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?

 

[main]

Hey @Nat Hunt. I have no idea. And the seasoned rep I was working with had never ever seen it either until recently. For me, my Afternic buy-now sales have basically disappeared though I am still closing some leads that the brokers bring to me.

 

[main]

Oh, and there was also a transfer at GoDaddy that was canceled by the system. Premier Services was unsure why that happened and we needed to start it up again. A lot of bugs lately.

 

[campout]

Yeah I'm wondering if GDPR is screwing with Afternic's systems?

I've also heard some anecdotal evidence that others have seen Afternic sales drop way off over the past month or so.

 

[Arca]

Received this email today from [email protected]

Our compliance department requires additional information regarding your account.

Please provide: full name, address, date of birth, place of birth, citizenship, and nationality.
Please also provide a scanned copy of your passport (or similar valid ID).

Please login to the payments section of your account to upload the documents.

Thank you,
The GoDaddy team.

Wow, seriously? I thought they couldn't get more hypocritical amidst their deceitful payment practices, but it appears I was wrong.

So GoDaddy is now carrying out KYC style compliance checks on Afternic users, where they surely will emphasize congruence between what documents you submit, and what details you've provided for your account. For sure they will expect your submitted documents to match the ID attached to your account and the person that's been paid. Imagine having your account under the name, Peter Thomas from South Africa, and then during the compliance check, you tell them that it was a lie, and that you are actually Steven Lee from Taiwan, and you've been sending payments to a false ID account. Would they be okay with that?? I doubt it! Things need to check out, that's what these kinds of compliance checks are looking for.

But at the same time, they are knowingly falsifying payments to their own users, so that we ourselves are set up to fail bank/gov led reviews of our account activities, as we have no way of properly accounting for the incorrectly labelled payments they are sending us. So they're doing intrusive KYC compliance style checks on customers, requiring accurate and truthful documents to be submitted. While at the same time willfully screwing us for our own KYC checks with our banks by preventing us from being able to provide accurate and truthful documentation of what we're getting paid for, as they are falsely labeling our payments (my bank account remains frozen with no updates thanks to GoDaddy's lies...).

If they have taken the position that KYC and other compliance checks don't matter, and therefore they can continue to falsify the payment details when they pay us, it's extremely hypocritical of them to then carry out their own compliance checks seeking accurate verification. If accurate evidence need not be submitted (which is the position GoDaddy takes in the case of our banks), then why do you request your own users to submit such info? Very hypocritical of GoDaddy.

 

[simmplex]

Same for me.

My Afternic sales have fallen off a cliff in the last month. I think there is likely a problem with Fast-Transfer with many registrars as of late. I also had sale where the domain was "held by Afternic" from yet another registrar different than NameSilo and Dynadot.

and a sold domain could not be delivered to the buyer at Godaddy.

Registrant Email: [email protected]
Registry Registrant ID: Not Available From Registry
Registrant Name: TDNAM Holding Buyer Unreachable
Registrant Email: [email protected]

 

[Sameh]

Afternic doesn't want to release my payout from a sale because the buyer is not responsive and he didn't take control of the domain!

Sedo always released the payout once they have control over the domain.

Afternic told me that if the buyer didn't respond, they will cancel the transfer and return the domain. WTF?!!

What about the funds? Will you hold it in your bank account collecting interest or will you refund it to the buyer after you charge "your" commission for "my" time and "my" domain?

The lose are all mine!

So, someone paid for the domain and he knows that the domain is now secured in escrow and he is on vacation or busy with other stuff or having a wonderful time with his family while I'm waiting for either him to show up after wasting my time or to get back the domain after losing other potential sales during this period of time?!!

 

[DomainBarracksRob]

Soooooo

I've been adjusting my Portfolio and adding names....

come to realize..AFTERNIC HAS BEEN AUTO CHANGING MY MIN OFFER PRICES TO BE CLOSER IN RANGE TO THE BIN!

Example:
(name-BIN $2,488 make offer of $1,617 or more) !!!! WT* is this Afternic???

I never use these kind of numbers all odd numbers for one (execpt6), and for two I though it was me until I've noticed this on SEVERAL of my names $xxxx BIn with some BS X,376 MIN that I DID NOT SET!!

