Problems, Bugs and Fixes at Afternic - Report Problems Here

[carob]

I suggest a new thread titled Problems, Bugs and Fixes at Afternic - Report Problems Here. Then we can all list our issues so Afternic have to fix them. These Afternic probs have been repeatedly flagged up across numerous threads on here over a period of time, including the need for 2FA. Godaddy own Afternic and have the resources and motivation to fix it - this risky mess is unacceptable and reflects badly on their brand.

For info, Afternic keep reverting some of my domains to "In Review" status for no reason, and I only know that if I log in there to check on them. Until I then ask support to take them out of Review they are not listed for sale and will not sell at Afternic.

@Joe Styler When can we expect Godaddy to take action on Afternic, including implementing 2FA?

 

[Joedin]

Good News. My domain just pushed into my enom account today. Afternic did the transfer finally. I'm Glad for that.
----

 

[Joe Styler]

@Joe Styler - Is there an estimated time-frame for when the Afternic payout system will start working again?
Can we expect overdue payments to be disbursed within a few days, or should we be prepared to wait for a longer period of time before being paid? (i.e. 1-2 more weeks). It would be great if you could clarify how far you have gotten in terms of resolving this issue.

As payments were being made for a period of time, after a period of no payments being made, I thought this issue had been resolved, and expected Afternic to pay me for my sales in a timely manner again. Had I known in advance that this had become an issue once more, it would not have been a significant problem for me. However, because it seemed like this had been solved (people, including me, were getting paid again for a period), I have unfortunately made plans (and incurred expenses) based on the expectation that Afternic would make payouts for sold domains as scheduled by your own system. But because your system is not sending out payments anymore, this situation has put me into an inconvenient negative cash flow situation, so I hope you will be able to start paying sellers again shortly.

Also, if the system is fixed and starts sending out payments again, and then later stops working, it would be very helpful if you could stop by this thread and post a quick note about it. If we know in advance that Afternic is not going to make payments to us, at least it won't catch us off guard like this. Expecting to be paid on time and then not being sent any payment can cause a lot of inconvenience for sellers.

I'm not sure what you mean by we stopped paying people. I am not aware of us doing that for any reason. We've done the opposite in fact, we forced anyone without an payment option to update theirs through several channels most effectively -if we had a way to pay them we forced it to become the default so that people would get paid. That was the biggest hold up in the payments not having a way to pay people after the udpate as some people's old payment information was not brought into the new system correctly.
Right now payment time frames vary based on the type of sale, a fast transfer BIN domain will pay faster than a slower one you need to transfer to Afternic and we need to move to the buyer. We are working on ways to speed the payment time up further but if you were already paid for prior sales after the update we did there is no technical reason you should not be getting your payment. So there may be another issue you can contact support on such as the domain not moving. Either way they can figure it out. We did a lot of releases to fix issues and personally I was receiving 20 or 30 payment questions a day and since our releases this has dropped to a couple a day which is normal. Support has seen the same dip so I don't think this is systemic and thus is most likely related to your account which support should be able to help with.

 

[Arca]

I'm not sure what you mean by we stopped paying people. I am not aware of us doing that for any reason. We've done the opposite in fact, we forced anyone without an payment option to update theirs through several channels most effectively -if we had a way to pay them we forced it to become the default so that people would get paid. That was the biggest hold up in the payments not having a way to pay people after the udpate as some people's old payment information was not brought into the new system correctly.
Right now payment time frames vary based on the type of sale, a fast transfer BIN domain will pay faster than a slower one you need to transfer to Afternic and we need to move to the buyer. We are working on ways to speed the payment time up further but if you were already paid for prior sales after the update we did there is no technical reason you should not be getting your payment. So there may be another issue you can contact support on such as the domain not moving. Either way they can figure it out. We did a lot of releases to fix issues and personally I was receiving 20 or 30 payment questions a day and since our releases this has dropped to a couple a day which is normal. Support has seen the same dip so I don't think this is systemic and thus is most likely related to your account which support should be able to help with.

