advice My $8.5k valued domain got sold for just $90

[Anees Ahmad]

Dear fellow domainers,

Today (Friday, 00:26 24/04/2020 - IST) I got an email that says one of my domains got sold from sedo marketplace. I was really surprised because I stopped using sedo long ago. I signed up there mainly for the parking service. To check how thing are there, I added some of my domains to the portfolio and parked them there. Overall it seemed a good website. But for some other reason, I found out it was not for me. I disabled the parking and nearly never went back there. But what I didn't know was I left some market place listing for ridiculously low price. In fact, I don't even remember listing them for sale. I thought I was only enabled the parking.

All those domains were either hand registered or bought at expired auction at low rate. Later at some point I sold most of them to buy more. But I saved some of my favorite for a bigger sale. One of them recently got listed at squadhelp for $8,499. I got some inbound offers for the same too. To my shock, when I checked the mail from sedo, it was the very same name got sold for less than $100. I may not be able to sell it for the squadhelp price. But the sale amount was definitely too low for a good 5L .com name like this one.

Since the buyer has already paid the amount, I know it was a breach of contract to not to transfer the name. But I didn't wanna loose that name. So I decided to not to answer any emails from them. Since I don't have any domains registered at sedo, and I don't have any amount due to receive or haven't even linked my payment details, at worst, all they can do is closing my account. I was already stopped using it anyway. There is no chance of any legal action for such a petty transaction too.

I searched online for similar incidents happened before. There were so many posts by buyers who got frustrated by waiting for a long time after payment. The support team would have been trying hard too. And it's not something happens only at sedo. I didn't want this to happen to anyone because of me. I immediately contacted sedo explaining my situation, within one and half hour of the purchase. I haven't received any confirmation yet, but I am confident that since I did reached out on time and assured this won't happen again, there won't be issue to do the refund for this time.

I shared my experience to remind you all the importance of cleaning up your old listing and posts. Just do a quick check now if your listings are up to date everywhere. And when you sell a name or changes the price in the future, always update it everywhere you've listed them. I really appreciate everyone to share their thoughts and suggestions. Also in case the buyer happens to read this, please contact me through DM.

Regards
Anees Ahmad

 

[biggie]

Thanks @biggie

The mail I received was genuine. I can see the sale at my account dashboard.

I sold a name a couple of days ago. Got the email as usual. Maybe i'm just lucky

Thanks

I'll have to check it out




imo...

 

[uzver]

I'm of the opinion of honoring the sale regardless of the listing result. It would of been my mistake.

Regardless of the listing result? I.e. no matter that?

So you’re saying that if you would have a nice LLL.com domain listed for sale at 50K at DAN, Afternic, Uniregistry, and then you’d get an email from Sedo: “Congrats, your LLL.com has sold for $5,000!”, you would respect the deal??

You wouldn’t try talking to Sedo, explaining it was a mistake, that you agree to make a very generous discount so that all parties are happy? No? Just honour the deal and let it go for 5K?

 

[NameShiba]

Regardless of the listing result? I.e. no matter that?

So you’re saying that if you would have a nice LLL.com domain for sale at 50K on DAN, Afternic, Uniregistry, and then you’d get an email from Sedo: “Congrats, your LLL.com has sold for $5,000!”, you would respect the deal??

You wouldn’t try talking to Sedo, explaining it was a mistake, that you agree to make a very generous discount so that all parties are happy? No? Just honour the deal and let it go for 5K?

Yes, this was my opinion.

However, I listed below the true take-away from the argument.

I have no interest in arguing my opinions -- but would like to get behind the true conversation at hand which is what the OP was going for. (i.e. Community check your old listings cause this was something I have recently experienced.)

 

[uzver]

Yes, this was my opinion.

However, I listed below the true take-away from the argument.

I have no interest in arguing my opinions -- but would like to get behind the true conversation at hand which is what the OP was going for. (i.e. Community check your old listings cause this was something I have recently experienced.)

Is this your opinion on what is right?

OR

Is this what you would do in the scenario I described?

 

[NameShiba]

Is this your opinion on what is right?

OR

Is this what you would do in the scenario I described?

Both.