This is bull.. this means we COULD BE MISSING LOWER OFFERS! ( AND wasting my time when I've one and Manually set the MIN OFFER..just to have it "Changed"

AUTO SHORTING the GAP in your BIN and min OFFER! This needs to STOP!

Anyone else?

 

[tonyk2000]

AFTERNIC HAS BEEN AUTO CHANGING MY MIN OFFER PRICES TO BE CLOSER IN RANGE TO THE BIN

Do you mean that afternic bin domains are displayed on auctions.godaddy.com with 60% or so min. offer? Afaik it is by design. I had some cases where GD/Afternic agents contacted me with _offers_ for pure BIN domains, clearly configured as such (all 4 price fields with the same value) on Afternic. I promptly responded to these agents that BIN is BIN... not sure how they explained to buyers/inquirers that domain owner never had an intention to consider low(er) offers, contrary to what GoDaddy showed on auctions website.

 

[campout]

Yeah it's 65% exactly. GoDaddy takes liberty to insert a min. offer of their own choosing if your name is not in fast transfer.

 

[nitg16]

Soooooo

I've been adjusting my Portfolio and adding names....

come to realize..AFTERNIC HAS BEEN AUTO CHANGING MY MIN OFFER PRICES TO BE CLOSER IN RANGE TO THE BIN!

Example:
(name-BIN $2,488 make offer of $1,617 or more) !!!! WT* is this Afternic???

I never use these kind of numbers all odd numbers for one (execpt6), and for two I though it was me until I've noticed this on SEVERAL of my names $xxxx BIn with some BS X,376 MIN that I DID NOT SET!!

This is bull.. this means we COULD BE MISSING LOWER OFFERS! ( AND wasting my time when I've one and Manually set the MIN OFFER..just to have it "Changed"

AUTO SHORTING the GAP in your BIN and min OFFER! This needs to STOP!

Anyone else?

If you don't set any floor price, it is automatically set as 65% of BIN on both Afternic and GD auctions.

If you set a floor price, it is correctly honoured on Afternic but GD auctions still sets it as 65% of BIN.

This is what I was told when I inquired last time.

 

[kriss05]

I saw the comment in another thread regarding Afternic blocking access to its services from Ukraine. It also seems that Afternic also blocks Russian IPs. It includes access to both Afternic website and domains parked at Afternic.

@Joe Styler - I wonder if it is true that Afternic blocks whole countries now? If it is true, why?

 

[xynames]

Repeat: I am having to send in a support ticket every time I set a new price BIN/Floor on a domain, to kickstart the Fast Transfer process. Then within a day or two I get an email from AN that they have "reinitiated opt-in for the domain," followed later by the emails from AN and my registrar DynaDot prompting me to go to my DD account and click to enable the Afternic Fast Transfer. In other words, this process is not happening automatically lately.

In fact, I just got this email too, which implies that the Fast Transfer listing process is more broken than usual:

Hello _____,

Thank you for reaching out to us for assistance. Unfortunately, our typical fix is not currently working to select _________.com for fast transfer. Please try deleting and relisting the domain to see if that selects it for fast transfer. Please let us know if you have any additional questions.

Thanks,

Elizabeth

SmartName and Afternic Support

It's unfortunate because I like Afternic and do sell domains there. All this extra work we have to do just to get a domain listed for Fast Transfer at DynaDot is just wasting everyone's time, including the time of the Afternic support agents.

 

[Joe Styler]

I saw the comment in another thread regarding Afternic blocking access to its services from Ukraine. It also seems that Afternic also blocks Russian IPs. It includes access to both Afternic website and domains parked at Afternic.

@Joe Styler - I wonder if it is true that Afternic blocks whole countries now? If it is true, why?

We block countries and also large portions of countries for various reasons. Most are due to US law. For instance we have to block Crimea (parts of Ukraine) because of sanctions restricting US businesses from doing business there. We also block certain IPs or ranges based on past behavior. Say we see a lot of DDOS activity on our site and not a lot of buyers we would rather not deal with the DDOS issues which could impact everyone trying to access our site. If you email [email protected] with your IP they can look at your exact situation and see if you can be unblocked.

 

[tonyk2000]

@Joe Styler - this thread indicates that Afternic is overblocking IPs. Which GoDaddy does not, as members do complain about not being able to access Afternic exclusively (still being able to access GoDaddy dot com).

