Must read - Afternic story

[octobus]

Denny,

What email address did the scammmer use to communicate with you?

[denny007]

What email address did the scammmer use to communicate with you?

bd@virtuose.be


Here some more info which I got before it started use whois protect:
DomaineZoo.com - Domains management
Benjamin Decraene (Email protected from Robots by Whois Source)
+32.473203310
Fax: +32.27703029
950 chaussee de Waterloo
Uccle, NA 1180
BE

virtuose.fr
address: Decraene Benjamin
address: 950, chaussee de Waterloo
address: 59800 Lille
address: FR
phone: +33 4 73 20 33 10
e-mail: benjamin@virtuose.be
admin-c: BD948-FRNIC
tech-c: OVH5-FRNIC
zone-c: NFC1-FRNIC
nserver: ns1.virtuose.fr 66.98.250.41
nserver: ns2.virtuose.fr 66.98.251.227
mnt-by: FR-NIC-MNT
mnt-lower: FR-NIC-MNT
changed: nic@nic.fr 20050329
source: FRNIC
Domains it owns:
hotels.vu
loui.com
kulturell.com
sabryna.com
euroluxe.com
verlaine.com
sarbacane.com
paris.vu
u2b.com
r8k.com
DOMAINEZOO.COM

[proproject]

Completely, buyer's responsibility.
Takes 10% fees.
No risk, high commission.
Great business.

No broker in this industry substantially warranties the domain in this way. We reduce your risk by eliminating listings with known ownership disputes. We also do some due dilligence that most members don't know how to do themselves, but there is no title insurance for domains yet. (Hmm, there's a great business idea for somebody.)

We earn a 10% commission for selling domains and since we do not require exclusive listing agreement, it is the last thing any seller should care about. I will pay anyone here 90% commission to sell all my domains if you can sell them for a high enough price to justify it. That's all you have to do to ignore the commission, just add it to your price.

We distribute to our partners and members (who bring us the best buyer traffic in the business) over 5 times what we distribute to ourselves in profit. It is a great business to us, but it is an even greater business to our members and partners. That's our strategy in a nutshell.

[toho]

Roger,

>We reduce your risk by eliminating listings with known ownership disputes.

I hope so.


>there is no title insurance for domains yet.

Right.


>I will pay anyone here 90% commission to sell all my domains if you can sell them for a high enough price to justify it.

I do not know these kind of business. Impertinent remark.


You did not answer my YES / NO question yet.
But that's enough.
We learn your company policy and late support.



toho

[proproject]

>I will pay anyone here 90% commission to sell all my domains if you can sell them for a high enough price to justify it.

I do not know these kind of business. Impertinent remark.

No disrespect intended. 90% is an exagerated amount to illustrate a serious idea for sellers, care about your bottom line more than the commission. Maybe you nor I know anyone getting 90% commission but we both probably do know people getting 20% and they earn every penny if they sell your domain for a high price.

[denny007]

Now "going going on Afternic" (the guys relly does not care traffic cheaters - recent examples:
SCRIPTFREE.INFO 94,434 unique visitors per month
YOURSHOPPINGGUIDE.INFO 91,078 unique visitors per month
POSTER-FOOD.INFO 428,658 unique visitors per month
EASY-BUY.INFO 162,588 unique visitors per month
HEALTHCARESTORE.INFO 192,008 unique visitors per month
SHOPSOCOOL.INFO 232,457 unique visitors per month
EHEALTHPUB.COM 72,463 unique visitors per month
BEWEBMASTERS.INFO 33,818 unique visitors per month
TIPOFHEALTH.INFO 34,774 unique visitors per month
BUYCLEANINGSUPPLIES.INFO 417,120 unique visitors per month
Even little kid know, is something wrong...

[proproject]

We do care, but with about a million listings, we rely on our members to help us police them. We have blocked the owners of those domains from showing any traffic figures. Thanks for pointing these out to us.

