How can I prevent another Afternic user from deleting and listing my domains for sale on Afternic?

[Arca]

I'm having some problems with Afternic user "latonas" (Rick Latona). Earlier this year, I purchased two domains from NameJet that were previously listed on Afternic by "latonas". I provided Afternic with screenshots to provide my ownership of the domains, and they took down the old listings, so that I could list them myself. However, a few days later, the domains were silently deleted from my Afternic account, and re-listed by latonas. I contacted Afternic again, provided ownership info again, Afternic took down his listings, and I re-listed the domains myself. A day later though, the domains were silently deleted from my account again, and re-listed by latonas. Somehow he is able to repeatedly get domains removed from my account, and Afternic support do not seem to think it is a problem.

I don't understand how latonas is managing to do this, as I am providing Afternic with photos of the domains in my account to prove my ownership, and I also use the same email address that is listed in WHOIS when contacting them. Since these domains are no longer in latonas registrar account, and WHOIS is not his, I am not sure why they keep letting him delete my domains over and over.

I have emailed Rick Latona about this, but he did not respond. Afternic customer support simply deletes the domains from his account when I contact them about it, only to let him delete them from my account in the following days. It seems the only way I can prevent latonas from offering these names for sale, is to contact Afternic every 2-3 days to get them to delete his listings (after he has gotten them deleted from my account).

I've been considering to buy the domains from latona at Afternic, as he would be unable to deliver the domains, and perhaps then they would take action against him. However, I have purchased domains from "big" domainers at Afternic several times before, who reneged/did not deliver the domains I bought (even though WHOIS reflected that they were the current owner) and not once did Afternic take action against them/suspend their accounts, even for repeat offenders, so I am not sure it would help much (I'd also have to tie up a lot of $$$$ in the escrow process, and getting a refund could take a while...).

If these names were listed solely on Afternic, I could simply resort to listing them elsewhere. But since these names also show up at GoDaddy and other registrars with a BIN, I feel like his listing of these names at Afternic significantly lowers my own chances of selling them.

Does anyone know how I can block latonas permanently from deleting names from my Afternic account, or anything else I can do to deal with this issue?

 

[simmplex]

@Joe Styler

Would you be so kind to check and find out why Afternic allow this Rick Latona to add others' domains to his account again and again?
Thanks a lot.

 

[Arca]

Update: Afternic customer support have finally started taking this more seriously. They have clarified that Rick Latona is indeed uploading a spreadsheet of names, and that when he uploads his spreadsheet, it deletes the names out of my account (even though I have verified my ownership), and lists them for sale in his (he doesn't have to provide ownership proof). It appears that he is some kind of superuser, who can delete other users domains simply by listing them himself, even after they have been verified. That is how he has been able to delete my domains 5-6 times right out of my account, even though I have provided three forms of ownership proof for these domains multiple times. I recommend anyone who has names listed with Afternic to go and check whether all your names are actually in your account. Some might have silently deleted without your knowledge by a user like "latonas".

Afternic customer support are now going to try to get his Afternic portfolio manager to get him to delete these names from his spreadsheet. They do not have the authority to simply remove them from his account permanently or block him from listing them. Customer support have just now removed these domains from his account once again, and I have added them myself, but they said it is likely they will get deleted from my account and listed for sale by him again before they actually get him to remove my domains from his spreadsheet.

This was solved as described in the post above.

The domains were removed several more times from my account before it was finally solved, since customer support did not have the authority to stop him from apparently listing any name he wants by uploading his spreadsheet, and in that process removing all the names on his spreadsheet out of other user's accounts (even though those domains have been ownership verified by those other users). Eventually, customer support, via his afternic portfolio manager, appears to have been able to get him to voluntarily remove my domains from his spreadsheet. The domains are no longer being deleted from my account as a result.

His account currently has 257,000 domains listed for sale, down from 280,000 when I first made this post, and doing a WHOIS look up of recently listed names reveals a bunch of different owners and mostly brand new registration dates. So it appears that he is dropping names heavily, but because they are on his spreadsheet, they continue to be re-listed as soon as somebody else buys them, in which case the broader issue here persists.

