Hi everyone,
First of all a quick answer on the contracts:
The written contract and the online contract are basically the same thing. There are simply a fair amount of people out there who still don't trust online practices and would prefer to have the "security" of a paper contract. However, we are aware that this slows down the process considerably and we are phasing out the written contract in the very near future as part of our streamlining of the transfer system.
Onto the more difficult point of fake bidders: I think I mentioned in another post that we are doing all we can to weed out fake bidders and bogus buyers. We are looking at a number of measures that can be taken and we do review every single case of fake buyers and will normally sternly warn them with regard to their future practice or ban them outright if we feel it is justified. To many of you, it may seem that we are biassed on the side of the buyers. The fact is that our job is to find buyers for you guys, the sellers. We are very wary of being heavy-handed with buyers because we may scare off potential, bona fide buyers whilst targeting the bad guys.
This is a headache for all internet companies who act as the middle man between two strangers. The fact is, if we were to run stringent checks on all buyers before they could bid (ideas we've had are not allowing new users to place a bid for a week to weed out bogus bidders and carrying out some kind of credit card or bank account check like Paypal do) there is a very real danger that the number of decent bidders will decrease dramatically, thus losing our sellers money. As a direct result of this thread, we have asked tech to find out what percentage of deals struck through Sedo are made by buyers making a bid within 24 hours of setting up an account. I would think it is a high proportion.
I know that many of you who have been affected by bidders and buyers of this kind will be inclined to think we're just trying to find excuses for our own inadequacies. The thing is, we make between 800-1000 successful sales every month and only a small percentage of the sales that go through our system are cancelled. We believe we offer you guys an extremely vibrant market place with thousands upon thousands of happy, successful sellers.
I can only apologise to all of you who have experienced problems of this nature. We hate to see transfers break down. As the contract is between yourselves and the buyers, we have no power to take non-paying buyers to court. If it ever goes that far, however, we provide all evidence we can to support disgruntled sellers - and vice versa if the seller scarpers.
I hope this explains our situation a little more clearly. Email me if you have any more thoughts or questions on the matter at
ed@Cede.com
Have a great week and keep an eye out for our new domain management tool coming out this week. Enjoy.
Ed