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?

 

[creataweb]

Just a heads up to those forwarding to Afternic's BIN landing page, for some reason their BIN landing pages now resolve as blocked by "administrative rules" at times.

For example, visiting afternic.com/domain/cloudintelligence.com or www.afternic.com/domain/cloudintelligence.com yields this landing page in both Chrome and Safari for me:
Show attachment 93832 This is obviously not what you want prospective buyers to see.

Strangely, if I visit those links in FireFox, it works just fine:
Show attachment 93834

However, when I use FireFox on my phone, I get the "403 Forbidden" error message when I try to visit that landing page. I also get the error message when I try to visit the BIN landing page via the built in phone browser.

So out of Safari, Chrome, FireFox on desktop, and two mobile browsers, the Afternic landing page only resolves in one instance. Others might see different result.

Until or unless the landing page works 100% across all browsers/devices again, I think it's best to avoid forwarding to this landing page, as you have no guarantee it's going to work in the browsers of your prospective buyer's choice. The "right" buyer is rare, and when he/she materializes the landing page needs to work! If they are faced with a "403 Forbidden" page they will likely just move on to another name and what could have been a sale is lost.

All iterations of Afternic's non-bin landing page/price quote request form page (afternic.com/forsale/cloudintelligence.com) work as before (i.e. with and without www, and with both http and https), so I guess they may have deliberately disabled the BIN landing page (hence the "Request forbidden by administrative rules" message).

I tested this in the latest version of Chrome and it works for me.

 

[Arca]

I tested this in the latest version of Chrome and it works for me.

I was on Google Chrome 67 and I got "403 Forbidden Request forbidden by administrative rules."

I just updated to the latest, Google Chrome 68, and when visiting the BIN landing page for that domain I get "403 Forbidden Request forbidden by administrative rules."

 

[creataweb]

To illustrate how important it is that they don't fail to remove outdated listings, I recently bought a domain from Afternic and the seller no longer owned the domain, so Afternic failed to complete the sale. They issued a refund after discovering that the seller no longer owned the domain.

This kind of thing is exactly why Afternic's customer support should not be failing to remove outdated listings or dragging their feet to do so. The less you pay attention to making sure that only legitimate listings are live, the more failed sales you're gonna get. Certainly not the first time I've bought a domain at Afternic and not gotten it!

Since removing outdated listings now seems to be a highly complex task (I'm not surprised, Afternic's system is falling apart on the seller side of things, so I doubt things are running more smoothly for the support staff) that requires a lengthy period of time to respond to and then to complete, often requiring the input of multiple people, I suggest Afternic to train several staff especially to deal with this task. There should be a separate email, "[email protected]", to deal with this, and we should be able to send them an email and with their de-listing expertise get OUR asset de-listed within 24 hours when it's listed by someone who doesn't own it. People who report outdated listings are doing a huge service to Afternic, as many domain owners clearly don't stay on top of de-listing their Afternic listings. It's their fault that they don't remove listings, yet we have to put in the effort to get their outdated listings removed for them. Afternic should be grateful that we're doing this, as they themselves have no system in place for detecting and removing outdated listings.

If removing outdated listings is too complex and challenging for [email protected], Afternic should respond accordingly, and establish an illegitimate listing task force to deal with it!

That's certainly annoying to say the least.

My recommendation would be if you had the ability to do an auto-email for each name and set it for a send out every 48 hours until Afternic replies with a removal email and you validate it's been done.

This would make it automated and keep them on their toes with removals. I've had it happen both ways where sometimes the names were removed and others they were not even though AN said they were.

 

[Arca]

That's certainly annoying to say the least.

My recommendation would be if you had the ability to do an auto-email for each name and set it for a send out every 48 hours until Afternic replies with a removal email and you validate it's been done.

This would make it automated and keep them on their toes with removals. I've had it happen both ways where sometimes the names were removed and others they were not even though AN said they were.

Sending them more emails have, in my experience, no impact on their response time.


And you can email the TA agent 15 times about an issue regarding a sale/transfer, and you still get 0 replies.

As for [email protected] they take their 5-7+ days almost no matter what you do.

