Didn't get what I was shown

[Rocket2Uranus]

Originally posted by jberryhill
I bought a brand of shaving cream that was supposed to make me irresistible to women...

I thought you were becoming strangely attractive lately....

[DrDomains]

It's unfortunate that this has turned into such a mess, but here's the deal from my end:

1. Buyer was given full access to raw stats for the domain since the day it had been registered, which showed huge fluctuations ranging from 5 uniques per day to 100 uniques per day.
2. I never promised - nor put into a contract - anything regarding future traffic because you can never predict what the future will hold.
3. I told the buyer that the domain was based on a typo of another site, which means that traffic fluctuates along with that site's popularity.
4. I specifically told the buyer to examine the stats to make sure that he was "completely confortable" before buying.
5. I did not and have not done anything to bring about any changes in the traffic levels associated with this domain.
6. The buyer does not even have wildcards on the domain so that all of the domain's possible subpages redirect - instead you get a blank 404 page. Hence, traffic is being lost.
7. Buyer has been unprofessional in his communications to say the least.

In any event, I've done quite a few deals with people from this board - deals which have gone well. I do quite a bit of domain and web-based business in fact, and am proud of my rep. If this makes me less credible to some, then so be it. I was straight-up with this guy and plan to continue to be with both buyers and sellers in the future.

Now, I've spent quite a bit of time on this going back and forth with Brett and I need to get back to the domain business.

Jeffrey L. Reynolds

[cyphix]

Funny you choose to post now huh?

I'll just copy/paste bits of what I wrote to him in PM in reply to the above & add/edit bits as neccasary as what he wrote above is basically what he wrote to me in one of his PM's.

"1. Buyer was given full access to raw stats for the domain since the day it had been registered, which showed huge fluctuations ranging from 5 uniques per day to 100 uniques per day."

That may be true, but as I have said before... do you think it's perfectly normal for the domain that has consistently gotten for the last 2 months 90/day to start getting 14/day AS SOON AS I GET IT?

It is also true that on some days it only had like 5 uniques, BUT, this was only occuring awhile back.... as I remember the last 45-60 days were consistently getting in the range of 75-100/day.

"2. I never promised - nor put into a contract - anything regarding future traffic because you can never predict what the future will hold."

Also, as I have said before... I had/have no problems with the traffic declining.. as long as it when it does it is believable. Traffic dropping by 6 - 7 times the day that I get it is NOT BELIEVABLE!

"3. I told the buyer that the domain was based on a typo of another site, which means that traffic fluctuates along with that site's popularity."

Unless the site started auto-installing viruses or what have you on the users PC I highly doubt the large drop in traffic. It is not stastistically significant!

"6. The buyer does not even have wildcards on the domain so that all of the domain's possible subpages redirect - instead you get a blank 404 page. Hence, traffic is being lost."

The only place this would make a difference is @ my sponsor where I am redirecting the visitors. As I said, my stats track all uniques to the root URL & they also show all uniques overall...which includes all people going to error pages & non-existent pages/dirs. As I also said, I calculated the 14/day average from this slightly higher figure.

"7. Buyer has been unprofessional in his communications to say the least."

Me unprofessional? That's a laugher.... I'm just trying to get money back from someone who ripped me for it.

[jberryhill]

"I thought you were becoming strangely attractive lately...."

It's age. Your eyesight is going bad.

"2. I never promised - nor put into a contract - anything regarding future traffic because you can never predict what the future will hold."

There are a couple of ways to look at a statement like this. For example was there "a contract" in which such a statement could be "put into" or not. If not, then one could consider all of the statements made during the course of deal, and whether a reasonable domainer would have considered the traffic stats to be a material condition, sometimes called a "basis of the bargain", or whether it is customary consider more than just the name transfer per se as constituting what was bargained for.

And, if there was a written contract or memorandum of some kind, did it disclaim any representations or warranties outside of the four corners of the document itself?

It's not cut-and-dried either way, and I would lean with Howard in the "puffing" angle here. If the "real value" of everything were known to a certainty, then hardly anything would ever be traded for anything else. The only time that person A would ever trade his X for a Y belonging to person B is when both person A and person B have diametrically opposed opinions on the relative value of X and Y. Each of them has to value what the other person has more than what each of them has initially, or else there is no deal to be had. In a perfect universe of omniscient beings, that can't happen. But in this universe, it happens all of the time.