I'm not sure what the confusing part of my statement is? I am waiting for multiple overdue payments, hence your system is not paying me. That's what I mean by your system "stopped paying people" again. Your system is not disbursing my funds. Other people in the thread are reporting the same issue. I have received multiple emails for different domains saying: "You will receive an email within 1-3 business days to notify you when your payment has been sent to you." More than 3 business days have passed for these domain sales. The system scheduled payment to be made within 1-3 days, but no payments are being sent after that. When the system was working for a brief period of time, payments were sent pretty much instantly after that email was sent out. So how can the system be working fine when payments that were scheduled to be sent out 2 weeks ago are still not being sent out?

My PayPal profile is set up correctly, and I have previously been paid, when the non-payment issue was fixed the last time. However, now I am not being paid for any sales anymore, just like before. So it appears that the issue has returned. There are a number of other members in this thread who have reported having the same issue (not being paid).

So even though you say payments to sellers are working just fine, that does not seem to be the case. And I have finally managed to get a reply from support, and they are not saying that it is a problem with my account (I have been paid prior to mid-May, things were working for a short period). They are indicating that it is a systemic issue, and reporting "major delays" with payments being sent out:

"We have been experiencing major delays with our payment and currently working on resolving this issue."

 

[kaposzta]

So we're receiving two kinds of messages from support:

"We have been experiencing major delays with our payment and currently working on resolving this issue." - sent to Arca

vs

"Please note your payment has ben successfully scheduled" - sent to me

These can't be correct at the same time, so which one is correct? I haven't received anything, so I guess there are problems. A modern payment system should deal with thousands or even tens of thousands of payments a day. The conclusion is that either Afternic is intentionally slowing down payments, or their systems are crap, or incompetent people operate these systems. None of these sounds good. The bottom line is I haven't received a payment for months, and I'm not pleased with Afternic at the moment.

 

[main]

Despite my deal being complete with the domain being in the buyer's account and displaying the buyer's information in the whois for several days and me contacting the TA Agent and email support asking them to update the transaction, my domain status remains "Transfer Processing". If I click on the domain, it still tells me to transfer ownership.

Account summary is still not updating earnings on domains sold.

I magically have 95 domains pending review that were not in review before.

 

[Joe Styler]

So we're receiving two kinds of messages from support:

"We have been experiencing major delays with our payment and currently working on resolving this issue." - sent to Arca

vs

"Please note your payment has ben successfully scheduled" - sent to me

These can't be correct at the same time, so which one is correct? I haven't received anything, so I guess there are problems. A modern payment system should deal with thousands or even tens of thousands of payments a day. The conclusion is that either Afternic is intentionally slowing down payments, or their systems are crap, or incompetent people operate these systems. None of these sounds good. The bottom line is I haven't received a payment for months, and I'm not pleased with Afternic at the moment.

did you get both emails or just one saying the payment was scheduled? If you are still having issues being paid please contact me with the details via a pm and I will look into it and get things straightened out for you.

 

[Joe Styler]

Despite my deal being complete with the domain being in the buyer's account and displaying the buyer's information in the whois for several days and me contacting the TA Agent and email support asking them to update the transaction, my domain status remains "Transfer Processing". If I click on the domain, it still tells me to transfer ownership.

Account summary is still not updating earnings on domains sold.

I magically have 95 domains pending review that were not in review before.

Cameron should be able to help you with all these things.

 

[canswift]

@Joe Styler : The lack of forthcoming payments is being made worse by the lack of timely updates or emails from Afternic. Could Afternic consider assigning some staff temporarily to an email hotline specifically to deal with this issue? I for one, would feel less like I've been placed on "ignore" if there was a specific "payment concierge" who I could get a reply from within one day. Currently with no email ticketing system from within my account, I have no idea where I am with Afternic "support".

 

[Joe Styler]

@Joe Styler : The lack of forthcoming payments is being made worse by the lack of timely updates or emails from Afternic. Could Afternic consider assigning some staff temporarily to an email hotline specifically to deal with this issue? I for one, would feel less like I've been placed on "ignore" if there was a specific "payment concierge" who I could get a reply from within one day. Currently with no email ticketing system from within my account, I have no idea where I am with Afternic "support".

