Sedo's meaningless auction warning

[topdom]

I have an auction with very low 3 fig reserve (met), and Sedo discourages people from placing a bid by saying:
....
Additional Certification may be required:

Please note that in order to place bids above , an additional certification is required and completion of this process may take several business days.
.....
Why say this? People won't give it a try just because of such scary words!

It looks like Sedo is trying to prevent sales in any way possible.

 

[7363824]

Ya that's seems over the top. Why not only display that when someone places a bid that is high enough that it would trigger the certification requirement if the won or once to winning bid is that high. Seems like laziness to not add that simple conditional logic to that warning.

 

[Samer]

@Sedo

Let’s see how long they take to reply/address.

Samer

 

[Pay.My.id]

If this sentence "Additional Certification may be required" is replaced by "You could add certification to ensure this process will run well and you could contact our support team immediately " , it might feel better

 

[topdom]

Why was the original bidder not required to do that additional verification, and only newcomers are! Inconsistent from the beginning. Also auctions last at most 7 days, and Sedo works 5 days per week, and if you add 1 day delays for simple things, you can easily say sedo works 2 days per week. So because of this verification step which may take several days, other bidders may not even have a chance to place a bid. Why should they even give it a try. What is Sedo's true agenda. I'm very confused.

 

[Sedo]

Hi Topdom,

Sedo does not discourage any potential buyers or prevent sales in any way, quite to the contrary, Sedo is a business and like any business our intention is to make revenue, it would make absolutely no sense for the company to try and prevent sales.

The warning is not meaningless but factual, Premium Certification is required for Sedo members who wish to place bids greater than 10,000 USD/EUR/GBP in any Sedo auction. As this is our process we need to inform potential buyers of this. These are not scary words as you say, its a clear statement which shows buyers transparency in our process before making an bid, it shows that Sedo is keen to ensure that the person making the bid is a serious buyer to avoid cancellations. Submission of a certification application, a bank statement or utility bill, and a photo ID, are required. This is Sedos process which is why any interested parties looking at the domain at auction will see the message you describe, this is to inform them that they need to take action if they plan of making bids over this amount. The requests for premium certification are received by our security department and are processed as a matter of urgency on the day they are received if received on a working day.

I understand from your post that you are not happy with the process and I will put a request forward to our business development team to have them to consider any changes to the process. However, I am concerned that you seem to think Sedo is trying to prevent sales on our marketplace. Maybe you can take the time to give me a call directly so we can talk about this in more detail as I have noticed this is not the first post where you state that Sedo is preventing sales. My direct number is +49 221 340 30-152, I am happy to discuss any concerns you have and I am available Monday to Friday at our German office, 9am -5pm GMT+1.

All the best Chris

 

[equity78]

Hi Topdom,

Sedo does not discourage any potential buyers or prevent sales in any way, quite to the contrary, Sedo is a business and like any business our intention is to make revenue, it would make absolutely no sense for the company to try and prevent sales.

The warning is not meaningless but factual, Premium Certification is required for Sedo members who wish to place bids greater than 10,000 USD/EUR/GBP in any Sedo auction. As this is our process we need to inform potential buyers of this. These are not scary words as you say, its a clear statement which shows buyers transparency in our process before making an bid, it shows that Sedo is keen to ensure that the person making the bid is a serious buyer to avoid cancellations. Submission of a certification application, a bank statement or utility bill, and a photo ID, are required. This is Sedos process which is why any interested parties looking at the domain at auction will see the message you describe, this is to inform them that they need to take action if they plan of making bids over this amount. The requests for premium certification are received by our security department and are processed as a matter of urgency on the day they are received if received on a working day.

I understand from your post that you are not happy with the process and I will put a request forward to our business development team to have them to consider any changes to the process. However, I am concerned that you seem to think Sedo is trying to prevent sales on our marketplace. Maybe you can take the time to give me a call directly so we can talk about this in more detail as I have noticed this is not the first post where you state that Sedo is preventing sales. My direct number is +49 221 340 30-152, I am happy to discuss any concerns you have and I am available Monday to Friday at our German office, 9am -5pm GMT+1.

All the best Chris

Chris I agree with what you are saying except I would say this does not look good,

an additional certification is required and completion of this process may take several business days.

You are saying here The requests for premium certification are received by our security department and are processed as a matter of urgency on the day they are received if received on a working day.

Maybe that should be the language on the auction page. If I was not working in the domain industry I would think, "Hmm 1 day left, I like the name, but it's going to take several business days to get certified to bid $10,000.

 

[Sedo]

Chris I agree with what you are saying except I would say this does not look good,

an additional certification is required and completion of this process may take several business days.

You are saying here The requests for premium certification are received by our security department and are processed as a matter of urgency on the day they are received if received on a working day.

Maybe that should be the language on the auction page. If I was not working in the domain industry I would think, "Hmm 1 day left, I like the name, but it's going to take several business days to get certified to bid $10,000.

Hi Equity,

Thanks for the comment.

I do agree that the text should be updated and have already requested an amendment after Tomdoms post. I think the only reason why this text is there is because Sedo does not work on the weekends so if someone emailed on Friday after business hours, they wouldnt be able to get certified until Monday. I have also brought this to the attention of our business development team for a review of the whole process, we dont want buyers to miss out on buying a domain because of this.

All the best
Chris

 

[Ostrados]

This text should only be shown when a bid of above 10k is placed or if reserve price is above 10k.

 

[topdom]

If you just require refundable $10 for every bid (or an authorisation on the creditcard), you could do much better. Otherwise people enjoy buying for 4 figures and not paying, and at the same time stealing buyer's contact data.
...
In this case, current bid may be 100, and another person may be willing to pay 120 at most, but doesn't place a bid because you require a complicated certification for bids over 10K, but you don't mention 10K.
....
This is like saying: You will spend the rest of your life in prison if you kill someone. There is no reason to say something like this. And worse, you erase the part after "if" above.

 

[ecalc]

It sounds like OP’s device doesn’t show “10,000 USD/EUR/GBP” cert amount when rendering Sedo auction bid page cert statement. Probably a Sedo source code and/or OP device settings issue.