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?

 

[Joe Styler]

Possibly, I've tried to reach Joe Styler multiple times - but I only hear white noise back.

I was on vacation. I just got back and responded to you today.

 

[Joe Styler]

Transactions are taking an unacceptable amount of time to move forwards these days.

Afternic frequently takes 4-5 days to "verify funds" after buyer has paid. On other platforms it is instantaneous. And credit cards are getting rejected more often, and buyers are asked to send a wire transfer instead! This is a big hassle and turns buyers off, especially overseas ones (and many of them disappear or buy the name via another platform - without any payment issues). No other registrar or platforms reject credit cards this much. I have actually suggested some buyers to buy the name via GoDaddy instead, and guess what, GoDaddy accepts the credit cards rejected by Afternic! If GoDaddy accepts the credit card, why can't you?

After initiating a push, as the Afternic Transaction Assurance system instructs us to do, nobody at Afternic accepts the push for 5-7 days. For this system to work, responsive cooperation is required from Afternic! Are there so few Transaction Assurance staff that they only have time to log in to each registrar to accept pushes once a week? Other marketplaces usually move forward with this within 24 hours. And when Afternic gets the name, due to slow communication with buyer, they may hold the domain for another 5-10 days before moving it to buyer, or longer if they "forget" to move the name to buyer (which happens a lot if you don't remind them - shouldn't there be some internal system to remind escrow agents about moving names?).

So what usually takes a day, or up to a few days on other platforms, often end up taking 2-3 weeks at Afternic. The "Transaction Assurance" system provides a very unsatisfactory experience for both buyers and sellers.

Please hire more Transaction Assurance staff to be able to move forward with transactions in a timely, professional, and responsive manner.

We have the same credit card processor on the back end for both websites and the same team looking into the transactions. There may be an edge case here I am missing. You can always email your account rep or [email protected] for help with any names that you sold and should receive a response very quickly.

 

[tonyk2000]

Joe, in light of recently discovered WiFi security problem -

https : // www. easydns. com/blog/2017/10/16/major-wifi-vulnerability-discovered-krack-attack/

maybe it is time for afternic to finally implement https protocol, in correct way? As this namepros thread (together with the 2nd related thread) are indicating, afternic techs were never able to correctly setup forwarding from http to https (the site showed all sorts of errors), so they elected to disable this forwarding. Moreover, even if an user is using https - then the browser would still warn them about https issues after login, such as insecure images or scripts or whatever.

As per careers dot godaddy dot net website, GD is now looking to hire "Senior Software Development Engineer - Security". Since this job is still posted at the time of this writing, why not to hire one-time "elite" freelancer to fix all the security issues afternics main website currently has? Also 2-factor authentication would be helpful, just imagine what would happen if somebody manages to login as domain seller and change all prices to $10

 

[richtrading]

Yes, Also Namejet should implement HTTPS too. Why do these big companies not take security seriously?

 

[carob]

maybe it is time for afternic to finally implement https protocol, in correct way? As this namepros thread (together with the 2nd related thread) are indicating, afternic techs were never able to correctly setup forwarding from http to https (the site showed all sorts of errors), so they elected to disable this forwarding. Moreover, even if an user is using https - then the browser would still warn them about https issues after login, such as insecure images or scripts or whatever.

They could actually do most of this using Cloudflare in a few clicks, with no technical ability.

They just have to want to and as you can see, people here have asked them over and over and over again to address this. And they certainly can afford to - the question is, can they they afford not to?

Maybe they just think no matter what no one will go elsewhere - so they save money by not fixing stuff and clients bear the risk and the costs and the inconvenience.

 

[richtrading]

Afternic are pretty good at negotiating sales, so we stick with them. Who else is as good?

 

[Arca]

The review system is out of wack. Again.

1000+ of my domain listings are not working.

 

[xynames]

I have a certain domain listed for sale at Afternic that it seems to fit all the criteria for Fast Transfer, but the request won't come at the DynaDot side.

I wrote to AN asking why, and they said because it is transfer locked.
Specifically, they wrote: "According to the WHOIS, your domain is currently locked against transfer by your registrar, Dynadot. We cannot determine whether this is a 60 day lock or a manual setting."

Well, ALL of my domains at DD are transfer locked, this shouldn't matter, because there is an override setting that allows the AN Fast Transfer (on the DD side this setting is marked under Quick Info as "Quick info afternic").

In other words, on the DD side even though all of my domains are transfer locked, still the eligible ones, are additionally marked for AN Fast Transfer.

So why is this one particular domain not being accepted for Fast Transfer? It fits all of the below:

• .com, .net, .biz, .org, .pw and .info TLDs only
• Listed domains must have a Buy Now price
• Buy Now price must be below $50,000
• Registered for 60 days or longer with the current registrar and must not be subject to a 60 day registry lock (usually due to recent WHOIS update)
• Registration must not be within 30 days of expiration
• Registered with a Premium Promotion Partner

@Joe Styler I could PM or email you the domain name so that you could confidentially take a look. Thanks!

 

[GoKaizen]

Noticed this too. Lots of my domains are getting kicked into "In Review" status.

@Joe Styler Why???

Show attachment 71669
The review system is out of wack. Again.

1000+ of my domain listings are not working.

 

[xynames]

As far as the "Domains Pending Review" status, "hidden," I have a few dozen that I believe the issue is that they consider them "adult" or "obscene" although really they aren't adult most all don't contain any real obscene words, that remain in review, the number hasn't changed up or down since the beginning. I'm sending a list of them that should be fine and approved, to AN now.