[Mr. Deleted]

Now "going going on Afternic" (the guys relly does not care traffic cheaters - recent examples:
SCRIPTFREE.INFO 94,434 unique visitors per month
YOURSHOPPINGGUIDE.INFO 91,078 unique visitors per month
POSTER-FOOD.INFO 428,658 unique visitors per month
EASY-BUY.INFO 162,588 unique visitors per month
HEALTHCARESTORE.INFO 192,008 unique visitors per month
SHOPSOCOOL.INFO 232,457 unique visitors per month
EHEALTHPUB.COM 72,463 unique visitors per month
BEWEBMASTERS.INFO 33,818 unique visitors per month
TIPOFHEALTH.INFO 34,774 unique visitors per month
BUYCLEANINGSUPPLIES.INFO 417,120 unique visitors per month
Even little kid know, is something wrong...

a .info, a new ext, have that many type ins? :huh: no way.

Thanks for blocking those, that does not make sense. "POSTER-FOOD.INFO 428,658 unique visitors per month" lol that is crazy. What is poster food?

[denny007]

OK, glad to hear that, count me as Your freelance policeman...

We do care, but with about a million listings, we rely on our members to help us police them. We have blocked the owners of those domains from showing any traffic figures. Thanks for pointing these out to us.

[DomainLord]

Just a note from personal experience those guys are not very helpful. They run in groups and unless you are well known by them you wont get the help you deserve.

[proproject]

Clearly we have not achieved our goal of making every member feel important to us. I apologize, and I'll keep working on it. If anyone has any problem with membership support, feel free to ask for me personally. Our phone number is 407-880-3211.

[richard]

Clearly we have not achieved our goal of making every member feel important to us.

Make every member feel important to you?! What on
earth are you talking about?!.. Have you not read
many of the threads on this forum, from people whom
your company have treated with contempt?

Can I ask you a serious question? Can you confirm
to me here, in this public forum, that your company's
(supposed) policy on 'banning' and releasing member
details (for those members who have reneged on a
purchase/sale contract) applies to everyone?

As soon as I get that confirmation from you, i'll reply
further.

Regards

[proproject]

Contempt is a strong word so I'm sure I do not know of anytime that a member was treated with contempt by any of our employees. Although they have made some mistakes (damn humans), they are fantastic in general.

Few people understand how hard our support staff work and what crap they endure with grace. Just today one of our staff was called "retarded" on the phone for respectfully reminding a buyer to pay for his or her purchased domain. The staff have earned my respect. They have a lot more patience than I do as you can probably tell from the tone of this reply.

Most of the time we offer to provide contact info of a deadbeat to a member who wishes to enforce the agreement even though we had to cancel the escrow service due to non-performance by the deadbeat. There are exceptions, of course. For example, some failed transactions are simply honest mistakes using the website. Sometimes we mercifully give members a second chance.

Roger

[richard]

Most of the time we offer to provide contact info of a deadbeat to a member who wishes to enforce the agreement even though we had to cancel the escrow service due to non-performance by the deadbeat. There are exceptions, of course. For example, some failed transactions are simply honest mistakes using the website. Sometimes we mercifully give members a second chance.Roger

Ok, I have no problem with people making mistakes,
as you say we are only human...

But where do you stand on members such as
Register.com (Afternic's parent company) reneging
on a contract to sell a domain name, and Afternic
(helpfully!) allowing them to do just that without
penalty or even further comment?

..and if you are happy for Register.com to do this on
your website, are you also happy for other Afternic
members to do the same? (or are they a bit of a special
case, what with them owning your business 'n all..).

[WeBuyThe.Com]

Roger,

I noticed a problem when buying domains from afternic. The issue comes up when buyer submits payment. You have integrated paypal and offer an option to pay via echeck however once clicked and redirected to paypal you are not in the echeck mode but rather paypal mode. 2-3 days later an email comes from the escrow manager requesting more money to cover the paypal fees. Can you see if this can be corrected as it slows down transactions for buyers and sellers...

