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]

Few Afternic 'issues' today. Reproduced each twice to be sure :-

1. https://www.afternic.com/login
Nothing happens when clicking login.
Workaround is to go back to the homepage, and use the login popup window.

2. On Afternic transfer page the following link doesn't work
"message a TA Agent. "
Nothing happens when clicking the link


Can Afternic staff reproduce the issues please?

If you are using a browser in incognito mode, one that blocks cookies, etc we do not support that. Typicaly the error you are seeing happens when someone is using a private window or a software that blocks things making it act similar to a private window. That is not something we are going to fix.

 

[richtrading]

If you are using a browser in incognito mode, one that blocks cookies, etc we do not support that. Typicaly the error you are seeing happens when someone is using a private window or a software that blocks things making it act similar to a private window. That is not something we are going to fix.

No, just a regular browser Chrome, not incognito. Easy to reproduce every time. All other websites and logins working perfectly..

 

[Joe Styler]

@Joe Styler - This would take someone less than 5 minutes to fix.

International wire transfer uses the MT103 SWIFT message format.

You simply need to pull up your Afternic SWIFT payment to sellers template, locate field 70, which in your case it will state “online advertising income”. Delete that and type in “domain sales proceeds” or “proceeds from the sale of domain name assets” or something else along those lines. Then hit save. That’s it. The whole process takes less than 5 minutes to complete!

It’s in no way a complex task and takes no “development time”, it’s just a matter of changing one sentence in a pre-existing template. Even if whoever you delegated this task to have other things to do, this requires practically no time at all for them get done. They can just take a 5 minute break from what they are doing, pull up the template, and be done with it.

There has got to be one person out of GoDaddy’s 6000+ employees who can take 5 minutes out of their day to do this right away. And if there's nobody at GoDaddy who has time to spend 5 minutes on fixing an issue that affects millions in payments sent around the world, I would be grateful if you could personally take 5 minutes out of your own day and get it done.

It is much more complex than you think and likely not something we are going to do anytime soon as you are the only one I know of asking about it and you can easily show your accountant accurate records of what your payments were for using the account sales history.
We would have to clear it with legal and accounting compliance, check with international stake holders, and work with the third party payment system we employ to pay non US customers and our own development teams.
We have to balance all the requests we get against our own internal projects and what makes the biggest difference for the most customers. We try and find a balance that helps improve our overall product for the most people.

 

[Joe Styler]

No, just a regular browser Chrome, not incognito. Easy to reproduce every time. All other websites and logins working perfectly..

I just tried Chrome a couple times new instances and it worked fine for me. I am not sure why it is not working for you if you have nothing as a browser ad on or blockers that impact it.

 

[nitg16]

Right it is still in Beta. You can manage the domains via Afternic if you do not see them as able to manage in your GoDaddy domain control center. You will no longer see any GoDaddy premium listings because those are going away. The Afternic listing acts as the premium listing used to. Buy Now price shows up the same on the GoDaddy purchase side for buyers searching for domains. Payment and commissions are the same.

The auctions may not show up for a day or two. They have to sync across Afternic's whole network of sellers of which GoDaddy auctions is one and they have to clear GoDaddy's rules to be ok to list, such as a trademark filter.

Just after your reply, I checked the domain again and now I can see it on auctions. It took nearly 4 days though.

When I look up the domain in search bar in GD homepage, it shows that domain is already taken. There is no BIN price or premium listing for the domain. Just a handful of related domains are shown. It has been like this since I first listed the domain using new DLS service four days back.

So current status is:

Afternic lander and listing: working
Godaddy auctions listing: working
GD premium/BIN listing from search bar: not working

Another thing I noted is that floor price is visible on afternic listing which contradicts new DLS rules:

"Floor Price: The lowest acceptable sales price our sales executives can negotiate without seeking your approval. This price is not viewable to buyers."

The floor price shown on afternic is what I set in new beta DLS manager. However, GD auctions is showing a floor price 65% of BIN. It seems GD auctions is not honoring the floor price I set and and is setting it at 65% which is done when when there is no floor price is set by user.

I know it is in beta but just wanted to let you know about these issues.

Thanks again for your response.

 

[Joe Styler]

Just after your reply, I checked the domain again and now I can see it on auctions. It took nearly 4 days though.

When I look up the domain in search bar in GD homepage, it shows that domain is already taken. There is no BIN price or premium listing for the domain. Just a handful of related domains are shown. It has been like this since I first listed the domain using new DLS service four days back.

So current status is:

Afternic lander and listing: working
Godaddy auctions listing: working
GD premium/BIN listing from search bar: not working

Another thing I noted is that floor price is visible on afternic listing which contradicts new DLS rules:

"Floor Price: The lowest acceptable sales price our sales executives can negotiate without seeking your approval. This price is not viewable to buyers."

