This is why I hate Sedo...

I have been a member of Sedo for well over a decade, but my record with actually completing a purchase on their site is 0 for 12. Unless you are buying one of the promoted high dollar figure domains, the rest of the site is useless because the sellers of the domains no longer own them or check their Sedo account. There have been 12 different occasions where I purchased/paid for a domain, only to get a refund because the person let the name expire 5+ years ago and no longer owns it, or their account is inactive.

I hate Sedo for this reason. It is a lot like Flippa, where people listed domains many years ago, yet they still appear on the site, even though they are not for sale.

Does anyone else have a similar experience?

 

Nope. never. well I don't go buy that many domains in the aftermarket ever. lol

I do notice when I allow my domains to expire and delete that Sedo regularly lets me know that the domain is no longer in my name or has been deleted so Sedo has automatically removed it from Sedo.

so I don't know what you are experiencing. but I guess it happens? actually it happens on Afternic I've noticed. where a domain I now own but never listed with Afternic. got an inquiry via Afternic. therefore the old owner never removed it.

So in a way Sedo is better than Afternic?I don't think Afternic even has a system of notifying people that they no longer own the domain they listed because the whois has changed.

 

Sometimes, the updates are not timely enough to deliver the error message.
Maybe you can look at other platforms
I hope that can help you

 

Yes, I experienced this as well, even September this year. After buying a .nl domain, I noticed it had expired. Sedo gave me a refund. I adviced their 'Security & Compliance Department' to regularly check their complete inventory, to see if domains are still registered at all. There was some response, but I did not get the feeling they feel the urgency.

 

to be fair,
i understand your frustration,
but that's something that can happen in all marlketplace

but they improved a lot these last 2 years,
and now they remove all the domains that are not registered

here is why i use them to acquire a domain,
sometime i find a great deal on godaddy/afternic
next i check if the domain is available on sedo

because i'll be able to acquire without paying any taxes from sedo, which is a around 21% in my case

i always have around 10domains that i can not list on afternic, because the previous owners have it listed with godaddy/afternic.

 

Tried to list one of my domains on Sedo only to find the previous owner, who had let it expire, still had it listed for sale there. I contacted Sedo twice, who said they would contact the previous owner & ask them to remove it, nothing happened, it's still listed, I gave up listing on Sedo. Why could they not just have checked whois & then deleted the listing !? Their loss.

 

Tons of obsolete/available domains on Afternic, Uniregistry, DAN...
I remove them regularly...

 

Similar... yeah. Whenever I buy or register a dropped domain and go to add it to sedo, most of the time I get "domain already listed" at which point I just give up because the process is so fricking annoying. I register a domain (=fresh reg date) and set sedo nameservers, it's crystal clear that the old listing is obsolete. But no, they expect me to go back to the registrar, set other nameservers, paste some TXT record for verification, wait for refresh, re-list the domain, wait for verification then (optionally) change the nameservers to sedo again. No, thanks.

 

That's unlucky. I don't sell there but it's my preferred place to buy - due to the required ownership verification there are way less fake listings than on Afternic/Dan.

 

That's kind of annoying, indeed. Sedo's 'self-verification' with TXT or CNAME looks like it's been automated, but it can take days to complete (even with low TTL settings) and sometimes it doesn't even work at all. So, when I encounter a duplicate listing from a previous owner, I immediately mail some screenshots with proof of ownership to Sedo's Security department and they fix it manually, often within one day.

The "automated verification" setting at DAN.com works like a charm -- it's a real joy.

 

Good morning.

In response to your point about names already listed on Afternic by the previous owner. This has happened to me maybe once for every 100 names listed.

At the bottom of the Afternic page just click on the 'Contact us' field. This then lets you choose who you need to contact on a drop down menu. Choose 'Client Services'.

Unfortunately, and it is probably because their Staff are working from home it can take about a week to get the previous listing removed. They will email you when this has been done and you can list your names. Once you have done it a few times it is not so much of an issue just a fact of life.