 

[wwwweb]

This was solved as described in the post above.

The domains were removed several more times from my account before it was finally solved, since customer support did not have the authority to stop him from apparently listing any name he wants by uploading his spreadsheet, and in that process removing all the names on his spreadsheet out of other user's accounts (even though those domains have been ownership verified by those other users). Eventually, customer support, via his afternic portfolio manager, appears to have been able to get him to voluntarily remove my domains from his spreadsheet. The domains are no longer being deleted from my account as a result.

His account currently has 257,000 domains listed for sale, down from 280,000 when I first made this post, and doing a WHOIS look up of recently listed names reveals a bunch of different owners and mostly brand new registration dates. So it appears that he is dropping names heavily, but because they are on his spreadsheet, they continue to be re-listed as soon as somebody else buys them, in which case the broader issue here persists.

I don't think he owns that many domains, afternic is probably best to do a whois purge on his account.

 

[Joe Styler]

@Joe Styler

Would you be so kind to check and find out why Afternic allow this Rick Latona to add others' domains to his account again and again?
Thanks a lot.

Will do we have a meeting today I will bring it up in.

 

[Joe Styler]

I’m also surprised that Afternic silently deletes domains from my account, without any kind of notification. With SEDO, at least they will send you an email when they remove domains from your account.

I manually looked up some of my higher value domains, and I noticed that an LLLL.com and a few other names had been removed from my account too. I don’t know how many domains have been removed from my account in total. But since I point my domains to Afternic landing pages, it could have cost me sales, as names pointing to removed domain listings resolve to 404 pages.

I emailed Afternic and asked them if they could provide me with a list of domains they have stealth deleted from my account. They ignored my request.

Can you send me a couple domains that this happened to so I can see what happened?

 

[Joe Styler]

No offense here, but if you are simply repeating what Godaddy say without testing it, we don't know this for a fact. Once enough bugs are present, you can't be sure of anything. Really @Joe Styler needs to explain this here publicly or link to where GD/Afternic state this.

And yes there is another thread on here where a domain was wrongly sold by Afternic
https://www.namepros.com/threads/godaddy-domain-stolen.986743/

There isn't a way to sell names you do not own on Afternic. The system does have issues we are working on but selling names you don't own and getting paid for them isn't something I have seen happen. I have seen people sell names they did not want to sell that they owned, 2 times out of hundreds of thousands of sales and in each case owner of the domain did click the agreement that the registrar the domain name was registered at sent them asking them to confirm the listing for sale. We did however work with both parties this happened to and worked it out to a satisfactory end. At the end of the day we don't want to have any customer issues and we really do want the best for our customers. We work hard at it, with millions of listings and so many accounts and people involved sometimes things don't work like they should we do our best to fix them and to make sure they don't continue to happen. We want to be the best platform there is to sell domains and we are continuing to work on fixing it each day. We did have a meeting today and discussed this in depth so we could help make the process better. I appreciate the feedback on the forum and will continue to be an advocate for our customers.

 

[Joe Styler]

While I agree that he is not showing the kind of responsibility he should with his "superuser" account, and clearly not monitoring which names he actually owns these days, I don't think they will revoke any of his privileges. Sellers like him have a lot of leniency, and it's unlikely they are going to do anything. In fact, the solution is that he is going to be asked to remove the domains from his spreadsheet. In other words, customer support don't even have the authority to prevent him from listing whatever names he want, even if it has already been established through ownership verification measures that those names are not his. So customer support is at his mercy, and not the other way around, which is how it should be.

Previously I have bought domains from big sellers on Afternic who eventually decided to not let the name go, even after they confirmed with Afternic that they owned the name (WHOIS showed the same) and I had sent in the funds. One seller even did this multiple times. I asked Afternic repeatedly to suspend their accounts, but they refused to take any action. Some sellers seem to be pretty much untouchable.

