discuss Scammed on GoDaddy auctions!!

[JudgeMind]

A month ag I won auctions for two LLLL .com domains on godaddy. These were both public auction. I paid for the auctions then I sent the sellers info for transfers. A week and a half went by and I did not hear from the sellers nor did I receive either domains into my godaddy acct. I sent messages to sellers two more times after that. At this point it had been 3 weeks and still no response. I sent an email to godaddy explaining what happened and that I needed their assistance getting my domains or getting a refund. Here is their response:

As we are a payment processing service rather than an escrow service, we hold the funds for a specified period of time, and must release the funds at the end of that period unless we as your agent receive a dispute. As a dispute had not been received during the 15 day period described in the agreement, your funds have already been released to the seller. Any request for return of the funds will need to be made directly to the seller. However, we cannot intervene further. Once the 15-day Transaction Assurance period is completed, the window of opportunity to dispute the transaction has closed and we are limited in ways to help.

 

[Joe Styler]

Judgemind reached out to me last night and I started looking into it for him. We don't ever want to have people lose money or not get a domain. We do thousands of seamless transactions a day. This is an edge case and I will assist in it. Thank you for the members who suggested he reach out to me and for those who brought this to my attention.

 

[JudgeMind]

Update!!

Thanks to the help @JoeStyler I was able to get reimbursed for my purchases. The individual who took payment without sending the domain names to me has been suspended from godaddy.

Thanks all for the help with this. Hope to never deal with this again.

 

[Joe Styler]

Thanks for all the feedback. We will take care of this for the customer. We are actively working on a way to further reduce instances like this and continue to speed up the payment times for the seller. We do verify names via the whois. As I said, this is an edge case where the buyer didn't wind up with the domain but we are continuing to refine the process and make things even tighter.
We have been continually working towards a friction less aftermarket where people can buy and sell domains even more quickly and get paid just as quickly. Integrating with Afternic earlier was a part of this overarching goal and other plans are being implemented to improve the platform overall.

 

[solarix]

Hi JudgeMind, I had a very similar thing happen.

About a month or so ago I purchased a LLLL on GoDaddy (BIN price). 10 days go by and I still had not heard anything, so I emailed auctions support and they proceed to tell me that the owner had let the domain expire and it went to public auction. They told me to bid on it if I wanted to get the name.

I didn't think that was acceptable, and was not about to get into a bidding war and over pay. So I just decided to wait and see what happened with the auction outcome. (This was probably the mistake I made.. Should have just cancelled immediately.)

I email again after the auction is over, some time passes and GoDaddy tells me.

Thank you for contacting AfterMarket Support. Since no dispute was filed within the 15 day dispute period, the funds were released to the Seller on day 20. We are still attempting to work with the Seller to resolve this matter. ​

Well, a few more days go by and still have not heard anything, so I email for another update. Here is what they tell me.

As previously mentioned, we are contacting the seller to get the funds returned and we will update you when we have more information. ​

As stated in Section 9 DISPUTE POLICY of the Domain Name Aftermarket Membership Agreement, which you accepted at the time of purchasing your membership: "To file a Dispute, you must submit an email to [email protected] . The email must include, Your account number, name and contact information, the order number associated with the transaction, the domain name over which the Dispute arises and a detailed account of the Dispute. Such email must be received within 15 days from the sale date." Reference to the agreement can be found below:
https://www.godaddy.com/Agreements/ShowDoc.aspx?se=+&pageid=DNA_MEMBER

As we are a payment processing service rather than an escrow service, we hold the funds for a specified period of time, and must release the funds at the end of that period unless we as your agent receive a dispute. As a dispute had not been received during the 15 day period described in the agreement, your funds have already been released to the seller. Once the 15-day Transaction Assurance period is completed, the window of opportunity to dispute the transaction has closed and we are limited in ways to help.

We have requested that the seller return the funds so that a refund may be issued to you.
​

Uh oh, this does not sound promising. I nearly blew a gasket, but figured I would keep my cool and just fire off an email to that dispute address and see what happens, before going to more extreme methods.

Here is their response. Perhaps light at the end of the tunnel?

Thank you for contacting Aftermarket support. As you have been advised several times because a dispute was not filed prior to the funds being released we hae to make every effort to retrieve the funds from the seller before issuing a refund. To date the seller has been unresponsive to our calls and emails. We have sent 1 final email. If we have not contacted you about a refund in the next 7 days please reply to this message and we will issue your refund at that time regardless of whether or not the funds have been returned.​

Sent one final email for an update. They respond and tell me that I will be refunded. Thank god!

Thank you for contacting us. We have issued a refund for the purchase of ****.COM. Please allow 3-5 days for the refund to process. Please let us know if you require any additional assistance.​

It's very unfortunate their marketplace allows this kind of crap to happen and our funds get tied up for weeks. Just be persistent and you should be able to get the money back.

Good luck!