Good luck.

Regards,

Reddstagg

P.S...edited for typo

 

I gave up on TXT & CNAME ages ago with Sedo...

Point your nameservers to Sedo first then list the domain and it gets accepted almost instantly......then you can change your nameservers to wherever you like afterwards.....

Regarding the point by the OP - it happened to me several weeks ago - hit BIN on a Geo and it turned out they no longer owned the domain, first time it had happened to me.......

 

I can't speak of very old ones, but now at least, Sedo are doing automatic checks on expiration. I missed deleting a couple of names I had listed at Sedo, and after the grace period ended I got notices that an automatic check had indicated names were no longer owned by me so they had deleted the listings.

When I buy aftermarket names I find more often than not they are still listed at Sedo and Afternic and sometimes DAN. But at least at Sedo and DAN I can use the ownership TXT to easily add them, whereas at Afternic each time I have to contact support. I can't imagine how much time they must spend on this for all domains, as even with me I have to do it many times each year.

Bob

 

I agree bc this has happened to me at sedo several times recently. However, I don't think it's always because the owner let the domain go - I think the sellers are just dishonest sometimes and decide to keep the domain after they realize there might be some value there.. Since there are NO consequences on Sedo, why not! Just list all your domains under $100 and see what sells, and then keep the ones that are good, since you can't think for yourself and need other domainers to tell you what domains are good. As long as you don't mind getting DOXXED since that seems to be the only recourse on Sedo...

PS... this one scumbag I bought the domain on Sedo and then he listed in on Epik a couple days after I bought it on sedo.. then he never completed the sale on Sedo and I was refunded. want his name? jk

 

I notice outdated listings all the time at other marketplaces. For instance, there's a domain name that I registered and have owned for 7 years that's still listed at Uniregistry even though I never listed it there.

If the new owner ever wanted their domain removed from these marketplaces, they would have to spend an enormous amount of energy chasing these listings down and contacting each marketplace individually. New owners just aren't incentivized enough to do that.

At Alter, we remove outdated listings within 24 hours. Technically speaking, it's fairly easy to do this so I'm assuming other marketplaces are keeping the old listings alive for a reason (lead gen perhaps?).

 

I am going through this same thing right now for my latest domain I am trying to list at Afternic. I just contacted Client Services via their Contact Form. But it's the weekend so not expecting a response right away.

I'll let you know how it goes

 

Recent Afternic response was after 1 week delay...
Previously this delay was 1-3 days.

 

Hi Cush,

I am sorry to read that you have so much anger towards Sedo, I can feel your frustration in your post and want to let you know why this can happen. You mentioned that you have had 12 out of 12 failed purchases at Sedo, which seems extremely high. There are seller not owner cases that break down as there are on every after sales market but even though you seem to be unlucky with the excessive amount of sales that have fallen though for you, you have received a refund for them and that’s what Sedo is there for, to protect you as a buyer, if the transfer falls through due to the fault of the seller.

With the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation *GDPR* in May 2018 and the subsequent removal of domain owner information from the public Whois database, it has made it more difficult for us or any other marketplace to recognise domains that are seller not owner cases. The General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy in the European Union and the European Economic Area. It also addresses the transfer of personal data outside the EU and EEA areas. Sedos Security team actively monitors and removes expired domains or those that change hands to the best of their ability, but there are some that slip through the net. Sedo is in fact one of the only marketplaces that makes these extra checks or has a verification system in place to check the ownership of domains when sellers list them in the first place which we are constantly updating. Showing that we are looking at reducing seller not owner cases proactively and actively. After all, lets be honest here, these hurt our business, they are a waste of time for our customers and a waste of manpower for our company which we don’t get paid for. There has to be an assumption that the sellers keep their portfolios up to date as they agree to this when setting up an account with us, the combination of seller diligence and Sedos security checks when working in synchronisation is pretty effective which surprised me to learn you had 12 out of 12 transfers fail. We are constantly looking at ways to improve our seller not owner sales and we have a dedicated team doing this. Also if we are notified of any seller not owner cases then we will remove them swiftly upon receiving proof of ownership, if anyone has any issues with a domain not being removed then PM through Namepros and I will ensure it is dealt with.