You can email [email protected] they have a ticketing system.

 

[Joe Styler]

I'm not sure what the confusing part of my statement is? I am waiting for multiple overdue payments, hence your system is not paying me. That's what I mean by your system "stopped paying people" again. Your system is not disbursing my funds. Other people in the thread are reporting the same issue. I have received multiple emails for different domains saying: "You will receive an email within 1-3 business days to notify you when your payment has been sent to you." More than 3 business days have passed for these domain sales. The system scheduled payment to be made within 1-3 days, but no payments are being sent after that. When the system was working for a brief period of time, payments were sent pretty much instantly after that email was sent out. So how can the system be working fine when payments that were scheduled to be sent out 2 weeks ago are still not being sent out?

My PayPal profile is set up correctly, and I have previously been paid, when the non-payment issue was fixed the last time. However, now I am not being paid for any sales anymore, just like before. So it appears that the issue has returned. There are a number of other members in this thread who have reported having the same issue (not being paid).

So even though you say payments to sellers are working just fine, that does not seem to be the case. And I have finally managed to get a reply from support, and they are not saying that it is a problem with my account (I have been paid prior to mid-May, things were working for a short period). They are indicating that it is a systemic issue, and reporting "major delays" with payments being sent out:

"We have been experiencing major delays with our payment and currently working on resolving this issue."

I have been trying to track down who sent you that email and have been unable to. I confirmed with the support teams that we do not have any major delays and they are also unaware of who would send something to that effect. If you could forward me the email so I could look into it further I would appreciate it.

 

[Arca]

Good news! My stalled payments have finally moved forward. All the delayed May payments I have been waiting for have been sent to me in one lump sum, and that disbursement was followed by an ON TIME payment for another sale, just as scheduled. So I've just been paid for SIX different domain sales and I don't have any overdue payments pending at Afternic anymore. Glad to have that issue solved on my end. Have two more sales that should be scheduled for payout soon. Fingers crossed this is a permanent fix and that those upcoming payouts will be disbursed in a timely manner.

Hope everyone else who reported payment issues have gotten paid as well @kaposzta @drsheraz @canswift

 

[drsheraz]

Good news! My stalled payments have finally moved forward. All the delayed May payments I have been waiting for have been sent to me in one lump sum, and that disbursement was followed by an ON TIME payment for another sale, just as scheduled. So I've just been paid for SIX different domain sales and I don't have any overdue payments pending at Afternic anymore. Glad to have that issue solved on my end. Have two more sales that should be scheduled for payout soon. Fingers crossed this is a permanent fix and that those upcoming payouts will be disbursed in a timely manner.

Hope everyone else who reported payment issues have gotten paid as well @kaposzta @drsheraz @canswift

You are lucky. Still waiting for 3 domains sales payment. Do they disburse payment on Saturday?

 

[Arca]

You are lucky. Still waiting for 3 domains sales payment. Do they disburse payment on Saturday?

I just logged in to my email account and saw that I have gotten multiple "We’ve sent you payment for xxxx.com" emails (funds have been added to my PP account). In terms of US time, they were sent out before Saturday, and I believe they may not send out payments on sat-sun (their emails specify business days, not just days), so if you haven't gotten anything yet you probably have to wait until next week.

 

[Arca]

I have been trying to track down who sent you that email and have been unable to. I confirmed with the support teams that we do not have any major delays and they are also unaware of who would send something to that effect. If you could forward me the email so I could look into it further I would appreciate it.

I made a number of attempts at contacting Afternic in May about my payment issues, and got zero response. I tried sending messages via TA dashboard and also via email. Zero response from either channel. After growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of response, I then made another attempt on June 1, by replying to an automated message sent to me that said I would get paid back May. Lo and behold, I actually got a reply within hours from a TA agent. How can so many messages go unanswered, when the TA agents apparently read them within hours? Never got a reply to any of the messages I sent prior to this one...