 

[tonyk2000]

Indeed. About 15% of my afternic portfolio became "pending review". The domains in question were previously successfully added, "reviewed" where the system elected to, and had fast transfer enabled.
In other words, Afternic elected to stop distribution of these domains, sending them to "review".
???
Cc @Joe Styler

 

[tonyk2000]

I wrote to AN asking why, and they said because it is transfer locked.
Specifically, they wrote: "According to the WHOIS, your domain is currently locked against transfer by your registrar, Dynadot. We cannot determine whether this is a 60 day lock or a manual setting."

Well, ALL of my domains at DD are transfer locked, this shouldn't matter, because there is an override setting that allows the AN Fast Transfer

Sometimes I think that Afternic should hire domainers - customers to process support requests. This case clearly shows that the Afternic support representative does not have a basic understanding of how their system works, and the customer has to educate them. Alice in Wonderland...

 

[loredan]

Show attachment 71669
The review system is out of wack. Again.

1000+ of my domain listings are not working.

Noticed this too. Lots of my domains are getting kicked into "In Review" status.

@Joe Styler Why???

Same here, some domains have been moved from "listed" to "in review" status ...

 

[Joe Styler]

I have a certain domain listed for sale at Afternic that it seems to fit all the criteria for Fast Transfer, but the request won't come at the DynaDot side.

I wrote to AN asking why, and they said because it is transfer locked.
Specifically, they wrote: "According to the WHOIS, your domain is currently locked against transfer by your registrar, Dynadot. We cannot determine whether this is a 60 day lock or a manual setting."

Well, ALL of my domains at DD are transfer locked, this shouldn't matter, because there is an override setting that allows the AN Fast Transfer (on the DD side this setting is marked under Quick Info as "Quick info afternic").

In other words, on the DD side even though all of my domains are transfer locked, still the eligible ones, are additionally marked for AN Fast Transfer.

So why is this one particular domain not being accepted for Fast Transfer? It fits all of the below:

• .com, .net, .biz, .org, .pw and .info TLDs only
• Listed domains must have a Buy Now price
• Buy Now price must be below $50,000
• Registered for 60 days or longer with the current registrar and must not be subject to a 60 day registry lock (usually due to recent WHOIS update)
• Registration must not be within 30 days of expiration
• Registered with a Premium Promotion Partner

@Joe Styler I could PM or email you the domain name so that you could confidentially take a look. Thanks!

sure send me the domain.

 

[UncleBrand]

Big issue that lose money for afternic and users,

when a domain is already listed, YOU SHOULD HAVE THE OPTION TO CLAIM THE DOMAIN automatically,
and not going on a time wasting process of contacting the support
for people who manage portfolio of 500 to a few thousands domains, that is a big waste

i never bothered to contact the support, for a simple reason,
i usually add domain by bunches at each acquisition,
and don't have the time to spend chit chat with the support,
and i have probably 50 domains listed on afternic under the previous owner name

 

[xynames]

I have a certain domain listed for sale at Afternic that it seems to fit all the criteria for Fast Transfer, but the request won't come at the DynaDot side.

I wrote to AN asking why, and they said because it is transfer locked.
Specifically, they wrote: "According to the WHOIS, your domain is currently locked against transfer by your registrar, Dynadot. We cannot determine whether this is a 60 day lock or a manual setting."

Well, ALL of my domains at DD are transfer locked, this shouldn't matter, because there is an override setting that allows the AN Fast Transfer (on the DD side this setting is marked under Quick Info as "Quick info afternic").

In other words, on the DD side even though all of my domains are transfer locked, still the eligible ones, are additionally marked for AN Fast Transfer.

So why is this one particular domain not being accepted for Fast Transfer? It fits all of the below:

• .com, .net, .biz, .org, .pw and .info TLDs only
• Listed domains must have a Buy Now price
• Buy Now price must be below $50,000
• Registered for 60 days or longer with the current registrar and must not be subject to a 60 day registry lock (usually due to recent WHOIS update)
• Registration must not be within 30 days of expiration
• Registered with a Premium Promotion Partner

@Joe Styler I could PM or email you the domain name so that you could confidentially take a look. Thanks!

Few messages exchanged with Joe, couple submissions at AN for support, and an email to an AN manager, and now this and another domain are corrected and this issue is resolved! (until next time )

 

[Joe Styler]

We just looked through the support team's emails and our systems and spoke with the developers. We dont see any issues with people's names not acting as they should in general. If you have specific examples you can email [email protected] so they can look into it. With what we have so far we cannot find any issues.

 

[xynames]

Actually, I just found four more that have BIN / Floor set, appear to be fully eligible, and for whatever reason are not appearing as Fast Transfer eligible at the Dynadot end. I did send in requests on these to support via the submission form. I will PM these to you right now too. Thanks!

Over all, it's just a time consuming task to have to sift through these regularly, both for us, and for you...to figure out which ones automatically went through, and which we must mention to get action on.

It's not your fault. This sort of automation SNAFU happens all the time, for example with eBay sales...when we enter tracking numbers for shipments on the eBay side, they are supposed to transfer over and post automatically on the PayPal side if we have a linked PayPal account, but doesn't always happen. It is some kind of tech glitch.

 

[tonyk2000]

We just looked through the support team's emails and our systems and spoke with the developers. We dont see any issues with people's names not acting as they should in general. If you have specific examples you can email [email protected] so they can look into it. With what we have so far we cannot find any issues.

Joe, How about domains that unexpectedly became PENDING REVIEW even though they were all set before? Do you suggest to send a list of 400+ domains (my case) to service@ ? What for? And how am I supposed to generate such a list within afternic interface, to begin with?

As you can see, this issue is reported by various members

 

[xynames]

tonyk they obviously don't like you. I don't like you, either!

Ha...Just kidding. Couldn't resist a little mid week humor.