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?

 

[Sameh]

At least 10 domains were deleted from my Afternic account today and of course, there is no way to know which domains were deleted unless I'll waste more time comparing my portfolio to the downloadable list from Afternic. This happens at least once a month. Afternic doesn't send emails when they delete domains. Unless you keep an eye on the count in your Dashboard you will never know they deleted your domains.

At the same time, I can't access my Domain Settings in GoDaddy for the last 48 hours. The settings page keeps loading forever.

At the same time, I'm still waiting for three payments for GoDaddy Premium Listings that should have been paid out on Monday.

According to my time tracker, 95% of my wasted time is spent on dealing with GoDaddy & Afternic issues.

Company with Billions in Market Cap and Millions of Domains under management still have the most buggy system I dealing with for the last 10 years (on both, Afternic & GoDaddy).

I'm really not sure how hard and how expensive is it to hire real backend developers.

Is it really harder and more expensive than losing customers, frustrating the rest, hiring more Customer Support to deal with the pile of issues that keep popping up, losing revenue in sales?

 

[richtrading]

Is it really harder and more expensive than losing customers, frustrating the rest, hiring more Customer Support to deal with the pile of issues that keep popping up, losing revenue in sales?

Invariably it has been demonstrated failing departments rarely turn it around in business. Roughly 90% never change. Usually a dynamic business will sweep in, and the old business will wind up and shrink. So the question is... why a competing domain selling business hasn't popped up yet? Sedo isn't yet very good in my view.

 

[anantj]

why a competing domain selling business hasn't popped up yet

Building entrenched relationships with registrars and domain owners is not easy and take a significant amount of effort and time. Incumbents with reputation and registrar relationships have a massive monopoly. I'd say at this time, Afternic, GD and GD auctions are near monopoly (maybe not legally but attitude wise). With GD auctions increasingly getting more and more registrar's expired domain stream, GD auctions is, unfortunately a platform increasingly hard to ignore. Similarly Afternic. Given the extensive registrar partnerships they have for their DLS service, the benefits of listing on afternic far outweigh the pain that we all face. And this is exactly what GD is both banking on and leveraging!

 

[carob]

I don't understand what GoDaddy has to gain from consciously not fixing Afternic (as per the announcement that was made earlier this year that the platform will not see any significant updates and fixes in 2018). Many domainers outright refuse to use Afternic due to the horrible platform (lots of lost commission fees for GD, lost sales for those domainers), support gets swamped with support requests and don’t manage to reply in a timely manner, and the people who do use the platform heavily are constantly frustrated with all the things not working, all the technical issues, and the delayed responses from support and TA. It's a lose-lose situation for everyone.

Seems the gist of what GD/Afternic said was that there is real return for them in investing in the partner sites that list their domains, whereas investing in the Afternic site itself is not profitable as it is not the main sales platform.

But that is not distinguishing between the Afternic site's role as the outward-facing sales platform for buyers, and the other role as backoffice admin and entry point for the suppliers, who are domainers and Namepros members. The attitude to suppliers is basically "If you don't like it, go somewhere else."

 

[Arca]

At least 10 domains were deleted from my Afternic account today and of course, there is no way to know which domains were deleted unless I'll waste more time comparing my portfolio to the downloadable list from Afternic. This happens at least once a month. Afternic doesn't send emails when they delete domains. Unless you keep an eye on the count in your Dashboard you will never know they deleted your domains.

See this thread. Sounds like the same issue as I encountered.

 

[Arca]

So the question is... why a competing domain selling business hasn't popped up yet? Sedo isn't yet very good in my view.

As @anantj noted, it's probably not possible for any company to supplant Afternic's premium network of registrars. They have exclusive access to the search path of the most popular registrar (GD), which other marketplaces don't get access to, they have relationships and infrastructure in place to sell names via XXX registrars, many of them extremely popular with end-users, or in markets where it can otherwise be harder to passively sell your names into (i.e. China). On top of that they have a 13 million+ domain inventory to sell through this vast syndicate of registrars organized under Afternic. They have done a stellar job at setting up and expanding this network, and they've continued to add valuable partners. There is no way to reach more buyers than by listing at Afternic, making it the most important sales tool available to domainers.