And after they most recently told me they removed the 10 or so names I asked them to remove, 100% of the domains remained listed by the former owners. I shot back an email within 15 minutes of them telling me they removed the domains, asking them to actually remove them, not just say they removed them . But instead of getting an immediate reply back, I haven't heard anything yet. It appears that once you get a reply, you get placed at the back of the line again no matter what. Having your email "ticket" opened does not make them prioritize your issue. So I guess I'll get a reply 4-5 days from now, saying they have removed the outdated listings. Whether they'll actually have removed, is a totally different thing though...

When I dealt with some really urgent issues in the past that required higher priority and ideally very quick replies they did not provide that at all, despite me pestering them daily for help. Rather than escalate the issue internally and prioritizing it, they took 5-15 days between EACH response (they seemed to take longer and longer time to respond, eventually taking 2 weeks between each response at that time!). So getting a "serious" issue dealt with at Afternic can take weeks/months, when it really should have taken days.

 

[xynames]

<<when I use FireFox on my phone, I get the "403 Forbidden" error message when I try to visit that landing page. I also get the error message when I try to visit the BIN landing page via the built in phone browser.>>

This is a common issue with many landing pages IF there are PPC links on them, but usually not otherwise.

It has more to do with the ISP than the browser.

https://www.namepros.com/threads/one-disadvantage-of-domain-hacks.1050349/#post-6438418

 

[ResoluteDomains]

Sending them more emails have, in my experience, no impact on their response time.


And you can email the TA agent 15 times about an issue regarding a sale/transfer, and you still get 0 replies.

As for [email protected] they take their 5-7+ days almost no matter what you do.

And after they most recently told me they removed the 10 or so names I asked them to remove, 100% of the domains remained listed by the former owners. I shot back an email within 15 minutes of them telling me they removed the domains, asking them to actually remove them, not just say they removed them . But instead of getting an immediate reply back, I haven't heard anything yet. It appears that once you get a reply, you get placed at the back of the line again no matter what. Having your email "ticket" opened does not make them prioritize your issue. So I guess I'll get a reply 4-5 days from now, saying they have removed the outdated listings. Whether they'll actually have removed, is a totally different thing though...

When I dealt with some really urgent issues in the past that required higher priority and ideally very quick replies they did not provide that at all, despite me pestering them daily for help. Rather than escalate the issue internally and prioritizing it, they took 5-15 days between EACH response (they seemed to take longer and longer time to respond, eventually taking 2 weeks between each response at that time!). So getting a "serious" issue dealt with at Afternic can take weeks/months, when it really should have taken days.

Hopefully @Joe Styler can expedite this particular issue. I've been considering listing my names there again but reading through this thread has not been encouraging to say the least.

 

[anantj]

I was on Google Chrome 67 and I got "403 Forbidden Request forbidden by administrative rules."

I just updated to the latest, Google Chrome 68, and when visiting the BIN landing page for that domain I get "403 Forbidden Request forbidden by administrative rules."

From the two links,

https://www.afternic.com/domain/cloudintelligence.com - worked for me
http://afternic.com/domain/cloudintelligence.com gave me a 403 forbidden

Only difference is the SSL connection and the www subdomain. On trying
http://www.afternic.com/domain/cloudintelligence.com, it redirected me to the https version which again worked for me!

Edit: I'm on FF 61.0.1 on Windows 10 (both updated to the latest public release

Edit 2: Exactly the same result on Chrome v67.0.3396.99 (Updating to 68. Will update this shortly with results from that version)

Edit 3: Same result on Chrome after updating to the latest

 

[xynames]

This has to do with the server and the way it is force redirecting the site, or not force redirecting it, to the https. Have fun.

What Afternic could do is revise their forwarding script within .htaccess to address all possible non https entries including the one that Anantj has come up with, that seriously, almost no one would even type in in that format anyway.

 

[xynames]

This is second time this has happened: sold a name at Afternic, was set for Fast Transfer, but it did not fast transfer away and instead Afternic Transaction Assurance asked me to push it to them within DynaDot, which I did.

I emailed Afternic support, and also messaged their TA support, and showed them a screen shot of the domain within my DD portal to show that it is still set for Fast Transfer.

Once again, on today's Afternic sale, the domain that sold at my BIN is set for fast transfer:

but TA is requesting that I push it to them at DynaDot.