Which again -- is not the true point of the article. I provided my productive and constructive input in my response above.

 

[ABDELDJALIL]

No . IMO you did what you have to do. There are terms in your contract with SEDO. if they have no tolerance even after you sent an email within hours, it is ok just you have to accept thethe or whatever the punishement is. But nobody can force you to honor the deal that the buyer had with Sedo and not directly with you. People speaking about ethical way to do business arent putling food on your table.

 

[uzver]

Both.

Which again -- is not the true point of the article. I provided my productive and constructive input in my response above.

I’m not necessarily believe that you put your money where your mouth is, but thanks for replying.

 

[uzver]

If you notice -- I have one negative review on my profile.

I’m sorry, your NamePros trade score only tells me that you will probably respect the deal here at NamePros in the same price range you usually do. Nothing more.

 

[alcy]

actually sedo is the only place that has strange setup where u can set bin price and makeoffer combo.. such that no one can buy at that bin. so u basivally get notified buyer offered your bin price.. and then u have choice to accept or not. zero obligations

might be good for those into bin prices.
its not quite the same as makeoffer.. cause buyer still sees what bin price u want.. and basically expects and agrees to it when he submits this bin price to you. the only diff being u do not have obligation to sell to him.

some like it.. some do not.

im more into makeoffer only so i don't care. but for anyone who doesnt wanna run into problems on sedo like this one here.. u can look into it.

 

[uzver]

As mentioned above -- you do not have to believe in whether or not I will honor that deal.

Also, this is my limit to where I would go into posting about the "what ifs".

Take care though uzver, and I really appreciate you reaching out and arguing over the finer points of the opinions on the topic. It helped me be extremely clear on my viewpoint in the subject matter at hand and share my viewpoint in detail.

Cheers.

Thanks.

I didn’t say that I don’t believe you will not honor the deal.

I’ve described an edge case scenario when one would make a “perfect” mistake (the mistake is obvious to everyone) and where the financial loss is considerable. You said you wouldn’t even try reduce the loss and just let it go. Kudos to you if that’s true.

To me, it’s like someone would mistakenly put a price tag of Toyota Corolla on Ferrari. And then when buyer shows up, the owner of Ferrari would say “Never-mind, I will honor the deal”. I just don’t believe such thing can happen in real life.

Cheers.

 

[NameShiba]

Thanks.

I didn’t say that I don’t believe you will not honor the deal.

I’ve described an edge case scenario when one would make a “perfect” mistake (the mistake is obvious to everyone) and where the financial loss is considerable. You said you wouldn’t even try reduce the loss and just let it go. Kudos to you if that’s true.

To me, it’s like someone would mistakenly put a price tag of Toyota Corolla on Ferrari. And then when buyer shows up, the owner of Ferrari would say “Never-mind, I will honor the deal”. I just don’t believe such thing can happen in real life.

Cheers.

I absolutely understand your point of view. My opinion based above was never an attack on the OP.

I feel like OP did the right thing in coming to the forums to discuss the topic productively. Hopefully it helped a few people out on here who may have had their own outdated listings.

Very good analogy as well! It certainly does no justice to downplay the financial impact of such a situation like this. It would be a really difficult decision to make -- and would require a lot of thought and input from all sides involved. Communication is certainly key.

 

[uzver]

Very good analogy as well! It certainly does no justice to downplay the financial impact of such a situation like this. It would be a really difficult decision to make -- and would require a lot of thought and input from all sides involved. Communication is certainly key.

That’s exactly what I was trying to say.

I don’t think the OP’s domain real value is 8K (same concern about “long time ago” listed at Sedo).

But if it was, and if it was a genuine mistake, does letting the domain go for $100 (when it’s clear the domain’s fair price is $8,000) is the only right thing to do?

 

[gilescoley]

Yes, they should. And yet, they not always do.

Exactly, and then they get outed on public forum like they should and people learn how they operate. I can assure you there are lots pf people that stop using them when they see how they operate, and so they should. They dont feel the pinch like smaller companies or individual domainers do though

And how many people stopped buying domains from Uniregistry due to the issue I mentioned (linked) above? I doubt that many.
NetSol is a different story. Their reputation is bad (amongst domainers) due to a myriad of other reasons.