They're so far ahead that no newcomer is ever going to build something better. Even established Sedo, which has a larger inventory and their own fast-transfer system in place, can't compete with Afternic's sales performance. And frankly nobody is complaining about Afternic's sales performance, as they get an A+ in that department. What everyone is complaining about is the awful Afternic platform/website, which is so bad that it makes users want to avoid them as much as possible, except for the basic domain listing at Afternic in order to get the benefits of their registrar network.

New companies do pop up in areas where they can compete with Afternic though. Recent years have seen a significant influx of new landing page providers, that are providing landers that are miles ahead of Afternic’s ones.

I think a testament to this is how Afternic as more than 13 million domains listed, yet only a few hundred thousand names are parked with them. They only provide two dated landing pages (one with a price inquiry form, one with a BIN/make offer option), and as a range of new companies have jumped in to provide far better solutions, domainers are choosing to send their type-in traffic to these better options instead. Competitors like Sedo have also updated their landing pages.

Afternic is losing out hugely by not developing afternic.com as a hub for type-in traffic. Before when I was sending type-in to Afternic, buyers often contacted me after a purchase to complain about the slow and frustrating process of buying a domain via Afternic.com, and about how terrible the platform is, and how things didn't work as they should during the purchasing process. Buyers seemed to be even more frustrated with the Afternic website than we as sellers in this thread are (probably because we're used to it, they jump in a the deep end unprepared when they sign up to buy a domain). Successful type-in sales require great landing pages and a functional platform, neither of which is available at Afternic.

So domainers use a growing number of competing companies for this purpose, and Afternic are losing out massively in this sales channel as a result. And their (mostly) stellar broker team is losing out on many valuable leads. That's another cost of not updating the Afternic website/platform. Competing companies are eating their lunch in the landing page/type-in segment. But regardless, Afternic will keep dominating the registrar syndication network channel, and without any viable alternative we'll be stuck with the afternic.com site/platform. The best would be if they would just do a complete turnaround and start the huge job of fixing up the website and then start adding much needed improvements (bulk management functionality, new landing pages, etc.), but as you noted, it seems unlikely that a turnaround is going to happen at this point.

 

[Sameh]

Here is the latest update.

At least 10 domains were deleted from my Afternic account today and of course, there is no way to know which domains were deleted unless I'll waste more time comparing my portfolio to the downloadable list from Afternic. This happens at least once a month. Afternic doesn't send emails when they delete domains. Unless you keep an eye on the count in your Dashboard you will never know they deleted your domains.

I confirmed that at least 10 domains were deleted from my account. All of them were added this month to my Afternic account. All of them I asked Support to remove them from the recent owner's account. They did remove them and I added them to my account but they were deleted from my account yesterday. The exact same issue happened last month and the month before it. I informed them about the same issue before several times but of course, nothing happened! Afternic Support replied back (while I was writing this reply) asking me which domains were deleted so they can investigate.

At the same time, I can't access my Domain Settings in GoDaddy for the last 48 hours. The settings page keeps loading forever.

My Rep replied back regarding this issue and told me that GoDaddy is aware of this and he suggested that I should use INCOGNITO Mode to access my Domain Settings. He asks all his other clients to do the same. He doesn't think it's an issue and apparently, GoDaddy isn't going to fix it. Just use INCOGNITO Mode if you want to access your domains settings.

At the same time, I'm still waiting for three payments for GoDaddy Premium Listings that should have been paid out on Monday.

I got paid today. I should have been paid on last Monday.

 

[Arca]

@Joe Styler - Why are wire transfer payments for sold domains remitted to us by GoDaddy.com with the note "ONLINE ADVERTISING INCOME"?

One of my banks are asking me about the source of these funds. I've provided documentation that they are for realized gains at Afternic.com from the sale of specific domain name investments, but they are not accepting this explanation, because the payment is not from Afternic, and it's not marked as domain sales proceeds from Afternic.

When I receive a payment from Afternic.com, but the payment is sent out by another company and marked as online advertising income, I have no way of backing up the legitimacy of those funds. I am not doing "online advertising" work nor am I doing so for GoDaddy (and my Afternic parking proceeds stand at $0 as well, I have $0 online advertising income). Bankers are paranoid with KYC, AML and a growing number of other compliance regulations these days, and everything needs to "check out" to satisfy them.

Can you adjust the wire transfer details to more accurately reflect the source and nature of the funds you remit to domain sellers?

