Forum Poll: Will Sedo make things right with the October GreatDomains sellers?

[Domain Jedi]

Dear DNForum Friends,

Will Sedo make things right with the October GreatDomains auction sellers?

Yes or No?

For all those who were not following the October GreatDomains auction or the .DE auction on October 22nd, this is what happened.

Basically, the last 4-5 minutes before auction end, Sedo’s sedo.com and GreatDomains.com sites had issues and I couldn’t log in at all to check my GreatDomains auctions or my Sedo brokered auctions (ending at the exact same time).

Sedo, while trying to get their websites up and running issued the following statement on their GreatDomains.com domain:

[SEDO STATEMENT NUMBER 1]

“Due to the extremely high participation in the .De Pre-Auction Sedo?s website was temporarily down. We have decided to extend the auction until 8:00 PM CET. If necessary we will extend the auction later than this time to accommodate additional bids.

We want to apologize for any inconvenience caused and we appreciate your participation in the 1, 2, & 3-Character .de Pre-Auction.”

You will notice that the only apology granted is to the .DE auction bidders.

Also, seeing how all of Sedo’s auctions were negatively affected by these site issues (i.e GreatDomains, .DE, regular Sedo auctions etc.), wouldn’t you think that they would extend the October GreatDomains auction as well…

Later that day:

[SEDO STATEMENT NUMBER 2]

“Due to a malicious attempt to disrupt our services, Sedo suffered from two different distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks which temporarily caused the Sedo and GreatDomains.com websites to be slow or irresponsive between 17:55 and 20:15 CET on October, 22nd 2009 (11:55 and 2:15 PM EDT). Together with its protection provider, Prolexic, Sedo successfully fought both attacks and our websites are again fully operational. While the GreatDomains auction has concluded, to provide equal opportunities for all parties interested of the 1, 2 & 3-Character .de Pre-Auction, Sedo has extended the auction and attempted to contact and notify all bidders of the extended schedule.”

Please keep in mind that the October GreatDomains auction had the exact same end time as the .DE auction!

Followed up by:

[SEDO STATEMENT NUMBER 3]

"Sedo would like to take this chance to provide more information regarding the distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack that intended to disrupt our services yesterday, including the conclusion of our monthly auction at GreatDomains.com and the 1, 2, & 3-Character .de Pre-Auction. While the Sedo and GreatDomains websites were slowed as the auction was closing, our bid logs show that we did not experience any downtime until a brief window of time after the close of the final domain being sold in the GreatDomains auction. Bids were still being received throughout the close of the auction and every domain receiving bids in the final minutes were extended in accordance with our auction rules. Throughout the auction, the number of bids received were high and consistent, and in the end, this GreatDomains auction resulted in higher than average bids and sales volume, easily beating the results from our September auction. Because every domain that would have been extended due to bidding activity were in fact extended, there was no cause or reason for any further extensions of the auction timeframe.

Sedo has invested heavily to build a robust infrastructure that can handle high traffic, even during multiple auction events, and were it not for a malicious attack on our servers by those attempting to disrupt our services, pages would have loaded as fast as normal. Due to our proactive measures to implement a response system for such attacks, the DDOS queries were quickly routed away from our servers and the site no longer experienced any delays. While we regret that some of our users experienced a slow response rate from our website, we are encouraged that even during an extreme event we concluded another successful GreatDomains auction."

Now, here are my auction results Friends. You be the judge:

My Great Domains Auction Results:

Heated.com
Winning Bid: $1,500
Last Bid Placed: Oct/22/09 11:53 AM EST
Bidding History*-*Sedo.co.uk

Galoshes.com
Winning Bid: $5,600
Last Bid Placed: Oct/22/09 05:55 PM CEST (11:55 AM EST)
Bidding History*-*Sedo.com

Argument.com
Winning Bid: $5,301
Last Bid Placed: Oct/22/09 11:52 AM EST
Bidding History*-*Sedo.com

SoftMusic.com
Winning Bid: $2,210
Last Bid Placed: Oct/22/09 05:44 PM CEST (11:54 AM EST)
Bidding History*-*Sedo.co.uk

Additionally, I had three Sedo brokered auctions that took
place at the exact same time (same end time):

Xplosive.com
Winning Bid: $2,050
Last Bid Placed: Oct/22/09 05:56 PM CEST (11:56 AM EST)
Bidding History*-*Sedo.co.uk

SunnyShore.com
Winning Bid: $80
Last Bid Placed: Oct/22/09 05:48 PM CEST (11:48 AM EST)
Bidding History*-*Sedo.co.uk

PureTitanium.com
Winning Bid: $80
Last Bid Placed: Oct/22/09 03:25 PM CEST (9:25 AM EST)
Bidding History*-*Sedo.co.uk

As you can clearly see, none of my auctions received bids after 11:56 AM EST!

