So you THOUGHT Flippa was shady?

[S-B]

Sorry in advance, Kevin. Should have had your people leave me alone.

Flippa has been the subject of much controversy over the last 6 months. Speculative talk has ranged from shill bidding to bloated sales reports. Most of the accusations are pure garbage but the company is sketchy as hell.

While you might be thinking that I’m bitter because I haven’t any luck there, you should know that I moved $75,000 of domains in 6 months. At one point, I was the first to go to bat for them all because I try to show some loyalty when someone is taking care of me.

However, I recently had my Super Seller status revoked “due to comments made towards other users.” In fact, this is due to my response to the auction where an individual claimed to have an offer on a 3 day old domain of 10,000 bitcoins — that’s $2,500,000. Apparently, calling out a scammer is grounds for retaliation from the business.

I suppose this is because Flippa values net revenue more than customer satisfaction.

Now that you know my motivation I will move on and share a little bit of insider information.

If you’re paying full price for listing fees and upgrades you have been scammed.

They have gone on the defensive in the past by saying that they “subsidize” upgrades for their top sellers. Subsidize is a cute word for giveaway.

I received somewhere between $3,000 to $5,000 in “subsidies” — as a private seller — over 6 months. At one point, I received $2,000 in credits at one time.

Now I won’t lie, sometimes I had to pay for listings. When I did, I still got hooked up. For every upgrade or listing I purchased I received 2 free.

So when I paid, which was rare, I paid 1/3 of what you’ve been paying. I’m sure you now see why some people make a killing off their platform while others have lost hundreds of dollars per listing.

Oh you thought Editor’s choice was for good domains? Nah. It has been a filter for friends of Flippa.

When I sold on Flippa’s platform, I was given Editor’s Choice for nearly all of my domains. Why? Because I asked.

I know some of you noticed that only 3-5 people showed up when visiting that page. Some might not care but others might understand the value of this.

Domains at Flippa sell for much more when given the Editor’s Choice designation.

Oh so you suspect shilling? I’ve known many users who have shilled their way to a profit. It doesn’t benefit Flippa to eliminate shilling. High sales mean higher success fees.

Simple as that.

Straight up scamming? Yep.

I’ve reported verifiable scams to customer support and I didn’t hear back until after the auction closed. They stated that it was now the buyer’s responsibility to report the sale if something fishy occurred.

Hmmmm.

Would the buyer receive a refund? No. Would the seller be suspended? Yes. Would Flippa still profit? Damn right.

At the end of the day, you can choose to use their platform of boycott them.

I will choose the latter.

P.S.

Have you been curious about what Flippa has been doing?

They are working on adding small business to their platform.

Yeah. Dump money into selling physical business without verifying any of their claims.

That should work. Everyone is honest. Right?

 

[FlippaDomains]

We're addressing this issue here now:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/flippa-and-his-curious-solution.910490/page-2

 

[HeyNow]

Following through, yes. We'll have updates in the coming month. I'm not the one in charge of updating, and cannot control the timeline; though I have cleared a major update that should please you, in particular. More soon.

That statement was made December 20. The "coming month" has come and gone. Do you have updates to TOS regarding Flippa employees bidding against clueless Buyers? Or was your Dec 20 statement merely more BS?

 

[HeyNow]

Yes, it's being worked on - I'll PM you.

To any interested reader here, I read the PM from FlippaDomains and you can probably infer why he doesn't want to post here, but rather keep the conversation private. I'll tell you that my feeling is that his PM to me doesn't reflect well on him nor Flippa. It's another case of lack of transparency. He wants to pick and choose what is aired in a public forum. What does that tell you about what he has to say?

 

[Dave_Z]

What does that tell you about what he has to say?

Whatever anyone wants to infer, maybe.

On the other hand, the fact that FD responded to you---despite your calling his Dec. 20 statement as BS---ought to tell you something. Whatever that something means to you, anyway, especially when he can always ignore you and everyone here.

Or is ignoring a preferred option?

