An open letter to Sedo

[sevent]

Well, I've just about had it with sedo. Many months ago, after a bad experience there I sent a letter to them, and was told that they were "very interested" in my comments and would talk to me about them. That never happened, so here are my gripes. I've already moved lots of traffic away and have mostly stopped responding to offer requests at sedo. Here's why, and what I think Sedo needs to do to improve their system:

1. Do something to make it easier to handle crappy offers. Yes, you can set a minimum bid offer, but Sedo limits that to $10k and buyers automaticallly expect the price to be the same as the minimum bid or very close to it. I would suggest they add the option to let us reject offers without making a counter offer, with a comment.

2. Let there be real-time communication. Once a seller has sold a couple names, let us send messages instantly to the buyers. Same for respected buyers. Go ahead and review them later if you must to make sure no one is violating your policy.

3. Give more info to sellers about the buyer. You don't have to give out any *personally identifying* info, but tell us at least if they have successfully bought or sold at sedo before, and a range of what they paid.

4. Do a better job of screening buyers or create a general reputation system. Twice in the past few months, after responding to a persistent lowballer with a very high offer, I had my offer "accepted" by these jokers. If this happened to me I imagine it's happened to plenty of other folks.

5. Let people make their bids and counter offers binding for MUCH LESS time. Lots of times I've been bidding on several names and I don't want tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in bids outstanding. I need to know yes or know in 24 or 48 hours if the seller will accept a bid. Same thing as a seller. If I make an offer than someone makes a nice bid on that same name at the forums I'm put in a bind.

6. Login, logout, login, logout. Even though apparently someone can steal your session using just the "session" number in the GET string, for some reason I can't stay logged in even if I try. Every new browser window (firefox) or 10 minutes I have to log back in again. Often I have to "Logout" to login because even though it says I'm logged in I'm not.

Sedo does some things very well, and I like the addition of auctions, but these frustrations are pushing me away.

[JMJ]

Fully agree.

[James Jean]

I love sedo, and they are the only one I've used pass few years... but these issues- ALL OF THEM- need to get a dress.

Vote of Support from -X-

[Devil Dog]

#5 especially

I'lll see a few names that I want, make good offers and realize that I am over my budget while I am sitting here waiting for the owner to counter or reject the offer.

[Rico]

They should make it like afternic, if there is a bid for example $500 - the buyer has to beat that.
No more starting with lowballs

[StockDoctor]

Agree they need to screen/validate buyers BEFORE they are allowed to bid or make offers. Too many deadbeat deals fall through, while real bidders/buyers are put on hold or outbid.

[sevent]

Do you want this moved to sedo forum?

I don't think so. That forum seems to be more for PPC issues. This is a general discussion thread related to one of the biggest players in the domain industry so I think it's broader and seems to be appropriate in the Lounge.

Cheers.

[Varchar]

Cannot agree more!!

[PRED]

It's a good thread guys & it needs saying.
sedo will cave into pressure & 'we' are a significant slice of their business.
In sales, ppc, & purchases.
Just recently they have made a couple of changes which i believe 'we' had a hand in.
The buyer verification, although, not good enough, is a far sight better than none at all. which is what they had just a few months ago.
I have a few timewasters, but my percentage of completed sales has increased a lot.
They need to address all the points made above tbh.
One other area we changed their mind on was the commission charge for .mobi sales. They reduced by approx 60% (may have been more)
They also have a number of brokers who have serious training needs.
They could do worse than headhunt in this forum.
If i was the md i would. There would be a number of sedo brokers necks on the chopping blocks, a couple would actually be promoted too. But only a couple
Problem is the guys i have in mind on this forum, probably earn way too much
from domaining to be interested lol
keep up the slaughtering guys. one of these fine days Mr.Schumacher will patrol these boards & have a coronary .
if he cares about his company he will.

Pred

[Bill Roy]

Unfortunately one of the terms of employment is that you are not allowed to trade in domain names, etc.! That would put a lot of members here off from any position with the company.

[shaolinmonk]

As a buyer and seller on sedo I fully endorse the 'open letter'. sedo is now poised to consolidate its position as the leading 'independent' domain exchange (with Afternic essentially becoming a BuyDomains sales center) but it really needs to become more professional and transparent. With many of Sedo's key clients also here on DNF, I think pressure from this quarter can go a long way - but of course only if they are listening!

[SedoCoUk]

Hello Everyone,

First of all I would like to say that we fully appreciate posts like this. Valid points have been made and the criticism is constructive.

We see a great benefit in being active on DNForum as it is place for frank discussion between sedo and its clients. After all the success of sedo is based on a partnership between us and people like you guys, whether it is marketplace transactions or PPC.

I would also like to say that we are definitely aware of the points that have been made and are currently working on ways of addressing them. We recognize that as the company has grown and the industry has evolved, limitations to the current system have been exposed.

The bid verification system was the first step in adapting to these changes. I have been assured that planning updating the marketplace and the way transactions are processed is the top priority for our team this quarter. This will result in a major overhaul and I am certain that our clients will benefit greatly and welcome the changes.