The floor price shown on afternic is what I set in new beta DLS manager. However, GD auctions is showing a floor price 65% of BIN. It seems GD auctions is not honoring the floor price I set and and is setting it at 65% which is done when when there is no floor price is set by user.

I know it is in beta but just wanted to let you know about these issues.

Thanks again for your response.

I'd like to look into that more. Can you send me the domain name so I can figure it out?

 

[nitg16]

I'd like to look into that more. Can you send me the domain name so I can figure it out?

Sent you a PM.

 

[Arca]

It is much more complex than you think and likely not something we are going to do anytime soon as you are the only one I know of asking about it and you can easily show your accountant accurate records of what your payments were for using the account sales history.
We would have to clear it with legal and accounting compliance, check with international stake holders, and work with the third party payment system we employ to pay non US customers and our own development teams.
We have to balance all the requests we get against our own internal projects and what makes the biggest difference for the most customers. We try and find a balance that helps improve our overall product for the most people.

@Joe Styler - I don't understand what GoDaddy has to gain from continuing to label wire transfers incorrectly?

This is online advertising: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_advertising

Investing in domain names to sell them for a profit has nothing to do with online advertising.

When I sell a domain name, I do not earn “online advertising income”. Period. Why do insist on labeling my payments as “online advertising income”? Whoever set up the template for parking payouts probably failed to distinguish between parking payouts and domain sales payouts, and that error has continued on and the parking template is being used for domain sales. You are using the domain parking payment template as the domain sales payment template, and it's wrong. Why can’t you just start calling domain sales payments domain sales payments, why do you have to call them something else? I don’t see why you would fight against calling domain sales domain sales, when clearly, domain sales are domain sales, and not advertising.

I would get it if you were fighting against a request of mislabeling the payments as a gift or something like that, but I am simply asking for you to label payments for domain sales correctly! What does GoDaddy stand to gain from misidentifying payments to Afternic sellers?

Maintaining incorrect payment details have nothing to do with staying clear with legal and accounting. Banking regulations require the information included with wire transfer to be accurate, as this info is screened by several parties for a number of compliance processes. You are misleading your own payment processor and bank, beneficiary banks, and financial gov bodies around the world in doing so, which has nothing to do with staying compliant. And you will still not change the wire transfer information tag to accurately reflect the nature of the funds your are sending us?

 

[richtrading]

I just tried Chrome a couple times new instances and it worked fine for me. I am not sure why it is not working for you if you have nothing as a browser ad on or blockers that impact it.

Many thanks fro your reply and testing.

I also checked again https://www.afternic.com/login just now
It's working again. So would have been an intermittent fault... can anything be done to make it more reliable?

It still has the broken avatar image link I saw. Can that be fixed?
It is 404:
https://www.afternic.com/images/avatars/266814.jpg

It shows top left of the screen after logging in:

[avatar] is logged in as <myusername>

 

[Joe Styler]

The avatar issue is known. It may or may not be fixed as it is likely being removed in the future.

 

[tonyk2000]

@Joe Styler -

Can you please look into:

The same problem again and again, Domain with fast transfer sold by dotster/domain.com/Endurance or their reseller. Fast transfer happens. I am paid. But, buyer does not receive the domain! After the transfer, domain.com sent me a bunch of emails asking me to confirm ownership change to one John Doe and/or confirm my email, by clickling various links. I cannot click unknown links. Even if they are technically legitimate links (not phishing). I am not supposed to confirm my email to domain.com (I am NO MORE registrant from legal point of view), nor to approve ownership change to John Doe (Afternic never told me who purchased the domain and where!).

Well, as you recommended in this thread earlier, I forwarded all the emails to service@. In hours, if not minutes after they were received. After a few days I learned from service@ that "We see that everything for this transaction appears to be in order at this time. You are free to email TA @ afternic.com if you have any additional questions". How professional is such a response? They did not even read what I was sent to them! OK, I emailed TA. "Afternic transaction insurance" responded stating that they are "reaching out to our Transaction Assurance team to further investigate this".

FIne. TA reaching out to TA. Let it be so.

... and I never heard from TA (or service@) again.

In the meantime, domain.com sent me (hopefully) the last email, stating that they SUSPENDED the domain in question. Indeed, nobody fixed domain delivery issue. Also, I did not click any links, as afternic did not verify are those links legitimate (should be clicked) or not.

Poor buyer.

Am I the only one who cares????

