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?

 

[xynames]

Problem continues where domain that was already set for fast transfer at DynaDot

sold at Afternic for the BIN, and yet I still had to push it over manually as Fast Transfer did not kick in.

I did send the non-redacted screen shot to both Afternic transaction assurance and Afternic support to see what they say, but the last time I did this their response was of no help.

 

[Joe Styler]

Problem continues where domain that was already set for fast transfer at DynaDot

sold at Afternic for the BIN, and yet I still had to push it over manually as Fast Transfer did not kick in.

I did send the non-redacted screen shot to both Afternic transaction assurance and Afternic support to see what they say, but the last time I did this their response was of no help.

Do you have an account rep at Afternic or GoDaddy?

 

[MasterOfMyDomains]

Trying to book a name at netsol. Dropped last year.
Investor never removed it from their afternic listing, so its showing their listed price at afternic, as purchase price at netsol. Someone was dreaming.
It's showing as available to buy for 12.45 at goodaddy, netsol 4k.
Daddy picked up on it Joe, but your end didn't. 10 months

Good news Called the hotline at afternic, spoke to Kaimi, (1am pst) answered on second ring. She did her job, quite well, and the name has been unlisted from afternic. We will see how long until netsol picks that up, she said couple hours.

Control panel still defaults to 10, even after reset to 50, you do edit, back to 10 rows. Efty has 2500 rows/page of names Joe, why cant you? Your control panel is really hurt Joe, help us out and make it so can see 500 names per page, or 2500 like efty.
Sedo is 2000, nice and clean, check it out joe, thats what i want to see, just like your competition, maybe better?

I also searched my name at netsol, and i got a pop up form to fill out for inquiry. Guess this is the kind of situation where we get a price request, as there was no option to make offer.

From netsol search

SearchedDomain is for sale!

This premium domain is available for sale through one of Network Solutions® partners. For more information, please fill out the form below please and we will contact you shortly. Submitting this form does not commit you to any purchase agreement, however, it does provide Network Solutions with your consent to share this information with the owner in accordance with our Privacy Policy
*Required

First Name:*
Last Name:*
Phone:*
Email Address:*
Comments:

The name in question is at namesilo. BIN 799
I also searched said name at other premium and standard network sites https://www.afternic.com/domain-reseller-network
epik shows to backorder
register.com say available to buy but need to login
name.com shows make offer and goes to sedo
domaintools shows banner link to request price via afternic page, where no bin is set, just call get price in 24 hours
Dynadot, one of your standard members shows make offer and linko goes to sedo
looks like your standard network registrars are pointing your stock to sedo.
Maybe more than the few of us domainers, like your advertising network are sick of all this 1980's type service

So we know where these price requests are coming from, right @Joe Styler the network registrars that you claim to expose our names to more than 35 million searches per month.

 

[creataweb]

Trying to book a name at netsol. Dropped last year.
Investor never removed it from their afternic listing, so its showing their listed price at afternic, as purchase price at netsol. Someone was dreaming.
It's showing as available to buy for 12.45 at goodaddy, netsol 4k.
Daddy picked up on it Joe, but your end didn't. 10 months

Good news Called the hotline at afternic, spoke to Kaimi, (1am pst) answered on second ring. She did her job, quite well, and the name has been unlisted from afternic. We will see how long until netsol picks that up, she said couple hours.

Control panel still defaults to 10, even after reset to 50, you do edit, back to 10 rows. Efty has 2500 rows/page of names Joe, why cant you? Your control panel is really hurt Joe, help us out and make it so can see 500 names per page, or 2500 like efty.
Sedo is 2000, nice and clean, check it out joe, thats what i want to see, just like your competition, maybe better?

I also searched my name at netsol, and i got a pop up form to fill out for inquiry. Guess this is the kind of situation where we get a price request, as there was no option to make offer.

From netsol search

SearchedDomain is for sale!

This premium domain is available for sale through one of Network Solutions® partners. For more information, please fill out the form below please and we will contact you shortly. Submitting this form does not commit you to any purchase agreement, however, it does provide Network Solutions with your consent to share this information with the owner in accordance with our Privacy Policy
*Required

First Name:*
Last Name:*
Phone:*
Email Address:*
Comments:

The name in question is at namesilo. BIN 799
I also searched said name at other premium and standard network sites https://www.afternic.com/domain-reseller-network
epik shows to backorder
register.com say available to buy but need to login
name.com shows make offer and goes to sedo
domaintools shows banner link to request price via afternic page, where no bin is set, just call get price in 24 hours
Dynadot, one of your standard members shows make offer and linko goes to sedo
looks like your standard network registrars are pointing your stock to sedo.
Maybe more than the few of us domainers, like your advertising network are sick of all this 1980's type service

So we know where these price requests are coming from, right @Joe Styler the network registrars that you claim to expose our names to more than 35 million searches per month.

Yeah I noticed this too. Names that were dropped last year and available were showing as premium price only on NetSol and couldn't be registered there without paying the high price. Guess I'll have to send a list to AN to remove those names so I can register them.