@Arca First and foremost I would like to apologize. It sounds like you have used a lot of your time to deal with something you should not have to be fixing. I can't imagine your frustration but I will do what I can to help make sure you don't have to work on this and spend more of your valuable time on it. Please pm me the domains so I can see what is happening. Also I will give you someone who can do all this work for you to make sure your names are listed easily and stay listed. I'll see if we can find out what names have been removed from your account as well and let you know. If you pm me a name that was removed I will be able to locate your account information at get the other details from there. We are working on a couple projects that will help resolve these issues but they are bigger pieces of the puzzle and likely will not be released for months but we are trying to fix things the right way to make it better in the long term.

 

[simmplex]

@Joe Styler

Please check these and find out how can this Lisa been given the privilege to suspend
my auctions account before she go to check and find that I have already sent the buyer the auth code 3 times through the Email Buyer link.

I demand you urge this Lisa send me an apology email soon.

Dear xxx,

You sold xxx . com on 3/22/2017 and were paid for the sale of the name on 4/11/2017. However, you have not provided the domain name to the buyer. Your auctions account has been suspended until the transfer codes are provided. Please reply to this email and provide the codes. If you no longer own this domain name or plan on delivering in, we will need the funds returned. We have placed a miscellaneous fee in the cart. Please process this order and reply back so that we can issue a refund if you do not plan on delivering the domain.

Lisa
Aftermarket Support

 

[tonyk2000]

As a matter of fact, Rick Latona is not the only "evil" user doing this. Somebody is adding a few domains we own about one time each month (same domains in each batch). We then ask afternic/GD to remove those. They promptly do. After a few weeks, the same evil and unprofessional domainer re-adds our domains again. There is something that should be fixed with a whole afternic system.

 

[Arca]

Can you send me a couple domains that this happened to so I can see what happened?

Besides the two domains that were repeatedly removed by user “latonas”, the other domain listings I noticed were gone had simply been deleted (and not re-listed by anyone).

However, I checked and discovered that six weeks ago, when I was working out this issue, and at that time I just re-listed those domains. I can’t remember which domains it affected.

I’ll search through my current Afternic listings to locate other disappeared listings and let you know some examples.

As a matter of fact, Rick Latona is not the only "evil" user doing this. Somebody is adding a few domains we own about one time each month (same domains in each batch). We then ask afternic/GD to remove those. They promptly do. After a few weeks, the same evil and unprofessional domainer re-adds our domains again. There is something that should be fixed with a whole afternic system.

Sounds very similar to the problem I had. Do you know who is doing it? When they have listed your domains, you can visit afternic.com/domain/YOURDOMAIN.com to find out which domainer it is (only works if their user is public). Since that domainer is apparently able to add any domain, just like "latonas", regardless of whether a regular user has gone through the ownership verification process, you have to get customer support to plead with him to stop doing it. It can be very difficult to get them to listen/take your issue seriously, but if you persist they will probably deal with it in the end. Based on my own experience with this, customer support cannot stop such super-users from listing your domains (they explicitly told me so), but they can get someone from Afternic to reach out to them and tell them to stop doing it. Hardly an ideal solution, but at least it's better than emailing them over and over to verify your ownership, only to log in and repeatedly discover that the domain has been removed from your account and listed by the other user again.

 

[Joe Styler]

Besides the two domains that were repeatedly removed by user “latonas”, the other domain listings I noticed were gone had simply been deleted (and not re-listed by anyone).
....

Well again I apologize and if you do see any names that are doing something they should not be please let me know the names and I will look into it and work on making sure it doesnt happen again.

 

[tonyk2000]

Do you know who is doing it? When they have listed your domains, you can visit afternic.com/domain/YOURDOMAIN.com to find out which domainer it is (only works if their user is public). Since that domainer is apparently able to add any domain, just like "latonas", regardless of whether a regular user has gone through the ownership verification process, you have to get customer support to plead with him to stop doing it.

Indeed, I know who is doing it. And they are still doing it, even though I asked my GD account manager not only to arrange domain removal from afternic (a routine monthly request, as if we or GD has no better things to do...) - but also to have this customer contacted. I have just sent a pm to Joe Styler with the details though

 

[campout]

Indeed, I know who is doing it.

Who is it? No reason to keep their name out of things when they're shitting all over the rest of us.