I can assure you there are plenty of people that stop using them when they see how they operate, and so they should, especially when there is lots of competition, plenty of other similalr companies to use. You know what, even if they didnt, a public thread like this does a lot more damage to those big companies.

Make no difference how many people stop using them, its their reputation that tales a knock, and if they did that to somone they should be named and shamed as well, and people should be made aware if it, its something is caused by a system glitch or something that cannot be helped, then fine, you give them a break and hopefully it doesnt happen again, but say Sedo or Unregistry say have some terms and conditions and they refused to abide by them after selling your name, you really think that is ok. Imagine Sedo decided decide after selling one of your names, oh we are going to pay you for this name, we made a mistake so we wont be honoring the sale, or we will only be pying you 10% of the sale price. I cannot believe ayone would see that and think its ok, thats just ridiculous and you know it. Any person who has been in business for longer than 6 months would know this is wrong. This is basic common sense man

People sell assets (goods, cars, realty) and list them on various platforms for exposure, e.g. classifieds ads websites, niche websites, forums. They not always update their listing and may not even remember where they have listed them. It happens that I reach out to the buyer just to find out the item has been sold, or its price/description has changed.

Admittedly, I'm irritated when this happens, but it would be ridiculous to scream at the seller "You should honour the deal". The deal implies two parties agree onto something. There was no deal. It's the seller's prerogative to change his mind.

Its certainly not different because its an individual and not a company, thats wrong and you know it. Is there a different rule for small businesses, medium business, sole traders, small family-run businesses etc

If someone lists a house car, TV or whatever on a website for a price, any online patform, whether its Westside Auto down the road or a major company like BMW.com or Gumtree, makes no difference right, I assume you agree with that, you wouldnt discriminate against a company just because they are smaller than tha global car manufacturer. You buy a car online or any product and make payment and they decide, actually, the house, car, or TV is not that price, we made a mistake with out listing, that is ok with you?? I dont care if they have that product listed at a higher price on another site because they cant be bothered updating it. I purchased it online at a price you set, you sell it for that price. Its not the sellers perogative to change his mind after he has made the sale as you stated, thats just crazy, imagine we all did that in business. I can assure very people in business these days would find this ok.
I have purchased a fridge from Harvey Norman in Australia, I went in the store because it was on special. the lady said the special was over and the price had gone up to the normal price. I told her its still showing the special price on their website, she immediadiately said if its advertised at that price, they would sell it at that price, like they should. They honored the deal.

Sedo will ban them for this. So the seller can choose

Yes, the seller can choose, that doesnt make it right. The seller is still wrong in this case for not selling the name, this is my point, there is no grey area here.

Isn't this ALMOST similar to declining an offer?

Sorry, this is nothing like declinging an offer, you listed it for a price and they bought it, the deal is done. If you want to decline offers, set it to "Make Offer"

Let’s imagine few months ago you wanted to upgrade your car and you listed in on a classifieds ads website (like Craig’s list or similar) as well as on some more websites. But then your circumstances changed, and you removed the listing from all platforms but one. You simply forgot.Today you get an email that your car has sold. Your actions? Honor the deal?

100%, I would sell it every time if thats what I advertised it for. Why should the buyer not get a product for a set price because of a mistake by the seller. Just put yourself in the buyes shoes, thats the best way to look at these situations.

I will sign off from this thread now, taking up too much of my time, you have your way of thinking, I have mine, lets agree to disagree.

 

[ABDELDJALIL]

Dear Anees Ahmed.
The domain is yours until you agree to get rid of it by selling it or giving it away all up to you. Rules are made to be respected when they are mutually agreed . In your case you made a mistake and you forgot to update your listing I see the wrong thing is that the buyer do not take this in consideration and try to force you sell the domain and maybe he is aware about the other prices in the other marketplaces.
For me the unethical is to take advantage from somone else ignorance ,lack of experience or mistakes.
Thank you for sharing your experience.

Peace

 

[King]

Sedo is pretty cringe

 

[Anees Ahmad]

Thank you @uzver

While I agree with you, I also believe that not everything is black and white in life. It depends on the circumstances.

