I think Flippa just screwed up my auction

[Lyubomir]

Hi all, I have a problem with Flippa (again) !

I received an email from some person that told me he's interested in one of my domains on auction. He told me that he has registered in Flippa, but they want him a credit card that he haven't got. The email was received 1 hour before the end of the auction. I wrote to Flippa's premium support(I've PAID for it) how we can fix this. 1 hour later the auction ended and still NO RESPONSE from Flippa!

I also received couple of bids last seconds and the auction WAS NOT EXTENDED. Here in their 'terms' is written with BOLD following: ...any non-BIN bids which are higher than the current bidder, will extend the end time by one hour...

I think they screwed my auction ... what do you think is the best option in this case :/

P.S.: I need some sleep now, but tomorrow I'll share with you how I'm waiting this "premium" support more than 1 week to tell me why I did not receive newsletters from them.

 

[D Haynes]

Hmmmm pretty grey area. So if bidding is at 1500 and I bid 1550 when the leading bidder has a proxy of 1600, nothing changes? Thats not really fair as I have no way of knowing by opponents proxy without bidding. Maybe in this situation they should extend by 5 mins like GoDaddy auctions so you have opportunity to bid again.

 

[Nikhil Jain]

SEDO states this in their website.

Show attachment 64000

Are you saying Proxy bids don't extend the auction time on Sedo?



It doesn't. Pretending for a second that I don't focus on the bold...
Show attachment 63999

... that support page neglects to mention anything about proxy bids not being subject to the one hour extension.

I think you did not read this part -

• Scenario 3 - New bidder enters auction in last hour but doesn't take over lead -> no extension
  Bidder 1 is the highest bidder at $5,000 but with a max bid of $6,000. Bidder 2 places a higher bid of $5,500 with 10 minutes remaining on the auction.
  Result: The system automatically places a bid of $5,600 for Bidder 1 to keep him in the lead. Bidder 2 is immediately informed that she needs to place a higher bid to win the auction. The auction IS NOT extended as there is no new highest bidder.

 

[Cdomains]

Not surprised.

This is the way they do things over there.

 

[Chris Hydrick]

• Scenario 3 - New bidder enters auction in last hour but doesn't take over lead -> no extension
  Bidder 1 is the highest bidder at $5,000 but with a max bid of $6,000. Bidder 2 places a higher bid of $5,500 with 10 minutes remaining on the auction.
  Result: The system automatically places a bid of $5,600 for Bidder 1 to keep him in the lead. Bidder 2 is immediately informed that she needs to place a higher bid to win the auction. The auction IS NOT extended as there is no new highest bidder.

Ahhh thanks!!! I have been searching proxy. Ok - so now we can have a real discussion.

Last bid: 20:32:28 UTC
Auction Ended: 20:36:19 UTC

Bidder 2 - 20:32:27

Bidder 1 - 20:31:47

Bidder 2 - 20:31:45

Looking at the log it's hard to tell if it was a proxy bid. The log shows a new leader for a second (or 2 seconds) The confusing part is (a) the log shows bidder 2 in the lead for a brief second (b) Proxy bid times vary by 1 or 2 seconds. There is no INSTANT standard.

An exception would be if bidder #2 was told immediately that he didn't take the lead, thus the auction end time wasn't suspended.

 

[Chris Hydrick]

My assumption is that the intentions are to make bidder #2 blindly bid more than bidder #1 max bid (and not just by $1)

IE bidder #2 if he really wants it can bid $2k when bidder #1 max bid may only be $1700. Thus resulting in an extra $299 for the seller if bidder #2 knew he could win by only bidding $1701.

 

[Ollie3000]

@iHaveThisIdea = Kevin

Thanks

 

[rentmynames]

IF bidder 2 wait til the last seconds to bid then that would be his MAX BID. Bidder 2 might be an ebayer, because that's how eBay works.

IF bidder 2 had 30 secs and up left, then he would have had enough time to increase his bid if the last bid was not his MAX BID.

SIMPLE!

My assumption is that the intentions are to make bidder #2 blindly bid more than bidder #1 max bid (and not just by $1)

IE bidder #2 if he really wants it can bid $2k when bidder #1 max bid may only be $1700. Thus resulting in an extra $299 for the seller if bidder #2 knew he could win by only bidding $1701.

 

[Cdomains]

Where has Kevin gone now?