I understand that setting "ip deny" rules is not trivial.

For example. Need to block Crimea? Indeed, U.S.-based company must comply with the U.S. Law. No questions. But, how about neighbor regions of either RU or UA that may use the same IP ranges in 3g/4g with the same IPs shown for hundreds of visitors in different towns or cities? Just check the map, they are all very close. How can Afternic be sure that the block does not affect non-Crimea-based visitors? Wouldn't blocking account registrations or CC purchases with contact or billing addresses of sanctioned regions serve the same purpose, but without potential negative side effects?

Some IPs/requests should obviously be banned like Amazon AWS, cheap hosting providers (OVH/Hetzner) and requests to wp-login . php and the like.

Anything else? GoDaddy does this job better. Afternic overfilters visitors. So, what prevents Afternic and GD from using exactly the same set of ip deny rules... ?

 

[Joe Styler]

Godaddy also blocks ips based on the same rules. If there is activity that is nefarious aimed only at Afternic they will block that activity and the same goes for GoDaddy. IPs are blocked based on the same considerations although practically speaking those may be different IPs for the two sites. If we are seeing high malicious activity from certain areas aimed a Afternic only we would only block that area for Afternic and vice versa for GoDaddy. I don't really want to get more specific than this or give more detailed rationale as I don't think that is wise. But as a big company we are targets of bad actors as any other website is and we need to make tough decisions on what IPs we need to block. It is bad for business to be overzealous with IPs that are blocked. We do review the blocks routinely and make updates.
Again, we are not wanting to restrict legitimate customers and emailing [email protected] with your IP can resolve any issues pretty quickly.

 

[Sameh]

@Joe Styler - This is the third time you are ignoring my posts in this thread. I'm really disappointed because you always replied back to my emails over the years just fine. I'm not sure if I'm on your blocklist here or you just don't think I deserve a reply.

Afternic doesn't want to release my payout from a sale because the buyer is not responsive and he didn't take control of the domain!

Sedo always released the payout once they have control over the domain.

Afternic told me that if the buyer didn't respond, they will cancel the transfer and return the domain. WTF?!!

What about the funds? Will you hold it in your bank account collecting interest or will you refund it to the buyer after you charge "your" commission for "my" time and "my" domain?

The lose are all mine!

So, someone paid for the domain and he knows that the domain is now secured in escrow and he is on vacation or busy with other stuff or having a wonderful time with his family while I'm waiting for either him to show up after wasting my time or to get back the domain after losing other potential sales during this period of time?!!

 

[xynames]

I had an escrow.com where the buyer paid but took a long time to take control of the domain, this is a necessary part of the process. Later the buyer claimed that she wasn't receiving notifications from domainagents - it was an escrow.com opened by domain agents where I had direct contact with the buyer only after the sale closed.

Of course domainagents told me that they had contacted the buyer repeatedly, so who knows which party was being derelict.

But in any case, in your situation if Afternic is in fact contacting the buyer and the buyer is being slow to take custody of the domain, that is not Afternic's fault. You will not get paid until the domain is transferred and accepted this is a standard part of any domain sale. Only difference here - with a third party involved - is that you don't have the domain either, apparently. Not a fun situation, but just the way it is.

 

[Joe Styler]

@Joe Styler - This is the third time you are ignoring my posts in this thread. I'm really disappointed because you always replied back to my emails over the years just fine. I'm not sure if I'm on your blocklist here or you just don't think I deserve a reply.

No I apologize. I have had a lot of threads mentioning me lately and that combined with a really bad headache for a few days has lead to me missing or misunderstanding some posts.
If you email [email protected] and let them know what is happening, how long you are waiting, how the buyer won't accept the domain including what you tried they can help step in and get the buyer to take the domain.
We are looking at ways to pay faster and hopefully will have one out before the end of the year.

 

[anantj]

Repeat: I am having to send in a support ticket every time I set a new price BIN/Floor on a domain, to kickstart the Fast Transfer process. Then within a day or two I get an email from AN that they have "reinitiated opt-in for the domain," followed later by the emails from AN and my registrar DynaDot prompting me to go to my DD account and click to enable the Afternic Fast Transfer. In other words, this process is not happening automatically lately.