 

[MasterOfMyDomains]

I was hoping it would rectify itself, but i will call netsol and get them to update it.
They would love to sell than unregistered name for 4k

 

[creataweb]

AN should really fix this unregistered domain problem showing in their system as "for sale" - I am having to email them for every name I cannot register for reg. fee because it's showing as premium pricing.

This should be easily accomplished by automatically de-listing names that are no longer active.

 

[anantj]

Are you really hand-registering at NetSol? Why? Why not use one of the more trustworthy, ethical and reliable registrars?
This is besides the point that yes, Afternic should definitely fix the issue irrespective of the registrar being used

 

[MasterOfMyDomains]

Money honey. NS finally made the update dropping the price from premium priced to $1
24 hours after i called afternic and let them know, their listing was invalid for 8 months
No problems with netsol other than them up selling like crazy, making it difficult to update stuff and selling my whois, probably posting it all over the web, the bast*rds.
Name added to afternic last night appearing in goodaddy search tonight. Yay!
Same name when searched at whois.domaintools.com is showing for sale banner, and links to https://www.afternic.com/forsale/thename .com of course
Get a price in less than 24 hours
Fill out the form below. One of our domain experts will have a price to you within 24 business hours.

 

[xynames]

<<NS finally made the update dropping the price from premium priced to $1>>

?

I actually couldn't follow most of what you just posted, what you meant or what you were talking about.

 

[MasterOfMyDomains]

I wanted a name. It was previously owned by someone who had it listed on afternic. Afternic price apoears when you search a name at netsol. I had afternic remove the listing, and it took 24 hours to update pricing at netsol to display reg fee (1$)Other registrars showed it as reg fee entire time.
Avoidable @Joe Styler

 

[Joe Styler]

We are working on adding different verification methods which should help remove some old listings. We do go through the names and remove unregistered inventory, but are limited with how many WHOIS lookups we can do at any time. We literally have tens of millions of requests to perform to do this so we are exploring alternative ways to get the results without having to ping the registry servers continually.

 

[tonyk2000]

we are exploring alternative ways to get the results without having to ping the registry servers continually

GoDaddy offers domain backorder service for pendingdelete domains, which by itself means that GD at least grabs daily pendingdelete lists generated by Verisign registry (.com/.net). It appears that comparing these lists with afternic db on daily basis can be programmed, with an easy db query. Any domain name that became pendingdelete can be safely removed from afternic account - if found in afternic db. This would eliminate maybe 80% of duplicates. AND SAVE A LOT OF TIME TO BOTH SUPPORT GUYS AND THE CUSTOMERS. However it also appears that afternic runs without any tech engineers serving the system on regular basis, so maybe afternic can hire one-time freelancer to setup the above daily check. No irony here, it is an unfortunate fact that the system is not maintained well.

 

[anantj]

with an easy db query

On both GD and Afternic, nothing, literally nothing, is easy!
I mean changing functionality/code of course

And before someone gets on my case, of course, I do not work for GD or Afternic and do not know this for a fact. This is just based on experience from change and feature requests!

 

[anantj]

@Arca Did you Bank account issue and the fund statement issue get resolved? What's the status of this?

 

[NYJimbo]

I sold a domain two days ago for $1650 through Afternic.

Domain was already succesfully accepted into the fast transfer service so it should have been a quick process.

Domain is reg'd on Tucows/Opensrs.
Buyer found it on Godaddy. Bought and paid for in full.

I received NO email from Afternic, NO email from Godaddy, NO email from Tucows/Opensrs.

The only reason I know about it is because the buyer figured out I was the seller and emailed me.

Afternic shows "PENDING SALE". But not one single detail anywhere on their website as to what happens next or if they are trying to contact me or anything.

Tucows/Opensrs still shows me as the owner.

Ok, what do I do now ? Who has the money ? Who has the domain ? Why has NOBODY contacted me ?

What is the point of "fast transfer" if we have to go through this ?

Last month I sold a domain through Undeveloped, they emailed me the moment they got the money and we had emails back and forth through every step of the sale.

 

[xynames]

I had a low to mid five figure sale where the buyer paid for it on GoDaddy and then it showed as pending for two business days in my Afternic. In that case, I also received no notification about it other than a request to change the registrar that came from GDaddy, but I was told later that this was an auto email that came out because apparently a domain hosting, website or some such had been included with the sale. Obviously I did not act on the request because I hadn't been paid anything yet. It was only after I called in to AN that I was told that there was in fact a sale, that was pending verification of funds. Five hours after I made that call, I received an email saying that the domain had sold, pending verification of funds. When the funds were verified, as I mentioned, two business days later, I received all the emails asking me to transfer it, etc. and the sale closed just fine.

I posted about the above here at DomainPros and there were all kinds of theories people offered about how maybe someone just put it into the GDiddy shopping cart and then never paid for it, and that it was all somehow a bogus sale, but in my case - the sale concluded and I received all the money, all low to mid five figures of it!

Also, I recently found out that just because a domain is accepted into Fast Transfer and is in fact IN Fast Transfer status and is sold, does not mean it will Fast Transfer, because some sales are directly on Afternic (which, Afternic is not a registrar so it cannot fast transfer to itself), and also there are other partner sites that do not support the fast transfer, so there are situations where the domain must be transferred manually, such as via push to Afternic even with Fast Transfer properly set and in place.