 

[tonyk2000]

There are no postive changes with this problem so far. Moreover, there are negative changes. These so-called "powerful users" are still able to list anything they want for sale. Afternic does not respect explicit "reject" (If I as a rightful owner reject afternic authorization for my domain through negatively responding to "Opt-in to the Afternic..." registrars email). In other words, my domain added by "powerful" user is offered for sale at their price not only on afternic itself, but also on any and all instant-transfer partners even after I explicitly reject this with my domain registrar.

The last but not the least, the domains are no more removed from rightful account (if also added by rightful owner). Afternic accepts duplicate listings illegaly submitted by powerful users, and their listings prevail.

I asked afternic to remove our domain from somebody elses portfolio 3 times a raw. After each removal, the domain reappeared submitted by "powerful" user in a few days. Afternic support never bothers to do anything else, even if asked to. Last time, afternic support wrote: "The domain has been added to your account, please log in to Afternic and adjust your pricing as I have set the minimum offer...If you do not plan on selling the domain, please mark the domain as "hidden" and this will prevent the other user to add the errant listing."
Well, I did mark the domain as hidden. It is still at my account as hidden, but was just added by "poweful so-called user" to their account as well, and is now for sale everywhere with their pricing.

I am wondering what should happen to have this nonsense stopped...

 

[campout]

Well, I did mark the domain as hidden. It is still at my account as hidden, but was just added by "poweful so-called user" to their account as well, and is now for sale everywhere with their pricing.

That's interesting. I was under the impression that a name could not be simultaneously in two accounts at once.

Yeah I once asked support to remove some names that were "already listed" by these sellers who are allowed to list huge amounts of names they do not own, and after support removed the names they told me to "add them quickly before the other person adds them again." WTF???

 

[tonyk2000]

Yes, I was also surprised - and double checked. Indeed, even though the domain was and still is listed in my afternic account as "hidden" one, I received unexpected "Afternic listing request" email from domain registrar (NameSilo) on Sunday evening, promptly rejected this request @ NameSilo, but this rejection did not change anything - afternic own page at afternic.com / domain / domainname showed my domain as being for sale with the price set by another user, and the same with netsol, registercom etc. for exact match domainsearch - available for buy now @ their price.

To afternics credit, they responded fast - in a few hours - and removed the domain from superusers account again. They neither confirmed nor denied any extra actions performed, so it is still unclear whether I should expect this game to be continued or not...

 

[tonyk2000]

It took two more add-delete rounds for afternic to finally respond with the following - "we do not have a blacklist that we can add the domain to and we do not have control over which domains other customers submit for listings, but we have reached out to the customer who has listed the domain multiple times and requested they remove the domain from their list."

I am wondering why afternic elected to spend time of 5 different support agents who (cumulatively) deleted the errant listing 5 or 6 times... instead of "reaching out to the customer" immediately after the problem was detected (after their listing of our domain reappeared for the first time), especially since I've asked afternic to do so?

Other questions to @Joe Styler -

Are there any real developments with resolving such an issues on system level?

For what purpose did Afternic introduce a feature allowing duplicate listings for superusers, where a domain can exist in both normal legitimate account AND superusers account at the same time, and superusers config prevails?

How can one perform a _bulk_ check that their domains, that are shown inside normal account, are in fact distributed by Afternic as desired (meaning they are not overwritten by some superuser)?

 

[Joe Styler]

If you have a domain listed on Afternic someone else cannot successfully list it. If the domain is in your account and it is showing as listed you are good. There is the ability for certain sellers to bulk list names. (If you have over 100k names and would like to talk about getting access to that let me know.) However that ability to bulk list a domain does not supercede an existing listing.
We do manual checks as well for duplicate listings and do inform people to remove names when we find them to be inaccurate regardless of the number of names they own/list.

 

[campout]

If you have a domain listed on Afternic someone else cannot successfully list it.

We do manual checks as well for duplicate listings

Why would you do manual checks for duplicate listings if it's impossible for two people to list the same domain?

 

[anantj]

If you have a domain listed on Afternic someone else cannot successfully list it

Based on posts and comments from others, this is obviously not accurate. In fact, the OP exactly states that someone is superseding their listing (and I believe a couple of others reported the same on the Afternic Updates or Afternic feedback thread).

