- Impact
- 154
I've been in the game over 20 years now and am not some newbie. I've had my share of bumps and scrapes, and this is by far the worst ever - even worse than infamous "RegisterFly" for those who are even old enough to have lived through that.
On Friday I went through all the normal motions to buy a domain registered at Domain.com and pay the BIN in full via verified PayPal I've been using for years and years, and years. The price was in the $x,xxx's. The domain was also listed with the same BIN at SnapNames, Afternic, and is listed at Sedo. However, the path of least resistance appeared to be just buying it directly at Domain.com itself, where you could (purportedly) do so at the BIN there. So I did. Or so I thought. (No, I will certainly not be saying what the name is.)
Instead of accepting my payment, instead I got an email saying this nonsense:
"It looks like something was amiss with your payment information. We are currently manually reviewing your transaction and we will email you shortly regarding your recent payment for your [redacted] account.
No need to contact us; We will be in contact within 24 hours regarding the next steps."
Needless to say, they most certainly did not contact me. But I tried to contact them through most of the weekend, using their inconvenient and customer-unfriendly chat feature. And all I got was nowhere, they wouldn't even tell me what the *alleged* "something amiss" was to even address it, until finally today one of them told me something ridiculous about IP addresses not matching billing address and such, as if that's even a thing when people do business all over the world, use VPN, have businesses in different locations, and the whole reason why PayPal and credit cards even exist is in large part to enable people to complete transactions no matter where they are, etc. How absurd. No domain industry company has ever done anything so ridiculous in all my 20 plus years, because it makes no sense.
I was not even able to just buy it as any NORMAL transaction would occur on Afternic or SnapNames just to get it done, and the Sedo listing is only make-offer with an asking price, not a BIN option. Domain.com apparently disabled all those other BIN options after my good faith effort to purchase and pay. Ironically, I had originally stated my concern that someone else could buy it while they were doing their "review" for which they originally refused to even tell me what the issue was, during the first chat session.
I had originally almost just bought it as any normal transaction through one of the listings, but I had thought surely it would be good to just buy directly at Domain.com, and I figured it would be nice to try them for the first time too. And was I ever wrong. Absolutely appalling.
If they don't do the right thing and honor the sale and my good faith effort to pay in full I definitely intend to pursue every possible remedy. This has been the worst and most appalling episode regarding such matters of my entire online business life since 2001, and I'm not exactly any newbie or without past bad experiences with dirty tricks and corrupt people and practices in this industry.
On Friday I went through all the normal motions to buy a domain registered at Domain.com and pay the BIN in full via verified PayPal I've been using for years and years, and years. The price was in the $x,xxx's. The domain was also listed with the same BIN at SnapNames, Afternic, and is listed at Sedo. However, the path of least resistance appeared to be just buying it directly at Domain.com itself, where you could (purportedly) do so at the BIN there. So I did. Or so I thought. (No, I will certainly not be saying what the name is.)
Instead of accepting my payment, instead I got an email saying this nonsense:
"It looks like something was amiss with your payment information. We are currently manually reviewing your transaction and we will email you shortly regarding your recent payment for your [redacted] account.
No need to contact us; We will be in contact within 24 hours regarding the next steps."
Needless to say, they most certainly did not contact me. But I tried to contact them through most of the weekend, using their inconvenient and customer-unfriendly chat feature. And all I got was nowhere, they wouldn't even tell me what the *alleged* "something amiss" was to even address it, until finally today one of them told me something ridiculous about IP addresses not matching billing address and such, as if that's even a thing when people do business all over the world, use VPN, have businesses in different locations, and the whole reason why PayPal and credit cards even exist is in large part to enable people to complete transactions no matter where they are, etc. How absurd. No domain industry company has ever done anything so ridiculous in all my 20 plus years, because it makes no sense.
I was not even able to just buy it as any NORMAL transaction would occur on Afternic or SnapNames just to get it done, and the Sedo listing is only make-offer with an asking price, not a BIN option. Domain.com apparently disabled all those other BIN options after my good faith effort to purchase and pay. Ironically, I had originally stated my concern that someone else could buy it while they were doing their "review" for which they originally refused to even tell me what the issue was, during the first chat session.
I had originally almost just bought it as any normal transaction through one of the listings, but I had thought surely it would be good to just buy directly at Domain.com, and I figured it would be nice to try them for the first time too. And was I ever wrong. Absolutely appalling.
If they don't do the right thing and honor the sale and my good faith effort to pay in full I definitely intend to pursue every possible remedy. This has been the worst and most appalling episode regarding such matters of my entire online business life since 2001, and I'm not exactly any newbie or without past bad experiences with dirty tricks and corrupt people and practices in this industry.
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