Now, as is common knowledge, seasoned bidders will wait until the very end to bid so as to avoid driving the price up early on.

With regard to my personal interactions with Sedo:

As of Friday, my Sedo rep. said that Sedo will not hold it against me if I decide not to honor the winning bid prices however, I got the feeling that Sedo isn't going to void the auctions and that the buyers can pursue legal action if they wish to do so.

My question to all of you is this:

Will Sedo make things right with the October GreatDomains auction sellers?

Sincerely,

Craig

[PRED]

No sedo won't im afraid
sedo look after themselves , they have a history of shit customer service

[Acro]

I had a similar issue with Namejet (as a bidder) a couple of times that their system was DDoS'ed and they repeated the auctions. That's the proper thing to do.

[Gerry]

No sedo won't im afraid
sedo look after themselves , they have a history of shit customer service

Spot on, Pred.

You'll have to take legal action to get them to consent to any resale, let alone getting them to admit wrongdoing.

I would be embarrassed if I were sedo and attempted to convince us of a DDoS.

Imagine, lying to your own clients.

[Domain Jedi]

Tomorrow I will be speaking with the North America Director of Sales. I will keep you all posted.

I realize that this incident didn’t affect all of you however, your voices of support will be heard loud and clear by sedo.

Please keep the feedback/opinions coming.

[Gerry]

Tomorrow I will be speaking with the North America Director of Sales. I will keep you all posted.

I realize that this incident didn’t affect all of you however, your voices of support will be heard loud and clear by sedo.

Please keep the feedback/opinions coming.

Even ebay adds a day when they have an outage.

[Domain Jedi]

I did have one more October GreatDomains auction that didn't receive any bids at the end of the auction. Thank goodness the reserve price wasn't met!

Here are the details:

ChocolateBars.com
High Bid: $9,999
Last Bid Placed: Oct/15/09 04:46 PM EST
Bidding History*-*sedo.com

Please note that ChocolateBars.com was one of the higher profile October GreatDomains auctions. In fact, the high bid price you see took place on the very first day the auction went live.

Also, Sedo had the domain ChocolateBars.com advertised in both of their banners for the full seven days of the auction.

Sedo, where are the end of auction bids for any of my auctions?

[Domain Jedi]

Yesterday, I was supposed to receive a call from sedo's North America Director of Sales…

No call. No follow up email.

[Gerry]

sedo immediately came out and said they were the victim of TWO malicious DDoS.

I am sure they will continue to use this as a basis of we did nothing wrong.

[Domain Jedi]

Doc, I appreciate all of your feedback, comments, support etc!

Still no word from sedo's Director of Sales...

Lisa (SedoCoUk) PMed me that she has sent a follow-up email to both my account manager as well as the the Director of Sales advising them of my continued inquiry.

[Gerry]

Doc, I appreciate all of your feedback, comments, support etc!

Still no word from sedo's Director of Sales...

Lisa (SedoCoUk) PMed me that she has sent a follow-up email to both my account manager as well as the the Director of Sales advising them of my continued inquiry.

Do you have an account manager?

[Domain Jedi]

Do you have an account manager?

I do however, his line has gone silent as well...

[Gerry]

I do however, his line has gone silent as well...

[d.name]

[Domain Jedi]

I just wanted to give all of you an update. Unfortunately the October GreatDomains (sedo) auction sellers have been lied to and basically left to fend for themselves.

I realize that this fraud is small time when compared to the SnapNames fiasco however, it is sad that I haven't been able to get much traction with regard to getting this story out.

[Mike Cruz]

I had not used sedo til recently, but I do find their customer service pretty horrible. I have to wait days to receive replies to my questions and even then, they are pretty empty.

I have been waiting for weeks on payment for two domains, but from what I have been reading, this is 'the usual' and to top it off, sedo doesn't even prevent these people from bidding on other auctions, nor suspending their accounts... it makes absolutely no sense...