 

[Joe Styler]

You can email auctions at godaddy dot com to get to the auctions support team. This is only for auction related issues and if you send in stuff on say hosting, they won't be able to help.

And of course you can always reach out to me on here if you are not getting an answer quickly enough.

 

[forge]

I have sold quite a few domains on Godaddy and they do have this 15 day period thing. Basically if I sold a domain that is NOT registered with GD after the 5 day window when Godaddy verifies the funds Godaddy would send a mail asking to get in touch with the buyer and transfer the domain.

Also, according to GoDaddy Auctions TOS, it is a period of "approximately 20 days". Frankly, once you read the fine print, you may never want to buy another domain using GoDaddy Auctions.

Caveat emptor.

 

[Name Trader]

I'd prefer not to go through all the scenarios that could potentially happen as I think that would give bad actors more ideas about how to potentially exploit people. I will say that we do verify names pretty thoroughly via account ownership if the name is with us, whois and other methods if not, which make it hard for a person who does not own the domain to list it for sale.

We have very few issues where people don't either get the domain they pay for or their money back when there is an issue, very few as in less than I can count on my hand in a year. And I have been in charge of the auctions support team in the past for years and director of the Aftermarket for years so I have a pretty good handle on it.

So for something like this to happen, you would need to list a domain name for sale that you don't own.
It would have to pass our ownership checks.
It would have to sell.
We would have to miss any suspicious activity by the seller- which we have both automated and manual daily checks on 365 days a year.
The buyer would have to not say anything for weeks after paying for a domain, not getting it and not hearing anything from the seller about moving them the domain.
We would have to make a payment out to the seller we couldn't get back.
We would have to be unwilling to refund the buyer at our loss to make sure the integrity of the auction house stands, which is worth much more than the refund.

All these things would have to happen and at each point there are less and less names that can sneak through each of these steps to the point that this becomes super rare.

When something bad does get through as rare as it is, it is an opportunity to look over everything and make it more secure which we consistently do as new threats emerge.

We do thousands and thousands of transactions per day almost all go through without an issue and the ones that come up as issues we look at to try and improve the experience for everyone.

I can't promise a perfect marketplace but I can promise we will continue to improve and work towards a better experience for everyone and take our customer's concerns seriously.

That doesn't sound anything like the "real" public face of godaddy which replied to @judgemind.

As we are a payment processing service rather than an escrow service, we hold the funds for a specified period of time, and must release the funds at the end of that period unless we as your agent receive a dispute. As a dispute had not been received during the 15 day period described in the agreement, your funds have already been released to the seller. Any request for return of the funds will need to be made directly to the seller. However, we cannot intervene further. Once the 15-day Transaction Assurance period is completed, the window of opportunity to dispute the transaction has closed and we are limited in ways to help.

It shouldn't be necessary to resort to public shaming, to get these problems resolved. And maybe you only had to deal with <5/yr because all the others were scared off by the severity, tone, hopelessness, and finality of GoDaddy's responsiveness. All due to GoDaddy's lousy ToS on this matter. I don't think @JudgeMind would have ever got this resolved without posting here publicly on NamePros. Which says a lot about how GoDaddy treats it's customers. IMHO.

Also. If these problems are really <5/yr, you can afford to just pay all these disputes out without putting the injured party thru this wringer.

 

[Joe Styler]

I'd prefer not to go through all the scenarios that could potentially happen as I think that would give bad actors more ideas about how to potentially exploit people. I will say that we do verify names pretty thoroughly via account ownership if the name is with us, whois and other methods if not, which make it hard for a person who does not own the domain to list it for sale.

We have very few issues where people don't either get the domain they pay for or their money back when there is an issue, very few as in less than I can count on my hand in a year. And I have been in charge of the auctions support team in the past for years and director of the Aftermarket for years so I have a pretty good handle on it.

So for something like this to happen, you would need to list a domain name for sale that you don't own.
It would have to pass our ownership checks.
It would have to sell.
We would have to miss any suspicious activity by the seller- which we have both automated and manual daily checks on 365 days a year.
The buyer would have to not say anything for weeks after paying for a domain, not getting it and not hearing anything from the seller about moving them the domain.
We would have to make a payment out to the seller we couldn't get back.
We would have to be unwilling to refund the buyer at our loss to make sure the integrity of the auction house stands, which is worth much more than the refund.

All these things would have to happen and at each point there are less and less names that can sneak through each of these steps to the point that this becomes super rare.

When something bad does get through as rare as it is, it is an opportunity to look over everything and make it more secure which we consistently do as new threats emerge.

We do thousands and thousands of transactions per day almost all go through without an issue and the ones that come up as issues we look at to try and improve the experience for everyone.

I can't promise a perfect marketplace but I can promise we will continue to improve and work towards a better experience for everyone and take our customer's concerns seriously.