As part of improving our service, I would be interested in looking a little closer at these 12 failed transactions you mentioned. Could you please PM us with your Sedo account email address? I can have a look into this further for you and see whats gone wrong.

All the best

Chris

 

Hi

when you've been in business as long as sedo and moved the volume of inventory they have.....
then maybe, it might be comparable.

the longer a platform has existed, the more likely there will be some outdated listings.

dan/undeveloped has only been around a few years, so comparably, not much to purge.
i used to search buydomains years ago and some of their listings had expired and were available to register.
with uni merger with GD/Afternic, and the existing faults each had individually,
plus covid and er'body working from home.... best be glad you get notice of a sale nowadays.

just saying....


imo...

 

You make a good point but in this case the volume has nothing to do with it in my opinion. As I mentioned in my post, there are very easy ways to remove outdated listings technically speaking (i.e. through DNS verification, change in nameservers, etc).

My assumption is that they're not removing them for a marketing/business reason. For instance, keeping an outdated listing alive can still bring in new leads that may eventually buy another domain on that platform.

 

we ass/u/me
I get regular emails if I have domains there that expire. Had a few instances where domain was listed. Txt or screenshot will fix.
I'll take sedo over godaddy anyday. Only when they let me add my google analytics so I can see true stats, which are very important. Sorry you experienced this

 

Sedo's GDPR excuse is laughable. I never had a sedo account and when I saw my domains listed on sedo and contacted them they flat out refused to delete them. Even when GoDaddy shown the whois info, they still refused to check whois. Lazy employees always wanted a screenshot of my GoDaddy account which they will never get. Seemed like they did everything they could to keep old fake listings up.

 

Hi

"volume" also includes the quantity of domains added to their platform as well.
for many domainers, listing on sedo is one of 1st. actions taken, after acquisition.

Hi

unless outdated names still have nameservers pointed to sedo, then any visitors would likely come from those already on sedo, who used the search function.

and....
i doubt any company would intentionally or purposely maintain outdated listings for marketing purposes, because that would reduce the credibility of them,
thus resulting in lower sales.... which would affect the business and industry credibility.

i think they are smarter than that.

imo....

 

Correct, there wouldn't be any direct traffic coming into the marketplace in that case. But there are other ways to utilize outdated listings for lead gen. E.g.:

1. Marketplace Search: When potential buyers are searching names and an outdated listing pops up that they like, they will contact the marketplace to purchase it. That presents an opportunity for the marketplace to either (a) sell them another name or (b) contact the current owner of the outdated listing to see if they want to sell.

2. Search Engines: The outdated listings will still appear in search engines like Google where potential buyers could still come from.

3. Inventory: Marketplaces can brag about the number of listings across all their marketing collateral. As you yourself pointed out to me earlier, a lot of people correlate big numbers with success.

With all due respect, that's your opinion. If that's the case then why not remove the outdated listings right away? They can be removed instantly from a technical standpoint. Or even if they have to do it manually, why not do it ASAP if it will hurt their reputation?

IMO, it's all about pros and cons. If the pros outweigh the cons, it's worth keeping them. Every marketplace is run by different people so it's up to them to decide what's more important to them and act accordingly.

Another thing to consider is that every marketplace has its own set of priorities. It could easily be that they want to remove outdated listings but they just don't have enough resources to allocate to it because of other priorities higher up their list.

All that said, obviously these are all speculations and we may never truly know the reason behind it so let's give the marketplaces the benefit of the doubt.

Nevertheless, this is a great thought-provoking conversation!