Exactly.

 

[uzver]

Oh, it's pretty black and white. The only gray area, is where we're not "keeping house". Keep your house clean, and everything else falls into place.

Otherwise, there's just no accountability and excuses like "I forgot to remove my listing" or "a private person is not the same as a business" will become your MO, and then your MO is as dirty as your unkept house. Just sayin', be responsible. People might be depending on it.

A private person can treat what he does as business too. I do this.

Now I have a question to you @HotKey and @gilescoley:

Let’s imagine few months ago you wanted to upgrade your car and you listed in on a classifieds ads website (like Craig’s list or similar) as well as on some more websites. But then your circumstances changed, and you removed the listing from all platforms but one. You simply forgot.

Today you get an email that your car has sold. Your actions? Honor the deal?

 

[uzver]

The domain was only listed at Sedo according to the OP, so this was just a case of he forgot about a name he had listed and then when it sold, he backed out the deal., its plain and simple.

I should have mentioned that I’m not depending OP in any way. I’m raising concerns about “honour the deal no matter what” in a more general sense.

 

[uzver]

Well I'm not sure if you can put up a car with a "bin" on a classified ad, usually there is some sort of communications back and forth first. But you do what you can given the circumstances. My answer is, don't give yourself the future option of "simply forgot". Have a mindset of housekeeping your domain listings, whether they be in the hundreds or thousands, and apply it in real-time.

I mean, yep poop happens and it happens to us all, but circumstances that change should be that which is out of our control, not that which is our business to maintain.

Your reply suggests it’s not that black and white after all

Of course, we should do housekeeping and all that. And we should always respect the deal.

My arguments are against “no matter what” part. I believe there can be edge case scenarios when the circumstances should be considered. We can’t paint all with one brush.

I would go as far as saying I disagree when people tell me there is only one correct way of doing something. I’m sure there are always more than one way of doing anything.

OP’s case is not an edge case if you ask me, but I’m not the one to judge him.

 

[BRANDERX]

Dear fellow domainers,

Today (Friday, 00:26 24/04/2020 - IST) I got an email that says one of my domains got sold from sedo marketplace. I was really surprised because I stopped using sedo long ago. I signed up there mainly for the parking service. To check how thing are there, I added some of my domains to the portfolio and parked them there. Overall it seemed a good website. But for some other reason, I found out it was not for me. I disabled the parking and nearly never went back there. But what I didn't know was I left some market place listing for ridiculously low price. In fact, I don't even remember listing them for sale. I thought I was only enabled the parking.

All those domains were either hand registered or bought at expired auction at low rate. Later at some point I sold most of them to buy more. But I saved some of my favorite for a bigger sale. One of them recently got listed at squadhelp for $8,499. I got some inbound offers for the same too. To my shock, when I checked the mail from sedo, it was the very same name got sold for less than $100. I may not be able to sell it for the squadhelp price. But the sale amount was definitely too low for a good 5L .com name like this one.

Since the buyer has already paid the amount, I know it was a breach of contract to not to transfer the name. But I didn't wanna loose that name. So I decided to not to answer any emails from them. Since I don't have any domains registered at sedo, and I don't have any amount due to receive or haven't even linked my payment details, at worst, all they can do is closing my account. I was already stopped using it anyway. There is no chance of any legal action for such a petty transaction too.

I searched online for similar incidents happened before. There were so many posts by buyers who got frustrated by waiting for a long time after payment. The support team would have been trying hard too. And it's not something happens only at sedo. I didn't want this to happen to anyone because of me. I immediately contacted sedo explaining my situation, within one and half hour of the purchase. I haven't received any confirmation yet, but I am confident that since I did reached out on time and assured this won't happen again, there won't be issue to do the refund for this time.

I shared my experience to remind you all the importance of cleaning up your old listing and posts. Just do a quick check now if your listings are up to date everywhere. And when you sell a name or changes the price in the future, always update it everywhere you've listed them. I really appreciate everyone to share their thoughts and suggestions. Also in case the buyer happens to read this, please contact me through DM.

Regards
Anees Ahmad

I believe you are being straight forward, & it really was a mistake.

Not OK if you're just making this up just to keep the name.

