poll How ethical is this? - You be the judge

[infosec3]

I recently responded to a NamePros Domains Wanted thread offering a few dozens of names I was liquidating.

The potential buyer showed interest and we apparently agreed on a bulk price. I was willing to sell and the other member said he needed a bit more time to confirm purchase.

I gave him 24 hours. Soon after, it came to my attention that my names (the same names this member was about to buy from me) had been submitted to SquadHelp premium for approval. The other member contacted me about 48 hours later, offering half the price we had stipulated before. I, of course, refused.

It seems that this other member requests names here, submits them to SquadHelp without the owners’ knowledge, and apparently buys them if SquadHelp accepts the names.

What do you all think? Is this ethical?

 

[GTBAAA]

No question - the person doing this is total scum.

 

[bmugford]

It is clearly unethical, by any reasonable standards.

Brad

 

[TCK]

Squadhelp needs to verify ownership.

 

[Samer]

Squadhelp needs to verify ownership.

Hopefully, in a non-cumbersome way.

Channel your inner DAN, not Sedo.

 

[Peak.Domains]

If nothing else, I believe that's pretty clearly against Squadhelp's terms of service. When you go to submit a name, it says "Important: You must be the registered owner of any domains submitted in this section."

If they had made you aware they were going to submit the names to SH and you were okay with that, and it was part of the deal, that's one thing. It may still be a violation of ToS, but at least the seller would be on board with it. The way they did it is not good at all, I would want that person off of the platform for that behavior.

 

[Pierre Barnard]

WTH? Its just wrong.

 

[karmaco]

Can I ask how you found out they were submitted? SH should be disciplining the person violating their terms.

 

[urlurl]

that member should be publically called out imo

 

[Fadi H]

This is obviously wrong unless you gave him permission. It's like the ones trying to sell names they don't own, And if they receive buyer interest they come back to you with an offer.

People of this type are apparently afraid to make an investment. They want to ensure some results and if any of them is reading my comment I'd say you must risk it for the biscuit. That's the game, Win & loss and most importantly you improve with time to get more wins.

 

[accuname]

I tried to address this very thing as I had an SH user or users submitting domains I'm selling on ebay. Sometimes I reevaluate what I sell on ebay and even re-submit to SH. One domain actually sold the same day I jumped on ebay to remove it from sale b/c I decided on other plans for it. Next day it's up on SH. Every time it happened I verified the submission occurred while I owned it. Unfortunately, SH hasn't come across as being serious about violations. Communication in chat is rather nonchalant about violations. Even the message on the submission page stating you can't submit names you don't own is rather lukewarm in its warning. It's quite unfair to those that do follow the rule.

Better message on submission page would be:

WARNING: Submitting domains you do not own will cause all your domains to be removed from sale and you will be banned from SH. First violation, you get a warning. Second, 3 month ban on submissions. Third, all domains removed and full SH ban.

https://www.namepros.com/threads/squadhelp-not-enforcing-its-own-policy.1215527/

Other than this one issue, SH is pretty good but I think this is an ongoing problem that does need to be addressed as i had it happen recently again. The SH user didn't buy my ebay domain b/c SH rejected it. When I tried to submit it - it was shown as having already been submitted while I owned it.

@GrantP

 

[slader23]

Can you please let us know who this person is? This way we can avoid them in the future as a community.

 

[blogspotter]

There is no way for squadhelp @GrantP to police ths.
If they insists on ownership proof at the time of submission (they do when you list in standard), it will be a lot of additional work for normal submissions/sellers so please think what you are asking for.

This is an asshole move but I won't want SH to start acting like Sedo just for submission.

I have seen this on some DNWE buys,

I once bought a DNWE name. The other buyer was perhaps negotiating when I pressed BIN and when I submitted to SH, I found it was under review.

So I simply sent screenshots and gave evidence of the same. I never heard back from SH even though I was told I was ready to add my name.

If a genuine seller provides evidence that another seller is submitting a name that he/she doesn't own, then the seller should be banned, instead of putting more checks and balances that annoys all sellers.
This will provide enough deterrent for sellers from such mischief.

They should also put it as TOS that it is a bannable offence.

Other than that, nothing much we can do for something unethical

 

[Name Trader]

I think it is 100% unethical. But from a sellers perspective on SH I am all for checks which can prove that the listed person owns the domains they are listing. Which is IMHO an email to the whois email address. I don't want to buy from SH and for them to turn around and say.. "oops! the seller doesn't own the domain anymore" I bitch about BrandBucket, but it's needed from the buyers perspective. You can ruin your reputation (SH) very quickly if too many sales go sour. I'm surprised SH let that cavalier attitude to continue. IMHO.