My Alter names listed at Afternic by someone else

I've had several names listed with new brandable marketplace Alter.com for a few months. When I first listed them, I mistakenly believed that Alter was an exclusive marketplace, and so I removed these names from all other marketplaces.

Since then, I have discovered that names listed with Alter can in fact be listed elsewhere. As such, I began re-listing with Afternic yesterday. Upon submitting my names, I discovered that six were already listed at Afternic by another user. The names and listings (in .com) are as follows:

• Ohasa - $2k min. offer
• Launch/Leader - $2k min. offer
• Planned/Path - $2k min. offer
• Ronono - $2k min. offer
• Mosry - $2k min. offer
• Dollar/Bot - $10k min. offer

I have since contacted Alter to confirm that they did not list these names at Afternic. They informed me that they did not.

I have also contacted Afternic to ask that the names are removed from the bogus account. Haven't heard back from them yet.

I suspect that the bogus Afternic user does this with many names in the hope that they'll make a sale at a price much higher than the listed price on Alter (or any other marketplace where the name may be listed). At that time they buy the name from Alter themselves, and complete their sale on Afternic.

Is this kind of thing a pretty common occurrence?

@Joe Styler - I'd be interested to know how Afternic handles these issues. Is action taken against the offending account/user? Is their address/phone number banned from ever creating an account again?

Honestly, I was tempted to create my own bogus account to offer $20K for one of the false listings of my own name. I make a sale... Alter gets some commission... and a scammer gets screwed. Seemed like a fun idea, but I thought better of it.

 

Send more stern emails to Afternic, demanding they remove these domains so you can list them yourself. They might be slow at taking care of it, sometimes.

 

Ohasa .com is also listed in Godaddy Auctions.

 

Yes, this happens automatically when a domain (in the right TLD) is submitted to Afternic.

 

This happens all the time. One of the perils with BIN domains. Its shameful that Afternic does not kick these fools off the site permanently. Instead of requiring some kind of proof of ownership before they’d rather make us jump through hoops to prove ownership later.

 

@Paul Nicks
@Joe Styler

 

I'm kind of torn... I love how easy it is to list with Afternic, but it's terrible that this process also makes things so easy for front-runners.

I'd at least like to know that accounts guilty of this are dealt with harshly.

 

Till the day that major domain marketplaces have properly fixed this problem, where users are not cleaning up their domains, and users are listing domains they do not own, one "remedy" is probably to be present on the most popular 3-5 domain marketplaces yourself, with all your domains. Yes, this is a lot of work and not always desired.

DNAcademy has created a tool called "Passive Sales Checker" (not for free), which is able to check the listings of 1 domain, or your complete portfolio, on the major marketplaces. It will highlight pricing inconsistencies, and you will also notice when rogue listings are present on platforms where you did not list your domains. Not using this tool myself, btw.

 

False alarm!

Apparently all but one of the bogus listings are not bogus at all. They are old listings that I had created at Uniregistry market a few years ago. Those get automatically synced with Afternic. I had no idea!

Thanks to Afternic support for clearing that up. I learned something new.

Apologies to all for the premature alarm bells, and thanks for the comments.

 

OK cool sorry I am trying to catch up. The answer to your original question is it depends. The support team uses their discretion. They can see if it is an old listing for example and if it was the old owner who listed it a long time ago they probably will just remove it and give the person a note saying remove your old names. If its a new listing they look into it and possibly ban the account. They will if they feel it is malicious like front running typically ban them for life and sometimes also ban them from GoDaddy aftermarket. There is discretion honest mistakes or errors are usually given a warning or small fine and something happening repeatedly or maliciously is dealt with in a more firm manner which usually means you are banned for good.