Mistakes happen, marketplaces are guilty of some as well..

Good luck

 

[uzver]

@gilescoley

Yep, I too have spent much more time here than I wanted. And I agree to disagree.

But since you've misinterpreted my examples (as I can see it), I need to make my position clear here to not leave any room for ambiguity to whoever reads it.

I'm all in for honouring the deal.
But the loophole is not a deal.


– You come to buy the domain from me, and we agreed you're going to pay at a later time. –> I will honor the deal even if I'm approached by someone who offers more while I'm waiting for you.
– You make an offer on Sedo, and I've accepted it. –> I will honor the deal.
– You bought a domain at the auction where I forgot to put a reserve, and I lost money. –> I will honor the deal [1]
– You buy some goods from me that you saw on Craigslist. –> I will honor the deal even if I get higher offers or realized I've underpriced them. [2]


And yet,

The common-sense tells me if the deal is too good to be true, it's either a loophole or an outright fraud.

I will not demand from a seller to honor a loophole-deal that I found, and depending on the circumstances I may not be willing to honor a similar loophole-deal either.

I've put plenty of examples in this thread what I mean by obvious mistake, the OP's situation is not obvious to me and I'm not defending him whatsoever.

Referring to my edge-case "car example" above, would I sell the car that I need to drive my two kids around the city and switch to public transport just because a random guy found my outdated listing on the web and now wants to buy it from me?

I no longer sell that car, am I expected to respect this kind of "deal"? Absolutely, not. My common sense tells me it would be ridiculous.

A sane person would understand if I tell him "Sorry mate, it's not for sale since XX month. I probably missed that advert, where did you see it? I will remove it right now".

I can only applaud your principles, but claiming that selling the car in this scenario is a common-sense is an exaggeration, IMO.

[1] It happened quite a few times. Always risky to put a no-reserve listing, but that's how you get more activity on the listing. Rest assured, I delivered the domains regardless of the loss.

[2] This is what happened to me recently when I moved from one apartment to another. I decided to sell all the furniture that I had, and I posted it on the OLX (Craigslist-type website) without much research, and the guy snapped it from me within 20 minutes. We agreed he would take it in a week, and within an hour, I received many more phone calls from people who offered about the same money for just some parts of the furniture. Yet, I kept my promise and sold it to the guy who was first.

And finally,

when I talked about companies that not always honour the deal, I wanted to highlight that it does happen from time to time, and the consequences do not always follow. The OP is new to domaining, and for this reason, I have more tolerance to what he did (or didn't do, in this case ). We can and should educate him on this, but I suggest him to also consider this:

if you don't honor the deal

this will happen:

[ ]

( nothing )

People speaking about ethical way to do business arent putling food on your table.

Peace
I’m out of this thread.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Do you still feel that honoring the sale is a must in this situation regardless of the circumstances?

I personally do still feel that way, but as I hope (or at least intended ) to say, I also view it as not absolutely black and white, and see other reasonable persons might make a different decision.

Admittedly I have never been in the position you describe, and since none of my domains are worth $15,000 never will be , but if it was MY mistake listing it one place at $150 I would honour it. If I was sure though that I had deleted it at the $150 place, but they had kept it there, then that is entirely different. Then I would fight like mad.

I think we all get more reminder emails than we like, but I wonder if it might be in order for the marketplaces to once a year or something email us a list of names we have listed for sale, and the asking prices, or perhaps simply a reminder to check the listed prices since it is easy for any of us to do. Maybe even to reconfirm them by a simple checkmark saying yes I still want to sell this at that price.

Bob

 

[uzver]

ut if it was MY mistake listing it one place at $1500 I would honour it.

Nope, I wrote $150.

You bought it for $1,500, listed for $15,000, but accidentally sold it for 10% of the purchase price.

 

[uzver]

Admittedly I have never been in the position

Neither had I.

I also view it as not absolutely black and white and see other reasonable persons might make a different decision.

I don't see it black and white either. It depends.

 

[uzver]

I would still honour it, provided it was truly entered by me, and not a system mistake of some sort.

"provided it was" is not the same as "no matter what"
and system mistake is open to interpretation...