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

 

[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...

 

[Anees Ahmad]

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Let me know your response only through like-dislike or agree-disagree buttons or by DM. Because I want this post to be seen by everyone who comes to this thread. If you accidentally posted something, please edit it to something short like a dot. I hope you will cooperate.​

Hi everyone,

I think it’s time to close this thread. Please have the courtesy to read this entire post patiently. I must say I can’t completely agree with most of you.

We all do outbound offers. Technically they are the same as fixed price listings. You pre-agreed the price and are responsible to proceed if the buyer accepts it. If a reply accepting the offer received after the name is sold elsewhere, there isn’t much for us to do apart from saying “Sorry the domain is sold”. This is one reason why honoring every sale regardless of the circumstances isn’t technically possible.

If you argue that you don’t have anything else to do, let me explain another scenario. How many of you did specify an expiration time with every outbound offer you’ve sent? How will you respond to someone who accepts an offer you send them 10 years back? Maybe you can neglect the renewal charges. But this is where monetary inflation comes in to the scene.

Just FYI, This is not exactly what happened in my case. My listing was not old enough for inflation to make a significant change in the value of $8.5k*. I have checked my listing date at sedo and it was on 2019-11-28*. Almost when I started using namepros and started to think seriously about investing in domains (Yes I am new here). I think I had registered at namepros before that but almost never used it*. All my first domain purchases were for a venture I planned to start by myself. In fact that is how I came to domaining.

Also how many of you will proceed with a sale that will lose you 8k because you mistyped the price or it was posted when you didn’t know much about how much domains are worth, as in my case? Maybe you will, if you somehow can’t deal with the consequences. But I don’t see any integrity if that is the case. You can still continue arguing, but please be actually honest rather than faking how honest you are. If you are one of the most honest 1%, congrats. I’m proud of you. But you can’t blame people for backing out from such deals.

At the same time I agree there are many things which a domainer shouldn’t do. As I mentioned earlier, I sold some cheap names in a non reserved auction. I was expecting at least $10 for each. But two ended up at $1. I spent around $26 each. I was really frustrated but contacted the bidder and transferred the name. Because backing out on such a deal is clearly not cool at all. Similarly it would be a bad move if I didn’t respond to sedo’s emails which will make the buyer wait weeks without refund or response from sedo. Or if I lie to sedo that the domain is sold. But I contacted them instead. Within hours. I did explain everything. Maybe you still won't agree with me. I can understand that. Let's agree to disagree.

Humble thanks to everyone for participating, regardless of whether you talked in favour or against me . Always update your listings. Happy domaining.

*check attachments

- Please do not post anything after this post -

Let me know your response only through like-dislike or agree-disagree buttons or by DM. Because I want this post to be seen by everyone who comes to this thread. If you accidentally posted something, please edit it to something short like a dot. I hope you will cooperate.​

 

[HotKey]

I dunno dude.. I mean you sparked some conversation, and that's what creating a thread is all about. You never know what new insight may be gained, and may be invaluable to newcomers or those searching for a better way to manage their domaining.

So kudos to you Anees, and thanks for being so forthright AND thanks you for allowing us the opportunity to compare mindsets. You have proven to be humble, and that is a quality that many cannot grab the reins to. Don't stifle new input, rather embrace it my friend. I don't think anyone would fault disagreements, nor the way which you tackled the conundrum of just being human- in that regards we can all agree.

 

[WGS_Thunder]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity
Integrity is the practice of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one's actions. Integrity can stand in opposition to hypocrisy, in that judging with the standards of integrity involves regarding internal consistency as a virtue, and suggests that parties holding within themselves apparently conflicting values should account for the discrepancy or alter their beliefs.


Opposite:
dishonesty

 

[gilescoley]

Sorry, yes I had meant the $150 and updated my post. Thanks for pointing it out. See how easy it is for someone like me to make a mistake typing a price! But me, I would still honour it, provided it was truly entered by me, and not a system mistake of some sort.
Bob

Well said Bob, glad to see there are still people who would honor the deal, irrespective of the amount of $$ involved.

 

[King]

Sedo is pretty cringe

 

[Debasis]

Sedo is kind of waste of money for me...like you are paying them to promote the domaiin in the homepage..but they didnt shoed my domain frequently .. its like 30 mins gap when i saw my domain ..it was years ago and i paid 59 pounds.. so..i thought a waste of money..so iremoved my domain s from there and made a website myself.

 

[xynames]

You shouldn’t have had BINs at more than one marketplace to begin with. That’s just Domaining 101.