The reply that notified me about "major delays" with payments seemed wholly accurate to me, since I was indeed experiencing "major delays". All scheduled payouts since May 17 were not being sent out at all, and all payments shceduled between May 17-31 were not sent out until June. A TA agent sending me this message does not strike me as an issue. It's actually a big improvement over TA agents not responding at all. The 20+ issues I have pointed out on preceding pages in this thread are the real issues that need to be addressed, more urgently than Afternic's people actually answering support requests in a timely manner. So instead of tracking down the only person who actually responded, I recommend tracking down all of the ones that ignore messages instead. It's generally VERY hard to get any kind of response from Afternic these days. I appreciate that this TA agent responded and provided accurate feedback to me, instead of just ignoring my message or providing a canned reply out of touch with the situation.

But if you think this is big enough of an issue that it needs to be looked into further, I have included the subject line of the email so that you can track it down. I assume you can track it down in Afternic's email system with a simple search for the reference number:

subject line (domain removed): Email:Message about domainremoved.com sale: 11e8197b-31b3-11e7-b975-86e2ab1fe450 [ ref:_00DG0i0kS._5001611F9oS:ref ]

Sender: "Afternic Transaction Assurance" <[email protected]>

Date: June 1

 

[canswift]

Hope everyone else who reported payment issues have gotten paid as wel

Thanks for posting your updates and I'm glad it's been sorted out (so far) for you. However, I am still waiting payment for sales that were supposed to be paid out on May 19th and May 23rd. The May 23rd one got changed in my dashboard to June 1st... but here we are June 3rd and still nothing.

 

[drsheraz]

I just logged in to my email account and saw that I have gotten multiple "We’ve sent you payment for xxxx.com" emails (funds have been added to my PP account). In terms of US time, they were sent out before Saturday, and I believe they may not send out payments on sat-sun (their emails specify business days, not just days), so if you haven't gotten anything yet you probably have to wait until next week.

Received today 3 payments in one transaction

 

[Arca]

Transaction assurance note: Namebright.com account push info is incomplete (afternic's account email needs to be added, as it is not possible to initiate a push only with a username):

namebright.com email address needs to be added here:

NameBright requires account email address to push, so I'm not able to push a sold name with only the info provided on afternic.com:

 

[Joe Styler]

We know about this error and it is being fixed with the developers and should be resolved in the next couple weeks if things go according to plan. It is part of some other changes we are making to help make things better.

 

[campout]

Here's another bug: I submitted some names into Afternic two months ago, right after buying them and while they were still in 60 day lock. The names are at GoDaddy. In the meantime, I delete one of the names from Afternic because I don't want it in Afternic anymore.

So 2 months later, I get the email from GoDaddy to opt those names into Fast transfer. And it includes the name I deleted from Afternic a month ago.

And there is no way to approve fast transfer for some of the names but not the others. It's an all or nothing thing.

The workaround I've been using is to not approve the names. Then go delete the ones that I do want opted in from Afternic. Then wait a while and re-submit those names to Afternic and hopefully get an email from GoDaddy shortly after giving me the option to opt just those names into Fast transfer.

 

[Joe Styler]

Here's another bug: I submitted some names into Afternic two months ago, right after buying them and while they were still in 60 day lock. The names are at GoDaddy. In the meantime, I delete one of the names from Afternic because I don't want it in Afternic anymore.

So 2 months later, I get the email from GoDaddy to opt those names into Fast transfer. And it includes the name I deleted from Afternic a month ago.

And there is no way to approve fast transfer for some of the names but not the others. It's an all or nothing thing.

The workaround I've been using is to not approve the names. Then go delete the ones that I do want opted in from Afternic. Then wait a while and re-submit those names to Afternic and hopefully get an email from GoDaddy shortly after giving me the option to opt just those names into Fast transfer.

I will bring it up to the developers. Can you do me a favor in the meantime? If you have not already cancelled all the listings and retried listing only the ones you want can you please approve the email that has all the names listed on it including the one you no longer wish to list and then let me know right away what the domain name is (via PM). I suspect it will ignore that domain and save you time in the future until this is fixed, but I would like to be absolutely sure it doesn't list that name for sale as well because that would be a bigger issue. Thanks.