Answer - I don't think he is with Flippa anymore, but I could be wrong.

He hasn't answered any questions on here for a while and I don't think they have anyone else from Flippa here.

I guess when you have no explanation for how you conduct your business and you do not want to answer for your questionable business practices you do not have someone from your organization here to explain or fix problems.

 

[Lyubomir]

Hi all,

Let me share with you how I see the situation, after all that has been posted.

Problem 1
When you open Flippa's terms from here: https://flippa.com/terms-and-conditions
and click on "Site rules" you are redirected to here: https://flippa.com/rules
On that page under section "Selling on Flippa - the golden rules" you can see a link named: "For extended Site Rules, see here." when you click it you are redirected to here: https://support.flippa.com/hc/en-us/articles/203110244

And the title is : Site Rules for Sellers
It this article you'll find this sentence:

• Bids made in the final hour postpone the end time until an hour after the bid was placed.

Nowhere, nobody is NOT talking about some proxy bids or whatever !

Problem 2
From this page: https://support.flippa.com/hc/en-us...n-auction-just-extend-after-a-bid-was-placed-

Couple of persons here were referring this:

• Scenario 3 - New bidder enters auction in last hour but doesn't take over lead -> no extension
  Bidder 1 is the highest bidder at $5,000 but with a max bid of $6,000. Bidder 2 places a higher bid of $5,500 with 10 minutes remaining on the auction.
  Result: The system automatically places a bid of $5,600 for Bidder 1 to keep him in the lead. Bidder 2 is immediately informed that she needs to place a higher bid to win the auction. The auction IS NOT extended as there is no new highest bidder.

But the problem with this is that in the beginning of the article is written this:
...any non-BIN bids which are higher than the current bidder, will extend the end time by one hour ...

These two things contradict each other ! Let me explain you why. Because for some amount of time (as we saw it was 1 or 2 second) there was bigger bid made in the last hour and it WAS NOT a BIN bid.

That "Scenario 3" comes from nowhere in contradict of everything written in their terms and out of nowhere.

I asked their support to talk with the manager and still waiting. If anyone has more ideas fee free to share them with us : )

 

[iHaveThisIdea]

Where has Kevin gone now?

Answer - I don't think he is with Flippa anymore, but I could be wrong.

He hasn't answered any questions on here for a while and I don't think they have anyone else from Flippa here.

I guess when you have no explanation for how you conduct your business and you do not want to answer for your questionable business practices you do not have someone from your organization here to explain or fix problems.

Thanks for that, but I haven't been with Flippa since January.

 

[Lyubomir]

@iHaveThisIdea , can I kindly ask you to provide me info who should I contact from Flippa different from support? And I would also be very happy to hear your opinion about this case : )

All the best : )

 

[iHaveThisIdea]

@iHaveThisIdea , can I kindly ask you to provide me info who should I contact from Flippa different from support? And I would also be very happy to hear your opinion about this case : )

All the best : )

Unfortunately, there is no one active in the forums from what I can tell. I'll have a read through when I have time.

 

[Lyubomir]

ihateFLIPPA.com is active. Have fun and everyone is invited to share his problems under the listing in flippa. You'll find the listing in the website : )

 

[voiceofreason]

@iHaveThisIdea , can I kindly ask you to provide me info who should I contact from Flippa different from support? And I would also be very happy to hear your opinion about this case : )

All the best : )

If the highest current bidder's MAX is not met or exceeded by the 2nd highest bidder, the auction will not be extended for an hour.

 

[NameOmnia]

Unfortunately, there is no one active in the forums from what I can tell. I'll have a read through when I have time.

...and that speaks volumes about Flippa.

Not that it comes as a surprise though..I mean...we all ( and by all I mean those of us who have never had to make Flippa look great ) have known it for a long long time.

What comes as a surprise to me is that people still use it.

 

[Lyubomir]

UPDATE: After 50+ mails thread with the support, the domain is re-listed and Flippa understood what I meant. They also changed a little their TOS (I expected more, but this is little 'win' for me).

 

[Chris Hydrick]

Correct me if I'm wrong - but the relisting prompted another last minute bidding war resulting in a bid $600 greater than the high bid in the screwed up auction? If so, nice happy ending for all.

 

[Lyubomir]

Yes, this is correct. After I relisted the auction it went for $600more