 

[BRANDERX]

Sorry if this is off topic, but I think this could be a bug.

So the domain " cedv.org " keeps rotating in the "new listings" section.

The only domain to keep coming up every a couple of hours. Been happening for weeks.

Silly of me to mention, but its annoying. lol..

Thanks

 

[Arca]

Sorry if this is off topic, but I think this could be a bug.

So the domain " cedv.org " keeps rotating in the "new listings" section.

The only domain to keep coming up every a couple of hours. Been happening for weeks.

Silly of me to mention, but its annoying. lol..

Thanks

It says it was listed on May 13, 2018 so a "new" listing in other words. Seller is BuyDomains.com with 993 835 listings, and their system probably lists/de-lists domain automatically. If you've seen the domain pop up every few hours for weeks it might be that there is a glitch and Buy Domains is re-listing the domain over and over again.

 

[BRANDERX]

It says it was listed on May 13, 2018 so a "new" listing in other words. Seller is BuyDomains.com with 993 835 listings, and their system probably lists/de-lists domain automatically. If you've seen the domain pop up every few hours for weeks it might be that there is a glitch and Buy Domains is re-listing the domain over and over again.

Yup, must be a glitch.

thank you for the info

 

[tonyk2000]

When I receive a payment from Afternic.com, but the payment is sent out by another company and marked as online advertising income, I have no way of backing up the legitimacy of those funds

It would be even harder to explain to some banks what a domain name is, why it can be sold, and sold not for $10 but for thousands. Accordingly, it appears that the scheme utilized by afternic makes at least some sense. Indeed, afternic is advertising something (premium domain name) as being for sale on GoDaddy (mostly) and in other places, and the domainer is receiving an income as the result of such advertising. I personally find it easier to explain what "online advertising" is to any party, and some online advertisers such as popular youtubers are making millions so nothing unusual with high payouts for advertising. While I am currently OK with the payment description in wires I receive, it of course does not mean that Afternic should not add a custom field to change this description to something the customer prefers due to whatever reason. It should also be noted that the field by itself is of limited length, so for example including a bunch of exact domain names sold in one wire may be impossible. And, what if the domain was adult (not really adult, it is not accepted by afternic, but sometimes banks may see adult in dating etc)... or related to a travel to an island of Cuba... better not to show such wording / domains to banks at all.

 

[Arca]

Indeed, afternic is advertising something (premium domain name) as being for sale on GoDaddy (mostly) and in other places, and the domainer is receiving an income as the result of such advertising.

Do you really believe domain sales proceeds constitute advertising income? So we're all advertisers here, not domain sellers? This is NamePros, not AdPros, and you're the first person I've seen try to reason that earning money from domains is a form of online advertising.

Advertising income is money paid to you for displaying ads, promoting a product, posting sponsored content, etc. Advertising is various marketing communication that seeks to sell something, be it a product, idea, service or whatever. If I post sponsored content on my blog, host adsense ads in my app, or promote a product to my social media following, those are activities that generate online advertising income.

When I sell domain123.com to a buyer, and Afternic serves as a third party that receives the funds from buyer, facilitates transfer of ownership rights, and disburses the funds to me, the seller, that arrangement simply has nothing to do with any "online advertising" services rendered by me for monetary gain.

Afternic/GoDaddy tagging domain sales proceeds as advertising income is incorrect and makes it difficult under KYC, AML regiments to explain sources of funds, as we have no proof of advertising activities that have generated said funds. It also complicates documentation of income for taxation purposes, as advertising income and the funds received from the sale of a (domain) asset are taxed differently in many jurisdictions.

 

[Joe Styler]

I'll look into the payment field and see what I can find out. We can easily talk to your bank for you if that helps.

 

[tonyk2000]

Do you really believe domain sales proceeds constitute advertising income?

Personally, I do not of course

The question is accounting, and, most notably, accountants.

I've spoken with at least 3 "average" accountants (non~U.S. though) and basically learned the following:

"I do not underand a single word from what you are telling me. Are you receiving payments from abroad? Just declare them as such. Fees/Honorariums or "other income" from abroad. Do you also have to send money abroad for webhosting (this is the only I understand) or anything else (I do not understand, I am not a tech guy) in order to receive your income? Declare this as expenses. And, for gods sake, do not tell me anymore about domains and registrars."

One would guess that an average bank will understand domaining on the same dummy level.