 

[DonDraper]

I emailed afternic a week ago to delete 3 names already listed, but they didnt reply yet

 

[campout]

I emailed afternic a week ago to delete 3 names already listed, but they didnt reply yet

Which email did you use? I get pretty good results with service@

If I didn't hear back in 2 days I would send them another email.

 

[DonDraper]

Yes @Nat Hunt I use service@

 

[Joe Styler]

Yes @Nat Hunt I use service@

Then they must not have gotten it because I know they had no emails in their q earlier last week - meaning they had answered all the emails in there from customers. You can send me a pm and I will give you my email so you can cc me on the email to service@ and I will track it through our system to make sure it is coming in to us, and give me the three names and I can have them deleted for you. Sorry about that, hopefully we get it all sorted out for you quickly so you don't have any other issues.

 

[Arca]

The gist of it is that we are now taking every name into an Afternic holding account and then moving it to the buyer. Once we get control of the domain we can pay you instead of waiting for the buyer to accept the domain or complete the transfer into their account.

This feature was announced in early April, and I was just wondering if there are any updates about when it will actually come into effect?

Both manual and fast transfer transactions are taking so much longer than they used to. I sold a name in end of may, Afternic took control of it immediately, and estimated payout is June 8. But it's still sitting in Afternic's holding account, 2 weeks later. I can't get paid until Afternic moves it to buyer. I have 3 other sold names also just sitting in Afternic's holding account right now, when transfer to another registrar could have completed for those sales already. Some of them haven't even been unlocked yet (so transfer has not even been initiated yet).

When Afternic receives a name under the "transaction assurance" system, it takes ages for the domain to be moved to buyer compared with how long it took in the old transaction system, which causes a major payout delay (since payment is scheduled only after the domain has been transferred to buyer).

Hope there will be some significant improvements in this area soon, as regular transactions are consistently taking 3-4 times as long to complete, from sale to payout, and transactions that inexplicably stall or where payments are being delayed are taking even longer than that.

A quick way to completely remedy this issue is just to introduce the feature you announced had been launched early April: "Once we get control of the domain we can pay you instead of waiting for the buyer to accept the domain or complete the transfer into their account." It's been 9 weeks since it was launched, this needs to be implemented now.

Also, the other issues that were pointed out upon launch, where the response was that fixes were being worked on, has not resulted in fixes actually materializing. Please add basic and bug-free functionality and features to the transaction assurance system. Please also re-introduce all the basic features that were stripped from the system (such as chat logs, domain sold date, whether it was an Afternic BIN/partner/premium network/standard network sale, etc.).

If it's impossible to bring back the basic functions provided by the old system, please bring back the old system. Please don't let us be stuck with this inferior downgrade if it cannot be brought up to the same level as the old transaction system.

I told myself to stop posting about Afternic platform and transaction assurance issues, as I have spent way too much time detailing about 20-25 platform issues and bugs in this thread over the past few months, but they are not being fixed, and updates are not being made. The only fix that might have come as a direct result of my reporting seems to be that emails for names sold at BIN are now being sent out again. So reporting problems and bugs has turned out to be a unproductive way of spending my time. But Afternic remains the best sales venue for me (55 sales in 2017 YTD, vs sales in the 5-15 range at all other marketplaces I am using), so I am consistently on the Afternic.com site multiple times every single day to deal with different stuff, and it's just so frustrating to deal with all these bugs and inefficiencies and the poor user experience that the website offers, day in and day out. I'm probably in the top 1-2% of users in terms of how much time I spend on the afternic.com website, and I'm just all too familiar with every single bug and problem on the site by now... I'm trying to spend less time on reporting on Afternic problems, but its hard not to do so when there are so many problems with the platform, that I have to deal with every day... I really hope Afternic will surprise me and take some major steps towards fixing up the platform in the near future. The user experience is really bad and the site has far more bugs than any other marketplace in the domain industry. It's ridiculous to have such a powerful sales network, coupled with such an outdated website to use this network. Afternic.com is supposed to be a functional gateway for accessing and utilizing your great sales network, and I hope the platform will some day be fixed and updated to reflect that.