Reflections on an Afternic sale

[sevent]

I had my first large sale at Afternic last week. Now that the full process is complete here are my thoughts about it, for what they are worth.

• I like that they have a phone number you can call, and about half the time you get an actual human being. However, despite my having their largest sale of the week I didn’t get to speak directly with the escrow manager and was just put on hold while they were consulted about a couple questions I had.
• They sometimes answer questions quickly, sometimes not at all. I used their escrow messages system to send messages to the “Escrow manager”. I imagine all of my messages were read, but I didn’t get any direct responses.
• The system of bidding is, well, bizarre (or Bazaar, heh heh). Someone makes an offer, and you can’t exactly make a counter offer, you can just raise the asking price for you domain, which happens automatically if you don’t do anything. I like the option of doing a 7 day “or best offer” auction, but it would be nice to simply be able to respond with a counter offer.
• I like the fact that, unlike at sedo, your messages to the other people go through right away.
• I ended up being paid by wire transfer, and they waived the fee for that, which is nice, though my own bank charged me a fee to receive the transfer. But I reallywould have preferred to be paid by check sent via FedEx. Afternic doesn't offer this option, not even for a fee, and not even in the case of large sales. They said they could only do a check by US mail, and I barely trust our postman with Wired, so I’m sure as hell not going to have him deliver a $14k+ check. Is it really so hard to send a few checks a week out via FedEx?

OK. Those are my thoughts. Your mileage may vary.

Cheers all!

[stevesko]

not even on your fedex account #?

Steve

[sevent]

not even on your fedex account #?

Steve

I didn't ask, but the lady I spoke with seemed quite clear in that they didn't send out anything except by snail mail or wire trasfer. I'm not sure why having a fexEx account # would make any diference; they could have simple charged $20 or whatever and taken it directly off the sale price, which is what escrow.com does.

[brian1234]

I have never found Afternic to be a
trustworthy seller; avoid them at all
costs.