Joe, what needs to be done to have fast transfer domains be correctly delivered to buyers who selected domain.com or their resellers to purchase the domain through? Can you please also look in this particular issue which is logged in afternic system with [ ref:_00DG0i0kS._5001L1AQknt:ref ]

Cc @Joe Styler

 

[Arca]

After answering question from my bank regarding the GoDaddy online advertising payments remitted to me I submitted them records of relevant Afternic sales. Subsequent to answering their questions, my account was blocked today without any explanation given (at least ATM and online banking services have been suspended). After hours on the phone with extremely unhelpful CS staff somebody finally told me vaguely that there were “discrepancies” in my banking activities that they had to look into... They refused to go into more detail than that, and I was told it would only take a few days, and that my banking services would be temporarily suspended until then...

A quick search online reveals that the bank in question has been freezing accounts of customers worldwide at the smallest sign of potentially suspicious activity, so this does not seem like a unique thing... Still a hugely stressful inconvenience.

I don't know whether this has anything to do with my inability to account for payments for supposed advertising services for a company I have never rendered any such services for. But what else could it be? Let's see how this goes...

 

[Haris]

@Arca It's not just limited to GD/AfterNic, Even while receiving payments from Escrow.com, Uniregistry.com, and NameSilo.com, The 'Purpose of Remittance' field has stuff totally unrelated to domain sales. My bank says it's not right and I may face problems in future.

Some examples of these purposes of remittance for a domain sale.

Uniregistry - Market payout
Escrow.com - Advertisements market research and public opinion polling
NameSilo - Software consultancy services
Escrow.com - Compensation of employees
GoDaddy.com - Advertisements market research and public opinion polling (I don't know how they had the exact same purpose as Escrow.com's.
GoDaddy - Online advertising income.

Just a week ago I had to explain the process of a domain sale to my bank and I had to tell them that the purpose of remittance written by the company is a lie. Because if I will tell them that it's advertising income or whatever and in future I will have to provide proofs what will I do?

 

[Arca]

The 'Purpose of Remittance' field has stuff totally unrelated to domain sales. My bank says it's not right and I may face problems in future.

What kinds of problems did they indicate that it would lead to?

Just a week ago I had to explain the process of a domain sale to my bank and I had to tell them that the purpose of remittance written by the company is a lie.

Did you just say that the payment details are false and they left it at that?

I don't understand why GoDaddy is against labeling payments accurately. Afternic/GoDaddy is willfully misleading their own payment processor and bank, any intermediary/correspondent banks, our beneficiary banks, and various financial gov bodies, a number of which are required by law to screen payments for various compliance processes. What does GoDaddy stand to stand to gain from it? I see no upside for them whatsoever, only a ton of potential downside for users like you and me. It puts us in a really difficult situation when we have to explain to our bank that the payment details are in fact untrue, and that the payment is for something entirely different than what the sender says it is for. In the era of KYC and AML and all of these others regulations, banks take issue with that kind of thing.

I am going through hell with my own bank right now (frozen account), apparently because of the discrepancy between how GoDaddy falsely labels my payment, and what the payment is actually for.

They should mark payments as what they are, for example domain sales proceeds or proceeds from sale of domain names. Notably, based on the examples you have provided, domain companies seem averse to describing domain sales as domain sales, refraining from even using the word “domain” when they send out payments… Something like proceeds from sale of intangible assets would be another way to phrase it without mentioning the 'forbidden' word (however, domain companies seemingly treating the word "domain" like it's Lord Voldemort, aka he who must not be named, when it comes to sending out domain payments, is absurd).

BTW I checked all my most recent NameSilo inward remittance advice slips (I get a paper copy in the mail for each wire transfer payment), and the payment details field is always blank, there is no description of the payment. AFAIK, I’ve not gotten any payments tagged with “software consultancy services” from them as you describe. @namesilo - could you please clarify your practices with regards to labeling international wire transfers to sellers for sold domain names?

 

[namesilo]

BTW I checked all my most recent NameSilo inward remittance advice slips (I get a paper copy in the mail for each wire transfer payment), and the payment details field is always blank, there is no description of the payment. AFAIK, I’ve not gotten any payments tagged with “software consultancy services” from them as you describe. @namesilo - could you please clarify your practices with regards to labeling international wire transfers to sellers for sold domain names?

Hello. This is correct - as far as I know, we do not include anything in the "Purpose of Remittance" field. This may be synonymous with the "reference notes" field that our bank uses when sending wires, and we do not include anything in that field when sending wires for Marketplace earning payouts. We have not had any instances reported to us of any problems processing outgoing wires or related issues with receiving bank accounts and we have sent several hundred (if not over 1,000) wires to sellers over the last few years in over 50 different countries. I'm far from a banking expert, but I can tell you we leave the note field blank and have not had reports of any issues. Not sure if these things are related. I will be sure to pass this thread along to our finance team to ensure they are aware of it and to monitor for any issues. Thanks

 

[Haris]

What kinds of problems did they indicate that it would lead to?

Termination of account, and something regarding FATF list.