Thanks in advance,
Matt

[proproject]

richard, Register.com does not own any part of Afternic.com now. They were the previous owners.

Register has had some problems with their liquidation auctions. They auctioned a name which was still registered by their customer. We've shut down their liquidation auctions until they get their system fixed. It was a bug/mistake. Not much we can do in that case except cancel the transaction and apologize.

Roger

Matt,

Thanks for bringing that to my attention. We've already confirmed what you're talking about. Now we will work on trying to fix it.

Roger

[richard]

Register has had some problems with their liquidation auctions. They auctioned a name which was still registered by their customer. We've shut down their liquidation auctions until they get their system fixed. It was a bug/mistake. Not much we can do in that case except cancel the transaction and apologize.

1) You claim to have 'shut down' their liquidation
auctions, but this can not be true as I have just
examined your website again today and, lo, all of
this company's liquidation auctions are still prominently
listed there (under the seller ID: inventory).

2) You also claim that they mistakenly auctioned
a domain name that was still registered by their
customer. If that is true, then why do I have
correspondence from them saying that the previous
owner had neglected to pay registration fees and
that the name could now be registered? (in this
circumstance how on earth could a 'mistake', as you
described, have occurred??!!).

But, of course, instead of releasing the domain for
registration they decided *after I had contacted them
about it* to APPROPRIATE the domain for themselves...

Then they chose to SELL the name in a public auction...

Then, finally, they decided to RENEGE on a legal contract
to sell the name through Afternic, without giving any
explanation for doing so...

...and your company helped them to do that!

Your comments to me Roger are very disturbing to say
the least.

[AfternicDomains]

Richard or Brian1234

We have addressed the issue before. Refer to the many posts that were made by Brian1234. I presume that you are the same person. We quit responding because you stated that you were going to address it through legal action against Afternic.

I will address a post that Roger made. Register.com did stop selling names on Afternic for a period of time of their own accord to fix some problems with their database. They have since started selling some names again, but Roger was on vacation and didn't realize this. He didn't intend to deceive anyone.

I have repeatedly heard read on this site that Afternic is owned by Register.com. Afternic.com (domain name and trademark) was purchased by Proproject in December 2002.

Michael Collins
VP Marketing

[richard]

Richard or Brian1234

We have addressed the issue before. Refer to the many posts that were made by Brian1234. I presume that you are the same person. We quit responding because you stated that you were going to address it through legal action against Afternic.

I will address a post that Roger made. Register.com did stop selling names on Afternic for a period of time of their own accord to fix some problems with their database. They have since started selling some names again, but Roger was on vacation and didn't realize this. He didn't intend to deceive anyone.

I have repeatedly heard read on this site that Afternic is owned by Register.com. Afternic.com (domain name and trademark) was purchased by Proproject in December 2002.

Michael Collins
VP Marketing

Thanks for your reply, but just as you decided
to ignore my earlier communications, privately,
you also seem unable to answer the very simple
questions now put to you in this public forum...

I am glad really that you have posted such inept,
ridiculous comments here since that will help to
show others the level of service they can expect
to receive from Afternic.

..and, just for the avoidance of doubt, I would
like to make it clear that you have not answered
ANY part of the two-part question put to you
earlier today.

(I think you may get easily upset Michael, but
please do not be tempted to post on this thread
again, unless you are ready to answer the simple
questions I have put to you).

[AWest]

Hello Richard,

We received updated information regarding the domain name you have referred to in your posts:

The name is locked down at the registry level because it is not a "true" IDN. It is not associated with any language tag and the registry has not decided what it will do with it yet. Due to its lack of association to a language will remain on hold and unusable until further notice.

I hope this information further clarifies why this sale could not be completed.

Regards,

Amber West
Afternic.com