I am to the point where I have confidence in Afternic, and if a sale is going to happen there, it will always close and I will always get the money. I don't even worry about it anymore I have too many sales happening sometimes to track them all hour by hour. Certainly, I review all bank deposits every now and then to make sure the totals gibe with my own spreadsheet, but otherwise, I trust in the process.


What IS burdensome however is the effort I have to put in to make sure a given domain gets Fast Transfer listed after I set a BIN/floor. I now have a sort of Afternic / GoDaddy account manager to help with this. Also it is a little troublesome that I do not always receive the emails notifying me that someone has made a price inquiry, such that I feel the need to login to my Afternic regularly just to check to see if a price inquiry is waiting there for action.

 

[Arca]

@Arca Did you Bank account issue and the fund statement issue get resolved? What's the status of this?

My bank account is still frozen due to GoDaddy faking the payment details of my Afternic payment...

 

[Arca]

They could do Afternic sellers a huge preventive favor if they labelled payments with "Afternic domain sales proceeds" or something like that. At least we'd have a shot at getting our seemingly unrelated screenshots from Afternic to be taken as a valid explanation of these payments sent out by GoDaddy. Otherwise, how is an Afternic screenshot going to explain an "online advertising income" payment from GoDaddy? To an outsider there is just no relation, and even a domain insider would expect to see some kind of parking income proof, because that's what GoDaddy labels the payment as!

They have the largest domain marketplace in the world, yet they are not even committed enough to the marketplace to set up a separate wire transfer template for it... I suppose they use the GoDaddy CashParking wire transfer template to pay all international wire transfers! (hence the "online advertising income" from GoDaddy in the payment details). The millions of payments they issue for Afternic sales don't even justify a separate and accurate wire transfer payment template!? We shouldn't be shocked they're not fixing up Afternic if the marketplace isn't even worth setting up an accurate wire transfer template to them.

The disregard for and lack of commitment to helping Afternic sellers is really disappointing, and as my frozen bank account shows, it is also creating seriously negative repercussions for Afternic sellers.

I really wish they would get this issue sorted out. It's unbelievable that I am fighting to get Afternic to simply label payments accurately, yet they insist on continuing to create fake payment details when they pay sellers. Just doesn't make any sense for them to do so.

Just please get this fixed, please include the words "afternic" and "domain" in some way in the wire transfer notes, so that we can convincingly legitimize these payments when asked.

 

[NYJimbo]

Why the hell don't they have a ticket system for problems ?

I was inquiring on an issue through their contact page which asks for "Your name", "Your email address". But with the info I entered, they said they could not find anything, so I had to send them my user nick name and email address for my username.

So I lost a few days waiting for a response to the initial request and who knows how long I have to wait for another one.

You should be able to login to your account (which I was when I sent the first question), post a simple question and they should already have ALL of your info already.

If they do have some kind of ticket system, I sure as hell can't find it.

 

[anantj]

If they do have some kind of ticket system, I sure as hell can't find it.

They don't! And the e-mail support sucks despite what some claim!

 

[NYJimbo]

They don't! And the e-mail support sucks despite what some claim!

Yup, 2-3 days for a single response. Maybe longer. Sad.

 

[Haris]

Domain sold on 10th August, auto transferred to buyer on same day. Payout date was 25th August. Payment still not received.

I usually don't mind delayed payments. But there should be an explanation why there is so much delay. Service@afternic told me on 21st August that "According to our Transaction Assurance team this has now been approved for payment and should pay out tomorrow". And today they said "We see the wire transfer payment on 8/21 status as submitted, but not paid yet." Submitted but not paid? I don't get it.

 

[NYJimbo]

I usually don't mind delayed payments. But there should be an explanation why there is so much delay. .

I really believe Afternic doesn't give a damn. Once they get the buyers payment they take their 20%. Any work they have to do after that is just an annoyance to them.

 

[Haris]

Domain sold on 10th August, auto transferred to buyer on same day. Payout date was 25th August. Payment still not received.

I usually don't mind delayed payments. But there should be an explanation why there is so much delay. Service@afternic told me on 21st August that "According to our Transaction Assurance team this has now been approved for payment and should pay out tomorrow". And today they said "We see the wire transfer payment on 8/21 status as submitted, but not paid yet." Submitted but not paid? I don't get it.

Still waiting for payment and an explanation @Joe Styler

It's almost a month since domain transferred.

 

[Joe Styler]

Submitted means we paid. We don't have that money anymore. We sent it to the company we use to make payments to be paid to you. Paid means we have confirmation back from the company we use to make payments that they received confirmation that the money hit your bank account. So what they are saying is we sent the money a couple weeks ago. If the payment fails we see that too. By now we should have seen a fail or paid status. If you email [email protected] with the information and ask them to trace the money since it has been a couple weeks they can get the other company to audit the payment and find out where the money is. Depending on your country and amount of the sale it is not that unusual for a bank to ask for more information around the person who owns the account before they release the money. It is hard to say without running a trace on the funds.