At any rate, only time will tell whether or not Flippa will update their TOS or whatever else FD said. Obviously, any to all of those won't stop anyone from deciding whatever and then acting on that decision.

As long as everyone decides what's best---despite what others think.

 

[HeyNow]

I reached out privately because we once had a constructive, amicable discussion in that manner -- but shame on me to think I could assume you would actually take me seriously.

I wanted you to know some details I'm not yet willing to share publicly.

Not because they reflect poorly on anyone; but because (as I told you - and the actual reason I chose to keep my message to you separate), I am no longer going to broadcast a timeline for changes until I have received the greenlight that they are in production on our end.

I'm eager to see what your reincarnated lines of attack will be, since our product changes will render your current ones useless.

Gibberish to me.

When Godaddy was finally outed for allowing employees, including its own VP in charge of TDNAM auctions, to bid stealthily at those auctions, it took Godaddy about 10 minutes to change the policy. No kidding. They did it IMMEDIATELY after they were outed, and I must also add they were embarrassed. They knew the extremely negative aspects of such a policy, and changed it immediately.

For you to try to convince us this is some hairy-ass task, that telling employees not to bid at auctions of their employer is a long, protracted process, is utter nonsense, IMHO. However, if indeed a company is making lots of money with such a policy in place, because of that policy, then it becomes obvious why the policy remains, in this writer's opinion.

 

[FlippaDomains]

For you to try to convince us this is some hairy-ass task, that telling employees not to bid at auctions of their employer is a long, protracted process, is utter nonsense, IMHO. However, if indeed a company is making lots of money with such a policy in place, because of that policy, then it becomes obvious why the policy remains, in this writer's opinion.

For the 812th time, we don't employ our employees to bid on auctions. But there's nothing I can say or promise you that would ever make you stop telling everyone that it's happening.

 

[HeyNow]

For the 812th time, we don't employ our employees to bid on auctions. But there's nothing I can say or promise you that would ever make you stop telling everyone that it's happening.

As you once told me, be very careful how you quote me and characterize my comments. I NEVER stated that "it's happening." I've only stated that Flippa's policy allows it, whether it's happening or not.

No one ever said you employ your employees to bid on auctions. But the FACT remains that Flippa's policy allows its employees to bid at Flippa auctions.

I'm so sick of you and those of your ilk parsing words to spin a particular negative into a positive. At this point, that much is transparent and doesn't reflect well on how you view the attention span of your customer base.

 

[GoKaizen]

Sorry in advance, Kevin. Should have had your people leave me alone.

Flippa has been the subject of much controversy over the last 6 months. Speculative talk has ranged from shill bidding to bloated sales reports. Most of the accusations are pure garbage but the company is sketchy as hell.

While you might be thinking that I’m bitter because I haven’t any luck there, you should know that I moved $75,000 of domains in 6 months. At one point, I was the first to go to bat for them all because I try to show some loyalty when someone is taking care of me.

However, I recently had my Super Seller status revoked “due to comments made towards other users.” In fact, this is due to my response to the auction where an individual claimed to have an offer on a 3 day old domain of 10,000 bitcoins — that’s $2,500,000. Apparently, calling out a scammer is grounds for retaliation from the business.

I suppose this is because Flippa values net revenue more than customer satisfaction.

Now that you know my motivation I will move on and share a little bit of insider information.

If you’re paying full price for listing fees and upgrades you have been scammed.

They have gone on the defensive in the past by saying that they “subsidize” upgrades for their top sellers. Subsidize is a cute word for giveaway.

I received somewhere between $3,000 to $5,000 in “subsidies” — as a private seller — over 6 months. At one point, I received $2,000 in credits at one time.

Now I won’t lie, sometimes I had to pay for listings. When I did, I still got hooked up. For every upgrade or listing I purchased I received 2 free.

So when I paid, which was rare, I paid 1/3 of what you’ve been paying. I’m sure you now see why some people make a killing off their platform while others have lost hundreds of dollars per listing.

