possibly inflates the market value especially on certain formats.

If you correct them, there will be a bunch of sale prices that are absurdly below market value.

Brad

It gets corrected to reflect what actually happened, as I prefer transparency and accountability, even if it doesn't reflect the true market value. It is truly a lose-lose-lose situation though.

Leaving the original price is out of the question for obvious reasons. I could delete the record entirely but then I'm just helping to sweep the problem under the rug. So correcting it seemed like the best of bad options.

Generally speaking I think most people can spot an extreme outlier and ignore it. The only problem is when public sales of a category are infrequent, and most of them happen at GoDaddy, then it becomes hard to tell it is an outlier and instead it just looks like a new normal. Take LL.net for example.

Hopefully GoDaddy fixes this sooner rather than later and it will become a non-issue. If that happens I would likely delete everything that was rolled back, because at that point there would be a downside in keeping the data but there would no longer be an upside.

Imo It is not legit a registrar to renew a name in a way like they are owners of it. If someone wins it at auction they renew it at the name of the winner. And if they renew upfront the auction and noone takes it at auction, then registrar will become the registrant? Not legit

I'm not saying they should renew every single expired name in preparation for an auction. I'm saying keep the same schedule/flow as now, but if a winning bidder doesn't pay then instead of manually offering it to the runner up they manually renew the name and start a new auction. Easy enough, and the only way it can be 100% fair and transparent with absolutely no way to game it.

Sure, there could be some instances where they're not able to sell a domain in a re-auction, but this would be extremely rare, and they could simply have a policy of deleting the domain if this happens.

People aren't doing this for fun. They're doing it because the names are very valuable, and there's a way to get them for practically nothing. They will sell in a re-auction too. They could also mitigate this risk by only re-auctioning domains that ended over a certain amount ($100, $500, or maybe even $1k).

Eventually, with no upside to playing these games, re-auctions themselves will become rare.

 

[Lox]

Maybe its an inside job like back in the day with Adam Dick

Nope. The Western business culture / exploit is not the same as KR, IN (east side) and in this case CN business culture (auction sys exploit ). Noticed ping pong in Sept. 2019 ….

… but that’s not the biggest thing in the domain aftermarket…. The biggest problem is the organized front-running @ large.

Regards