In fact, I just got this email too, which implies that the Fast Transfer listing process is more broken than usual:

Hello _____,

Thank you for reaching out to us for assistance. Unfortunately, our typical fix is not currently working to select _________.com for fast transfer. Please try deleting and relisting the domain to see if that selects it for fast transfer. Please let us know if you have any additional questions.

Thanks,

Elizabeth

SmartName and Afternic Support

It's unfortunate because I like Afternic and do sell domains there. All this extra work we have to do just to get a domain listed for Fast Transfer at DynaDot is just wasting everyone's time, including the time of the Afternic support agents.

On this note, for nearly 2 months now, I've been receiving 3 e-mails from Afternic daily asking me to opt-in to Fast Transfer but the actual opt-in e-mail never comes!

The system is just a massive clusterf with no many issues, bugs and abnormalities! What I don't understand is the prioritization of hiring more warm bodies to help workaround these bugs instead of investing bug fixes themselves. With the tech industry increasingly going more automated and self-serve, Afternic seems to be regressing and relying more on human intervention to work around these bugs or assist their customers...

 

[anantj]

The system is just a massive clusterf with no many issues, bugs and abnormalities

so* many issues

investing bug fixes themselves

investing in the* bug fixes themselves

 

[Joe Styler]

On this note, for nearly 2 months now, I've been receiving 3 e-mails from Afternic daily asking me to opt-in to Fast Transfer but the actual opt-in e-mail never comes!

The system is just a massive clusterf with no many issues, bugs and abnormalities! What I don't understand is the prioritization of hiring more warm bodies to help workaround these bugs instead of investing bug fixes themselves. With the tech industry increasingly going more automated and self-serve, Afternic seems to be regressing and relying more on human intervention to work around these bugs or assist their customers...

If you email [email protected] with the specifics they can look into it.

 

[anantj]

If you email [email protected] with the specifics they can look into it.

lol yeah. I'll probably get around to doing that eventually. Maybe!

Have you considered setting this sentence as your NP sig. Pretty sure this is one of your most common sentences in your comments

 

[nitg16]

I agree with @anantj about Afternic issues but then I think it is not appropriate to use personal attacks against @Joe Styler .

He is providing support to users on NP without any obligation to do so. NP is not an official GD/Afternic support channel. But still he entertains nearly all support queries targeted at him by NP users. I get that sometimes his replies may not be upfront or meet our expectations. But they are still better than what uninformed GD/Afternic support agents tell us on email or phone calls. The kind of support he is providing here on NP should not be underestimated.

Regarding Afternic:

Harsh may it sound but Afternic looks like one of the most unprofessional marketplace which is more like a throwback to 90s and is a bug ridden mess.

I just don't understand what stops them from hiring designers and engineers that can upgrade/revamp the marketplace? This is 2018 after all and my head hurts whenever I try to access Afternic UI.

Sedo had a revamp and it is looking much nicer than before.

 

[anantj]

I agree with @anantj about Afternic issues but then I think it is not appropriate to use personal attacks against @Joe Styler .

Where was the personal attack? If you're referring to the comment about e-mailing [email protected], that was a joke
I've repeatedly stated that I respect him and he is very patient and helpful.

 

[Arca]

I sold a domain last month via fast-transfer.

The domain did not automatically transfer.

The domain is still in my registrar account.

Afternic has no interest remedying this issue and transferring the domain to buyer manually.

I have messaged the TA Agent 8 times since then, but nobody replies. It's like there is no one there, and I'm just senselessly sending messages into the void.

I don't understand why they wouldn't want to look into it. Doesn't Afternic want to run the platform professionally and deliver sold domains in a timely manner? Why do they want to not move forward with the transfer of ownership? Though I should be used to it by now, the indifference of many Afternic staff continues to flabbergast me.

Similarly, I contacted [email protected] with an issue. They replied that they had fixed the issue. The issue has not been fixed. Why did they reply that the issue has been fixed then?

Either your message gets ignored or staff reply that they've fixed the issue without fixing it. Welcome to Afternic customer support.

It seems that Afternic don't try to fix issues by fixing them. Rather, their strategy seems centered on attrition, actively wearing us down with their unresponsiveness and indifference until we simply give up and go away. Afternic's logic seems to be that getting a user to give up complaining about an issue is the best way to "solve" that issue...