Oh you thought Editor’s choice was for good domains? Nah. It has been a filter for friends of Flippa.

When I sold on Flippa’s platform, I was given Editor’s Choice for nearly all of my domains. Why? Because I asked.

I know some of you noticed that only 3-5 people showed up when visiting that page. Some might not care but others might understand the value of this.

Domains at Flippa sell for much more when given the Editor’s Choice designation.

Oh so you suspect shilling? I’ve known many users who have shilled their way to a profit. It doesn’t benefit Flippa to eliminate shilling. High sales mean higher success fees.

Simple as that.

Straight up scamming? Yep.

I’ve reported verifiable scams to customer support and I didn’t hear back until after the auction closed. They stated that it was now the buyer’s responsibility to report the sale if something fishy occurred.

Hmmmm.

Would the buyer receive a refund? No. Would the seller be suspended? Yes. Would Flippa still profit? Damn right.

At the end of the day, you can choose to use their platform of boycott them.

I will choose the latter.

P.S.

Have you been curious about what Flippa has been doing?

They are working on adding small business to their platform.

Yeah. Dump money into selling physical business without verifying any of their claims.

That should work. Everyone is honest. Right?

Good to be aware of this, thanks.

 

[decode]

Each and every time I try to make a legit transaction on Flippa there is a hold up and weird threatening emails from them. So awesome!

 

[decode]

For example, it has been over 2 days and they are still "verifying" our payment. From our own credit card. No other online transaction of any kind takes 2 days to not complete verifying a simple legal transaction from well qualified individuals. So much room here for legit competition. A smart company that can interact properly with customers and use tech to keep out the fraud instead of using a system to hassle legit customers would be a huge fast growing enterprise.

 

[decode]

FYI - it is my understanding, if employees are bidding the company could face serious legal issues in the United States and Canada. The range of fraud could cause 10x monetary damage to all customers in all transactions where it occurred and a complete stop of operations. Not to mention fines and sanctions. I won't bore you with the simple calculations, but it wouldn't take long to run into the 10's of millions from just a few instances of illegal non-disclosed employee bidding . This doesn't sound good.

 

[DU]

FYI - it is my understanding, if employees are bidding the company could face serious legal issues in the United States and Canada. The range of fraud could cause 10x monetary damage to all customers in all transactions where it occurred and a complete stop of operations. Not to mention fines and sanctions. I won't bore you with the simple calculations, but it wouldn't take long to run into the 10's of millions from just a few instances of illegal non-disclosed employee bidding . This doesn't sound good.

And where does "my understanding" come from? Flippa is not an auction house. They are just a platform and they are operating out of Collingwood, AUS and not Canada or the US..

Check out their massive digs and you can see how huge they are.

 

[Mr Dobalina]

Everything in this post isn't true

And where does "my understanding" come from? Flippa is not an auction house. They are just a platform and they are operating out of Collingwood, AUS and not Canada or the US..

Check out their massive digs and you can see how huge they are.

 

[ZapNano]

I understand, that employees are also investors; however, when they are on the clock they shouldn't be bidding etc. this because you might be neglecting your responsibilities as a paid to work; and not to play. Just a thought.

 

[Mr Dobalina]

I understand, that employees are also investors; however, when they are on the clock they shouldn't be bidding etc. this because you might be neglecting your responsibilities as a paid to work; and not to play. Just a thought.

It also hurts the integrity of the website anytime they bid up listings and don't win. Flippa has an incentive for this activity since they take a percentage of the final price. Huge conflict of interest.

 

[DU]

Everything in this post isn't true

What isn't true? Care to share the real truth?

 

[HeyNow]

Bidders aliases are in the works as part of a larger security overhaul we'll be putting into place, and an 'Employee' badge hopefully sooner. I'll look into clarifying from a ToS POV how we provide this information more upfront.

The above quote is from November 2015. I've not seen anything that would lead me to believe anything has been accomplished in that regard. Have you? To me, it sounded like BS then. If nothing's been done after 9 months, then it appears I was probably right.