 

[tonyk2000]

Why would you do manual checks for duplicate listings if it's impossible for two people to list the same domain?

Indeed : - )

@Joe Styler - you are very welcome to check a recent ticket with a subject "domain add problem - domain conflict" where the following afternic agents: Vaclav R., Elizabeth, Kenneth McCortney, Will J., Lisa - all did one and the same thing in different points of time - they removed somebody elses listing which appeared and reappeared and prevailed in Afternic DB _with the domain in question still being listed at my account_.

Yes, it was at my account. I became aware of somebody elses duplicate listings simply because I received "afternic authorization" emails from my registrar (NameSilo) each time somebody else submitted my domain, and my rejection of said listing on NameSilo end did not change anything, as the duplicate listing prevailed on afternic com / domain / domainname and all distribution partners

 

[Joe Styler]

Why would you do manual checks for duplicate listings if it's impossible for two people to list the same domain?

Because it is not impossible for two people to list the name for sale. It is not possible for the scenario described above to happen.

So you list a name for sale and a company with 300k names uploads a list that has the same name on it. If your listing is first it stays in the priority - for all intents and purposes it is the only listing - meaning buyers only see yours when they do a search.
Internally however it created a second listing - one public never sees. We dont like that so we clean it up, when we do we let the Secondary lister know there is a conflict and to not keep uploading it because we dont like people of any size listing names they dont have and cleaning it up makes more manual work for us.

 

[Joe Styler]

Indeed : - )

@Joe Styler - you are very welcome to check a recent ticket with a subject "domain add problem - domain conflict" where the following afternic agents: Vaclav R., Elizabeth, Kenneth McCortney, Will J., Lisa - all did one and the same thing in different points of time - they removed somebody elses listing which appeared and reappeared and prevailed in Afternic DB _with the domain in question still being listed at my account_.

Yes, it was at my account. I became aware of somebody elses duplicate listings simply because I received "afternic authorization" emails from my registrar (NameSilo) each time somebody else submitted my domain, and my rejection of said listing on NameSilo end did not change anything, as the duplicate listing prevailed on afternic com / domain / domainname and all distribution partners

See my other answer to Nat - it is possible to have two listings for the same name but only the first listing we get has priority. If you are coming in as the second listing then your domain wont show for sale as your listing. They would need to cancel the other listing, notify that party to stop listing is and get you to list your name again.

 

[Arca]

Please have a read through this thread, Joe. The system is clearly not working as it should. It is not working the way you describe.

When these 100K+ domain users list an already listed domain name, it is deleted from the account of the "regular" user who had it listed, at least that's what happened in my case. So there are not two listings, there are just one (by the 100K user). I experienced this over and over again, which is why I opened this thread to seek advice from the community. I verified my ownership, listed the name, and 2 days later, it was deleted from my account and listed by user "latonas" again. I sent in ownership verification, they removed it from his account, I listed it myself, and 2 days it was gone from my account, and listed by him. I sent them ownership verification, they removed it from his account, I listed it myself, 2 days later it vanishes from my account, and is listed by him again. This happened repeatedly, and customer support said they have NO power over this, they said they could not stop him from doing it.

Customer support told me that whenever one of these "super users" upload their spreadsheet of domains, ALL domains on that spreadsheet are uploaded to their account, and if they were already listed by other sellers, they are automatically deleted from the regular sellers accounts. I can 100% attest to this, because I experienced it over and over again, and customer support explicitly told me that it's what is happening, and other users in this thread have reported the same problem.

The only way they could solve this was to get someone from Afternic to contact the offender, and plead with him to please stop listing MY domains. Very frustrating experience. These 100K users are given WAY too much power, which they are abusing. Why can they delete domains listed by other sellers without ownership verification? They also get to list porn domains, which makes a mockery of the rule that adult names cannot be sold on Afternic.

 

[Joe Styler]

That may have happened as a glitch with you but it is not how the system normally works. I normally verify what I am going to post with several people before answering, this particular answer I knew and I still confirmed it with the manager of our Afternic Support department and the person in charge of the API listings. Both confirmed my answer before posting and we looked at a couple examples in real time.