It is of course possible to find an accountant, in any country, who is familiar enough with IT and domaining. Will be costly, and _he_ will then have to explain everything to banks etc., in many cases successfully (but extra time will be required for this).

 

[Premiums]

Hello @Joe Styler please check you PM

I need your help

Thank you

 

[Arca]

I'll look into the payment field and see what I can find out. We can easily talk to your bank for you if that helps.

Will surely do that if needed. How do we go about establishing the connection between Afternic and a non-US bank? I assume this is not something the front line [email protected] staff would handle. There's also the issue of different time zones.

Personally, I do not of course

The question is accounting, and, most notably, accountants.

I've spoken with at least 3 "average" accountants (non~U.S. though) and basically learned the following:

"I do not underand a single word from what you are telling me. Are you receiving payments from abroad? Just declare them as such. Fees/Honorariums or "other income" from abroad. Do you also have to send money abroad for webhosting (this is the only I understand) or anything else (I do not understand, I am not a tech guy) in order to receive your income? Declare this as expenses. And, for gods sake, do not tell me anymore about domains and registrars."

One would guess that an average bank will understand domaining on the same dummy level.

It is of course possible to find an accountant, in any country, who is familiar enough with IT and domaining. Will be costly, and _he_ will then have to explain everything to banks etc., in many cases successfully (but extra time will be required for this).

While most people’s knowledge of the domain industry might be limited, it is easier to document authenticity of a domain sale that actually happened, versus online advertising that didn’t.

If I’m asked to document a domain sale I can point to the original purchase receipt/invoice of when I bought the name, and the notification of sale and disbursement of funds after I sold the name. This would of course have been even easier if the sales emails from Afternic contained the sales amount, they provided a sales invoice we could print out for each name, and if the funds were disbursed by Afternic, rather than GoDaddy, but still, at least I have recourse in terms of a paper trail of emails that point to the legitimacy of the funds.

If I’m asked to document the source of my online advertising income I cannot provide any documents to legitimize my advertising income, because I am not engaged in any form of online advertising.

If this was merely about accountants I wouldn’t care what the wire said, but we're in a new world of extremely strict KYC/AML/anti-terrorism funding compliance regulations, and some banks are very quick to freeze accounts and ask for comprehensive documentation of your source of funds if it comes from abroad. Especially if it comes from the US, as they are the foremost country pushing for these regulations and imposing large fines on non-compliant banks. So banks now over-comply under these regulations, and may treat anyone as potentially receiving money linked to a Mexican drug cartel until proven innocent. There are lots of horror stories out there already of regular long-terms customers with a completely clean records that are getting their funds frozen, audited by the bank, and then getting accounts shut because they can’t satisfy the documentation requests of the bank.

Being able to convincingly document the source of inward remittances to bankers with the power to freeze and/or shut my account is more important than the ease of which I can explain the nature of my business to an accountant, as the latter is just a matter of convenience.

 

[Joe Styler]

You can see the sales listed in either you GoDaddy or Afternic account depending on where the sale originated. We show this for tax reasons. I'm obviously in the US but I can take a screenshot and show my accountant my domain sales. You should be able to do that with yours. You are right most people don't understand domains, however it only took me a 3 minute explanation once to my accountant and he's never asked again. Try explaining first and show your bank your account where the domains were sold. That should be enough proof. If not you would have to find a time that would work from the bank, call them and then have them conference me or someone from support on the phone so we can confirm that the domain sold or we can just email you, but it is stated in the account already. Something in writing in the account or via email should be fine.

 

[Arca]

You can see the sales listed in either you GoDaddy or Afternic account depending on where the sale originated. We show this for tax reasons. I'm obviously in the US but I can take a screenshot and show my accountant my domain sales. You should be able to do that with yours. You are right most people don't understand domains, however it only took me a 3 minute explanation once to my accountant and he's never asked again. Try explaining first and show your bank your account where the domains were sold. That should be enough proof. If not you would have to find a time that would work from the bank, call them and then have them conference me or someone from support on the phone so we can confirm that the domain sold or we can just email you, but it is stated in the account already. Something in writing in the account or via email should be fine.

Thanks, but as I have reported in the thread previously, the "domains sold" page broke a long time ago. This is what it looks like:

It's been a blank table since last year, at least in all of my browsers. Any idea when it will be fixed?