Obviously due to the nature and size of a project like this, I cannot give a definitive time scale on when it will be implemented, but we hope to roll it out as soon as possible

I have spoken to several of you personally in the past and I look forward to receiving further feedback.

Cheers!

Tom

[mvl]

Good to see you pick this up Tom, but there is one very urgent issue that the tech-people need to fix because it is a security issue: Session hijacking. I know this is an issue for a very long time now, but it is still not fixed completely. This occurs if a link containing the sessionId is posted, and someone else clicks it while the sessionowner is still logged in. I know several people including myself have alerted sedo about this in the past but I checked five minutes ago and it is still possible ! EVERY SINGLE sedo ACCOUNT COULD BE HIJACKED. This can be fixed quite easily so do it !

Please fix it, this is an issue for over a year now and if it will not get fixed I am afraid in the near future someone will find a way to exploit it on a large scale.

[rawkinrich]

EVERY SINGLE sedo ACCOUNT COULD BE HIJACKED. This can be fixed quite easily so do it !

Please fix it, this is an issue for over a year now and if it will not get fixed I am afraid in the near future someone will find a way to exploit it on a large scale.

I see u have no response yet

[mvl]

Here is another one:

- If an offer is accompanied by a custom comment, and the comment is rejected by sedo for whatever reason, DON'T SEND THE OFFER TO THE BIDDER WITHOUT THE COMMENT. Sending a counteroffer but leaving out the justification for the asking price will damage negotiations beyond repair!!!

Here is the story of how my 4 to 5 figure deal was killed this way:
I got an opening bid by a potential buyer around a month ago. Made some offers and counter offers, sent traffic stats etc. Last week I got a higher counteroffer and the bidder asked me to justify my asking price.

I dropped my price quite a little before, to show I am serious about this, and now I sent my justification in a comment, completely following sedo's policy (no rude language, no contact details, not trying to make a deal ouside of Sedo).

Sedo cancelled the comments and sent me the following email:

Hello from Sedo and thank you for your using our comment feature. Unfortunately your comment:
"[my comment, absolutely NO contact details]
"

cannot be displayed because:
Please note that exchanging personal details (e.g. your name, telephone number, e-mail address, etc.) in the comments box is not permitted. Thank you.

When I checked my running offers I found out that the comments had been deleted but still the asking price was sent to the bidder WITHOUT any comments or justification. Although I asked my country manager to send a separate email with the comments (which she did) I feel this has damaged the negotiation activity very badly. This weekend the seller cancelled the deal, and I can only guess for what reason. Just FYI we are looking at $x.xxx to $xx.xxx for this domain.

This and my previous experiences (e.g. waiting for over a month for a simple Enom push of a domain I bought, emails getting ignored in the mean time) makes me wonder if I should take all my domains away from Sedo. If deals get damaged this way and there is no compensation whatsoever, why should I stick to Sedo? I am very serious about moving my portfolio to a better place.

[sevent]

Well, I just got off the phone with Martin Osusky of sedo. He seemed to take very seriously all of the "open letter" suggestions. Apparently they are working on some systems which would improve things significantly.

Martin said he'll be at Domainfest Thursday and Friday and is looking to meet with a handful of us folks who have concerns or want to share ideas. If you're interested maybe just post here. Friday morning would probably work best for me.

[sitehq]

they listen, but you rarely see them do anything but ask for your ppc business.

i guess its a numbers game for them. as domaineers we see transactions at the margin, the ones the are fakes, or the ones where an evolved system may have helped.

but it seems to sedo as long as .02-.03% of the names sell each month they're successful. so why focus on the individual factors about improving the site. but they miss that participants are only involved and care about their deal, its everything to them, to me, to hear that 10 deals went fine in a week, but the one i was working on got blown off, doesnt help me.

only competition will spur action.

regards

page howe

[StockDoctor]

only competition will spur action.

I think it's lookin that way too Page.

[UpMarketDns.com]

sedo aucitons are indeed an excellent new feature but waiting over 6 weeks to settle a payment / push and transfer to new owner of a backlog of 8 auctions isnt !!!!

sedo is obviously very very popular for deals but it wont be popular for long if the seller has to wait forever to receive funds and buyers to receive their names

aargh

oh btw im selling aargh.mobi if anyones interested - I CAN THINK OF A FEW DEVELOPMENT IDEAS FOR IT

[mvl]

I got a phonecall from Mr. Axel Kaltz of sedo today. We mainly spoke about the cancelled 4 to 5 figure deal following the rejection of a bidding comment for no good reason. He apologized for this incident and proposed a couple of things as a compensation. No money, no financial compensation, I don't want to give full details, but I think I am happy with our agreement.

Besides this personal incident I mentioned the session-id issue which makes it possible to log in into someone elses account under certain circumstances. Mr. Kaltz promised me this should be fixed this week and he will keep an eye on this.