I bought a name on Afternic but the lister doesn't own it

[fogfever]

Does Afternic allow anyone to list any name or do they have a process like Sedo that checks the WHOIS?
I saw a 3-letter .com with a buy it now price of $4,000 and a couple other domains with good prices so I bought all 3 of them. Afternic charged my credit card but it appears that these domains are owned by large companies and that someone just listed them for sale for fun.
Does Afternic have any verification process? Seems strange that Afternic would allow anyone to list names on their home page without any verification.

 

[TheWatcher]

the same with DomainNameSales.com/Uniregistry.com .. someone listed my EUROPE.NINJA on DNS and Uniregistry.

scammers everywhere...

Good thing, USA.Ninja is in good hand

 

[hookbox]

If you list a domain name as a fast transfer listing BIN name you need to opt in to sell the domain. Meaning there is a pretty strict check on these. The opt in to sell the name has to come from your registrar where the domain name is registered. So if I had x.com registered at GoDaddy and wanted to sell it on Afternic. I would log in to Afternic and list my name for sale then Afternic would tell GoDaddy I want to sell the name, GoDaddy would contact me and say you want to sell x.com? Click here to authorize this listing on Afternic. I would have to click the email I receive from GoDaddy or whatever registrar I have the name registered with to approve the listing. If I do not then the name cannot be listed for sale. Once the domain name expires, or a lock of some kind is added (such as a registry hold not a typical transfer lock), if the name sells etc if for any reason the domain name can no longer be fulfilled to the buyer then the registrar contacts Afternic and the name is pulled from the inventory list. If the name sells there is a live call to see if the name is available if the name just sold to someone else or just expired etc the call fails and the name is not sold.

Is it possible for a domain to sell when the owner did not list it? Yes but highly unlikely on a fast transfer name, there has to be a really unusual situation and the current owner would have to ok the sale. I am not going to go into the specifics publicly because I know some people may want to use this to try to steal a domain, this would not be possible as we can easily unwind sales with our partners but suffice it to say the situation for this to happen would be extremely rare and hard to duplicate and in all cases the owner needs to ok the listing on a priced fast transfer domain.

Unpriced listings are also checked however there is no registrar level check where the registrar checks as well on these so there is more room for error however these are slow transfers involving manual steps and if there is an error it can be caught during a manual process we have steps in place for that as a back up in case the first ownership checks fail to catch an issue.

Thanks for the reply Joe. If I have my names at Godaddy and the name sells through fast transfer will my rep still call me to authorize the sale or will the name be automatically pulled out of my account with no phone call? Right now I have authentication set up and no name leaves my account without a phone call first. Does this still apply for fast transfer names?

 

[Joe Styler]

Thanks for the reply Joe. If I have my names at Godaddy and the name sells through fast transfer will my rep still call me to authorize the sale or will the name be automatically pulled out of my account with no phone call? Right now I have authentication set up and no name leaves my account without a phone call first. Does this still apply for fast transfer names?

On fast transfer names you will not receive a phone call this is in the agreements. We have never had a domain name stolen via fast transfer to my knowledge (knock on wood) and if one was stolen, we have ways to get the name back just as quickly because of agreements we have with the fast transfer partners. So we feel fast transfer listings are very safe. Slow transfer sales would still need you to have the phone call from your agent.

 

[Joe Styler]

of-course, this is just theory (or fiction) in reality you will get the status "No (Opt-in Required)" but no email for opt in, i've just listed over 200 names with buy now and got the opt-in mail for maybe half of them.

another beautiful thing is when you waste 2 hours putting upper cases on your names on csv and everything is in lower cases after you upload.

If you would like we can save you a good amount of time by doing the uploads for you and making sure you get the opt in, etc. We have a couple people who work on Afternic who help with that very thing and can make it easier for you to list. If you would like the contact info just let me know in a PM.