And just to be clear, I am not talking about explaining the nature of payments received to an accountant. That's a separate concern brought up by @tony, and is primarily about the inconvenience of explaining that domain sales is a thing.

My concern is about providing to bank's compliance dept what the source of funds are under Know Your Customer, Anti-Money Laundering, etc. requirements. Inability to do so tends to lead to frozen funds and then usually account closure, even if the funds are 100% legitimate, as in the case of a domain sale.

When I receive a payment for "online advertising income" from GoDaddy, a screenshot from Afternic.com listing a bunch of domains does not check out from the bank's perspective, as they would expect to see just what the wire purports to be: online advertising income from GoDaddy. So they want to see proof of online advertising from GoDaddy, not a screenshot from Afternic with a list of domain names. That might cut it for an accountant that you're paying, but it doesn't for a bank that needs to make sure they're following a bunch of strict regulations.

If you simply call the the wires what they are (sales proceeds from domain transactions) that would at least make it possible for us to show some kind of documentation that is congruent with what the wire claims to be. Even sending them out with no/blank description would be better than tagging them as something they are not.

 

[Joe Styler]

Thanks, but as I have reported in the thread previously, the "domains sold" page broke a long time ago. This is what it looks like:
Show attachment 88003 It's been a blank table since last year, at least in all of my browsers. Any idea when it will be fixed?

And just to be clear, I am not talking about explaining the nature of payments received to an accountant. That's a separate concern brought up by @tony, and is primarily about the inconvenience of explaining that domain sales is a thing.

My concern is about providing to bank's compliance dept what the source of funds are under Know Your Customer, Anti-Money Laundering, etc. requirements. Inability to do so tends to lead to frozen funds and then usually account closure, even if the funds are 100% legitimate, as in the case of a domain sale.

When I receive a payment for "online advertising income" from GoDaddy, a screenshot from Afternic.com listing a bunch of domains does not check out from the bank's perspective, as they would expect to see just what the wire purports to be: online advertising income from GoDaddy. So they want to see proof of online advertising from GoDaddy, not a screenshot from Afternic with a list of domain names. That might cut it for an accountant that you're paying, but it doesn't for a bank that needs to make sure they're following a bunch of strict regulations.

If you simply call the the wires what they are (sales proceeds from domain transactions) that would at least make it possible for us to show some kind of documentation that is congruent with what the wire claims to be. Even sending them out with no/blank description would be better than tagging them as something they are not.

You can navigate to your Account - Statements and adjust the date range as needed to show your domain sales.

So login on the left side navigation menu. The one that shows your Dashboard, Portfolio etc. Click on Account, under account click statements. All your sales history is located there.

 

[tonyk2000]

@Joe Styler : For some time, if afternic instant transfer domain OR GD premium listing are sold on GoDaddy, the system does not change DNS to default "domaincontrol" ones anymore. It was not the case before. Resultingly, the buyer paid - received the domain - but still sees my page (forsale, or parking with contact form, or anything....) which may indicate that the domain is still for sale. Unexperienced buyer may be lost. Indeed, he paid - but the domain page still says it is for sale. If I delete domain from the parking company - this page will be gone. I may be unable to do this immediately, as the domains are sold 24/7. Yes, if _they_ change DNS - this page will also be gone.

Would it be possible to return previous behavior (dns change to default GODADDY dns servers together with domain delivery?)

 

[tonyk2000]

Is it only me, or bulk doman upload (.csv) to afternic no more works? It accepts the file though, but generates a message "successfully uploaded 0 domains". I did not change anything, using the same file format as always, and each line has the same structure as afternic shows in portfolio download, such as

somedomain.com,5000,5000,5000,5000,Reference,General,,"",,3,1,DEFAULT

for fixed priced 5K bin domain with instant transfer to be enabled.

The same domains can be added one by one with no issues

Cc @Joe Styler

 

[BRANDERX]

Afternic "unprotected connection" ? on all browsers.

How often does this occur?

thanks

 

[Joe Styler]

Happens every time if you are using a private window, incognito mode, cookie blockers etc. We don't support that.

 

[ET76]

Hi @Joe Styler , my domain sold since 9 May and I immediately push the domain on the same day but have not received payment yet. I have sent a message, but I only get information that the domain is in the transfer process. I was curious when I will get my funds because it was 13 days. May I inform my domain name through PM to you?