However this time I can't even push it, even after I unlocked it, as it is on hold with AN:

 

[canswift]

I have also had issues with my last few Afternic sales being enabled for Fast Transfer, and yet Afternic TA has requested I do a Manual push (into the customers GoDaddy account no less, you'd think that Fast Transfer could handle this).

But today I received the happy news that another of my names has sold on Afternic, and this time the Fast Transfer option has worked out just fine. Fingers crossed for the next time as well...

 

[xynames]

Once again, on today's Afternic sale, the domain that sold at my BIN is set for fast transfer:

but TA is requesting that I push it to them at DynaDot.

However this time I can't even push it, even after I unlocked it, as it is on hold with AN:

I was able to push it to Afternic today. Whatever was "hold"ing it back was released.

 

[Joe Styler]

Hi Everyone. I was on vacation for a couple weeks and am just getting back to things here. If I missed anything you posted let me know.

 

[BRANDERX]

@Joe Styler welcome back. hope you had a nice vacation.

just a quick question then, I got an email from Godaddy (refund for a domain I bought at closeouts).

The chat agent did some checking & said " it is up to the registry & we couldn't register the domain to your account".

question is, how unusual is it? I thought domains bought at closeouts are guaranteed ?

thank you,

 

[Joe Styler]

Most domains are fulfilled without issue. It depends in part on the registrar the domain expired at when listed for sale at our auction and their particular life cycle on expired domains. But all in all most domains fulfill.

 

[Arca]

The "* Something went wrong. Please try again" error is becoming increasingly frequent, to the extent that I'm now seeing it pretty much every day at some point during the day. Anyone else encountering this issue more and more often? Very frustrating to not be able to log in when you need to access your account.

 

[campout]

@Arca I just got the same error, trying to sign in 1 minute ago.

 

[Joe Styler]

Yup something broke and we fixed it. Should be back up soon across the web. Sorry about that.

 

[Sameh]

Afternic stricks again by removing "at least" 16 domains "most of them were added this month" from my account without any notice or an explanation. I always find out by noticing the domains count in my Dashboard. This has been happening over and over again for more than a year now.

 

[Joe Styler]

If you let [email protected] know they can look into what caused it.

 

[Sameh]

If you let [email protected] know they can look into what caused it.

I submitted a request to look into it. The problem is, this is not the first time the same issue happens. I reported it every single time, and the next month it happens again. If you go through this thread, you will see that I reported it at least three times.

 

[Joe Styler]

Yes that’s true but there are various reasons that the names could be removed. Some are out of our control like WHOIS updates as simple as the registrar updating something very small on it. That’s why it’s best to ask support what happened and see if it’s in your control or not.

 

[Sameh]

Yes that’s true but there are various reasons that the names could be removed. Some are out of our control like WHOIS updates as simple as the registrar updating something very small on it. That’s why it’s best to ask support what happened and see if it’s in your control or not.

Joe, every time I submitted a request to Support I asked why it happened and they never answered this question. My observations were always the same. All of them were domains that I acquired recently, and I added to Afternic within the same month they were deleted in later.

Out of the 16 domains that were removed, 14 were acquired and added this month. Also, 13 out of the 16 were won on NameJet and registered with ENOM. The other 3 were won on GoDaddy.

I hope my observations will help to find out why this keeps happening.

 

[Joe Styler]

Can you send me the names privately. I will have someone check into it. Thanks for letting me know. I appreciate it.

 

[Sameh]

Can you send me the names privately. I will have someone check into it. Thanks for letting me know. I appreciate it.

Elizabeth from Support answered my request and told me that they couldn't find out why the domains were removed. She said it might be due to Ownership Verification.

It makes sense because it happens on a monthly basis. Now, shouldn't you notify the owner by email that his domains were removed due to Ownership Verification?

Also, because of GDPR, Whois Masking will get wider and wider, and it will be harder to verify domain ownership. Shouldn't you imply Ownership Verification via other ways such as TXT entry in DNS Records like Sedo does? It will be easier, time-saving, more accurate to both of us (Afternic and their users).

Thanks for the offer to help and please consider my thoughts.

 

[Joe Styler]

we added txt verification to GoDaddy auctions and will add it to Afternic as well in the future which should help clear this up.