 

[Domainace]

This is completely unprofessional and, I suspect, illegal. To add insult to injury, Godaddy didn't even offer their own fee back. I would think that they would refund you, as I can't imagine them winning if you were to take them to court.

How difficult can it be to automatically email a buyer to let them know that payment will be completed unless they dispute?

 

[manurawat]

Recently i faced the same situation ......i won an auction and and paid for it .....for 2 days winning domain was in my winning bid list and suddenly it started to show some error loading that domain name on list.....i searched whois of the domain.....and found that it was still listed for sale in sedo...by the previous owner...and he didnt initiated the transfer .. i immediately contacted godaddy and they contacted the seller for transfer...and got this issue resolved ........(yes it was withing 15days period)

for all those who r buying domains from godaddy....please keep eyes on your winning domains...till they transferred to your account and if you see any problem contact godaddy immediately keep this email id handy for any dispute raising

auctiondisputes(at)godaddy dot com

 

[carob]

To my eyes the thread starter case is not a scam but GD followed their TOS.

The GD TOS may be a violation of the TOS that GD agree to with credit card companies - I would like to know. I hope in this situation someone does a chargeback and tells us so we'll know - very likely GD will then have to revise their TOS.

Claiming to be just a "payment processor" is not going to work and is a bit suspect - we all know that credit card companies do not accept that argument from Paypal and chargebacks of credit card payments to Paypal succeed.

You can't enforce an illegal contract, nor can you enforce unallowable TOS.

 

[Joe Styler]

We have a very low number of issues with customers not delivering domains. We do verify listings, and we did cancel that listing for bigmouth and not pay the seller. We do verify whois and one of the ways we do so is auto deny names that do not match the whois vs the account holder info. If that happens we can send an email to the whois email and ask them if they are listing the name for sale and if so to validate by clicking that they are. I am not saying what happened in this case but it is possible someone clicked a link without reading etc, but the whois contact needed to agree to list it or it would fail to list.
And we are working on something that will enable smoother transfers of domains not registered here which will roll out next year.

 

[Dominic Belley]

If you used your credit card, just contact them. There is a very strong chance that you'll get your money back. Paying by credit card is the safest thing to do for a buyer.

 

[Jen-Sin]

I think besides sending multiple reminders to the seller to transfer the domain, GoDaddy should at least send multiple reminders to the buyer too to file a dispute by a certain deadline if a domain is not delivered.

And also highlight these in red whenever we log in to GoDaddy, just like how they highlight expiring and expired domains to remind us to renew.

 

[JudgeMind]

Just for the record my response to Godaddy's email was:

So basically I got screwed out of $300 and you aren't going to do a damn thing about it? What a great service you offer here!!

 

[RWD]

Just a thought...

Did you use PayPal to transfer in funds...there is buyer protection...not sure limitations.

 

[thekiller]

Unfortunate incident.

That was rude answer because it is their responsibility to confirm that domain is transferred before releasing payment. They're getting 20% for securing transaction.

 

[RevolutionaryDomains]

You might send a PM to NP member @Joe Styler who may be able to assist.

 

[bmugford]

I am GoDaddy supporter, but this is not acceptable. If this is the current process then GoDaddy needs to change it immediately.

If the domain transfer does not happen automatically, then GoDaddy at bare minimum should make sure the transfer has completed before releasing payment to the seller.

I would do what RevolutionaryDomains said and contact Joe Styler.

Brad

 

[Bennett G.]

I have sold quite a few domains on Godaddy and they do have this 15 day period thing. Basically if I sold a domain that is NOT registered with GD after the 5 day window when Godaddy verifies the funds Godaddy would send a mail asking to get in touch with the buyer and transfer the domain. As a seller then I would use Godaddy system to send them a message that goes to them as an email and their response comes as an email to my inbox.

If there is no response from the buyer within these 15 days, funds get transferred to the seller automatically (irrespective of the transfer status of the domain although Godaddy would send multiple reminders to the seller to transfer the domain but throughout the process they would be in dark about its status and would care less) or if before that the buyer claims a refund for some reason or confirms that they have received the domain then only would Godaddy take any action.

@JudgeMind you're right its Godaddy who'd lose here plus if they take any action against you after the chargeback thats again not a good thing.

Why did you not get in touch with Goaddy within those 3 weeks?

 

[Psychedelic.us]

I used credit card. Not sure how I can reverse those payments

Normally your credit card company is good for that. I was almost ripped off for a domain on eBay. The best credit card service that offers supreme services for reversing the charges is American Express.

 

[cocaseco]

Don't be concerned with GoDaddy being mad about a chargeback or being out $300 lol....they are a multi, multi-million dollar company with standard accounts to write off losses, much bigger than this, on a daily basis.

 

[Name Trader]

How about GoDaddy agreeing to never to pay a seller without the buyer having confirmed they have received the domain. That would immediately put a stop to all these shenanigans.

 

[mlmleads]

I was under the impression domains are automatically transfered from sellers?