Did you just say that the payment details are false and they left it at that?

They said they can't trust what I am saying, they only trust what the purpose of remittance field says. But for me it probably won't be a huge problem because banks here want business and they are struggling to meet their targets so they do stuff like that. They also have a problem with me receiving payments from a foreign company in an individual account, while the requirement is that I should have a company account, but they have just warned me and it has been over a year.

BTW I checked all my most recent NameSilo inward remittance advice slips (I get a paper copy in the mail for each wire transfer payment), and the payment details field is always blank, there is no description of the payment. AFAIK, I’ve not gotten any payments tagged with “software consultancy services” from them as you describe. @namesilo - could you please clarify your practices with regards to labeling international wire transfers to sellers for sold domain names?

For tax purposes, I have been told that I need a Proceed Realization Certificate for all payments received. The "software consultancy services" and other examples are mentioned in those certificate's 'Purpose of Remittance' field. If Namesilo.com didn't do it, then I have no idea why it's there.

I completely agree with everything you said.

 

[Embrand]

I guess banks differ quite a lot from country to country. I have a business account and have never experienced problems receiving payout from Afternic or others. Having said that, getting the account verified in the first place took quite an effort.

I have a feeling my bank would not be happy if I received these kinds of payouts in my personal account.

 

[Arca]

Termination of account, and something regarding FATF list.

My bank account is still frozen. Hopefully my account won't get closed because of this...

They said they can't trust what I am saying, they only trust what the purpose of remittance field says.

Exactly, and the bank is likely going to believe that you are trying to deceive them when you can't back up what the sender states that the payment is for.

I gave my bank screenshots from Afternic, but that indisputably has nothing to do with the advertising services GoDaddy claim to be paying me for.

The wire transfer remittance advice clearly indicates: "By order of: GODADDY.COM LLC" and "Payment details: ONLINE ADVERTISING INCOME". From their perspective, the bank obviously expects to see proof of online advertising services, likely rendered to or through GoDaddy.com as they are the ones paying. Banks here are extremely strict and rigid, so I'm afraid a seemingly unrelated screenshot from another company detailing another kind of activity than what I am getting paid for is not going to cut it for them.

For tax purposes, I have been told that I need a Proceed Realization Certificate for all payments received. The "software consultancy services" and other examples are mentioned in those certificate's 'Purpose of Remittance' field.

Exactly, the wire transfer advice is the only official and tamper-proof document generated throughout the sales process, hence why this is a matter of importance.

Afternic doesn't provide us with any kind of sales invoice or transaction documentation whatsoever, so what we're left with is an easily forged screenshot off a not-self-explanatory list of domain sales, and that is supposed to rectify a bank issued remittance advice that apparently is false.

So basically GoDaddy is knowingly mislabeling our payments, and asking us to disprove the bank issued wire transfer with a dinky screenshot from a website that does not even match the sender of the wire transfer...

There are undoubtedly a number of things that could be improved in this process, but accurately labeling payments is the easiest and most cost-efficient way to begin. All GoDaddy has to do is change 3 words. It’s unbelievable that they don’t have the capacity to do such a small thing, despite having 6000 employees. And the explanation that they can't change the payment details because they have to stay compliant is untrue. Falsifying payment details is not how you stay compliant. If staying compliant was a priority they would have sought to label payment accurately, rather than fight against doing so.

 

[Haris]

Joe Styler says they aren't willing to do anything about it because you are the only one who brought this up. Which country are you from? and I don't get why other AfterNic sellers are not facing this issue with their banks, mine is an exception because I am in a somewhat lawless country.

Now, As we all saw they can't even fix little stuff on the AfterNic platform so we can't hope that they will resolve this issue, ever. So I think you should try and make your bank release your funds and contact AfterNic sellers in your country and understand how they are able to bypass this issue, which bank are they a customer of, some banks are less strict than others, that seems to be the only way, I think.

I don't think we have a reason to be afraid of the law, these companies are the ones who are lying and you have the proofs of your sales and the proofs that you warned that company many times but they didn't fix anything and they will be the ones responsible. I told my bank the same thing, I have all the proofs of what I am doing, I am not breaking any laws, I can't make these companies speak the truth, and even though I didn't say that, they know that if they will make me leave, other banks will be happy to have me as their customer.

 

[Joe Styler]

You can easily show the bank your account with us and the history of what the payments are for. You can also have them contact us for clarification if you would like. We have made hundreds of thousands of payments without issue. It is easy enough to show what the payments are for. You also receive an email letting you know your domain sold and what the sale amount was.
We also pay out various payments through the same payment mechanism, a third party vendor makes all non US payments and payments are made for various reason via the same platform such as parking payments, affiliate payments, and reseller payments, in addition to domain sales.