Asking price a joke!

[fatter]

(I see houses all the time out here sell for $250,000 when the asking price was only $220,000.)


you are right jumping jack this does happen quite often

 

[SedoCoUk]

Hello,

We have no plans to remove this limitation at the moment.
Basically, we enforce this limitation to prevent speculation and unreaslistic pricing.

However, remember that you can always set the minimum offer price at a high level to prevent "low-ball" offers and once you receive an offer you can counter with any sum you like - 10,000 or 10,000,000 - it is entirely up to you.

Kind Regards,

Nora Cotter
Domain Broker
_______________________________________________

SEDO.COM :: Buy and Sell Domain Names and Websites

tel +49 (221)-420-758-287 :: fax +49 (212)-202-3951
email: [email protected] :: url: www.sedo.com

_______________________ :: make a name for yourself.

 

[David G]

.

 

[Matrix1976]

Nora, i did not misunderstand anything, from what i can see, sedo has a policy to not get there hands dirty on anything. In the past 8-9 weeks or so, i have 'bought' 9 domains on sedo and this has been my experience :

1 has resulted in an honest sale and was concluded within a relatively short period of time (about 2 weeks).

1 has resulted in an honest sale and was concluded within a relatively long period of time (about 4 weeks).

4 had fraudulent traffic which sedo 'is apparently not responsible for' and did not care to correct even if sedo was advised of the problem b4 giving payment to seller.

1 had a fixed asking price that i bid on. the seller aparently did not want to sell the domain at that price, so Sedo removed his listing from sedo's website for not respecting his contract...a few days later, the seller put the domain back on sedo with the same asking price (probably under the same account)... the domain has and had EXACTLY the same whois information...to this day the domain is still actively listed on sedo....what a consequence to a breach of contract!! WOW y'all are brutal.

1 had a desired price (asking price) of 199 euro, i bid 199euro...2 days later, the seller changed his asking price to 399$! and this during the period for which 'i' as the buyer was 'under contract' for 7 days for my offer...so basically the purchase offer is binding to the buyer by sedo's terms, but not the sellers...

1 domain was purchased 2 months ago and im still waiting for control over it....


Nice track record eh? when so many people are complaining about certain procedures in a company, maybe its time to make some changes?... no matter how high and mighty one might think they are.....

Well -
A pertinant question would be why you would set a fixed price of 60 USD when the minimum commission is 50 USD.
A sales contract would be in effect.
A sales contract is an obligation to sell at 60 USD
The sales contract binds the buyer and seller to the sale.
The sales contract is legally binding.
The affected party would therefore decide how the disreputable seller should be consequenced.
Some decide to initiate legal proceedings, as is their right due to the breach of contract, while others decide not to.
That is a decision for the buyer, not for Sedo.
So - legal action would be one possible consequence.
The buyer could also decide on any number of other consequences, but we here at Sedo, would have no control over that.
We are not the domain police Matrix - be fair.
We can suspend the seller's account as a consequence of bad business practices, which would be yet another consequence.
We cannot hunt him down and force him to sell the domain to the buyer for 60 USD minus the 50 USD he would owe us in commission.

a few more things :

1 - the minimum commision does not apply, as it is waived according to what is written on the sedo website for the past few months...its good to know your own companies policies/specials.

2 - i was only stating the 60$ domain as an example, not a fact that i have encountered....

3 - as i was saying, and as you have described, Sedo does not take upon itself to insure that sellers respect their end of the contract, it is up to the buyer to take legall matters in their own hands for this....as if anyone would bother with that....

4- i have yet to see anyone get any consequences from not repecting their sales contract, so ill have to take your word on that one...

 

[paymaster7]

Now this just doesn't sound genuine. Hard to imagine that a 'service' meant to serve the user (in this case having a max of $10k on pricing) is actually a 'service' when the company providing it benefits because of it, because of the appraisal fee.

Just have a hard time believing that it's meant to protect users from overpriced domains (do we need that protection? can't one figure out pretty quickly if a domain is overpriced?) when its end result is to encourage people to line Sedo's pockets even more by paying for an appraisal.

Seems like you're double dipping there. It's a silly rule that should be dumped.

Just my two cents and I'm clearly not alone.

 

[Matrix1976]

Now this just doesn't sound genuine. Hard to imagine that a 'service' meant to serve the user (in this case having a max of $10k on pricing) is actually a 'service' when the company providing it benefits because of it, because of the appraisal fee.

Just have a hard time believing that it's meant to protect users from overpriced domains (do we need that protection? can't one figure out pretty quickly if a domain is overpriced?) when its end result is to encourage people to line Sedo's pockets even more by paying for an appraisal.

Seems like you're double dipping there. It's a silly rule that should be dumped.

Just my two cents and I'm clearly not alone.

well said

 

[SedoCoUk]

Hello again,

While we regret that Matrix experienced some broken sales, the fault lies with the seller.
The contract is between Matrix and the seller.
It is up to Matrix, as the injured party, to pursue the issue should he see fit.

Please think about it rationally:
It would be like Matrix replying to an advertisement in his local paper to buy a car for $5000.
He goes to buy the car for $5000 and the owner refuses to sell for anything less than $5500.
In this instance, Matrix' local paper is not at fault.
The seller of the car is at fault.

There appears to be a failure to understand that Sedo merely facilitates trading.
We cannot police the end results to the extent that Matrix seeks, in the same way that Ebay or any other online marketplace have only limited avenues of action in the event of sellers reneging upon sales.

The fixed price option is used by thousands of sellers successfully and while we regret that the seller involved in this instance did not honour his agreement, we have no plans to dismantle the fixed price option in the near future.

Matrix can acquire the details of the seller that reneged on the sales from his transfer agent should he wish to pursue legal action.
That is all we can do.

Again, allow me to state that while we find the actions of the seller reprehensible, there is nothing else we can do.
We faciliate the trade but the agreement is between buyer and the seller.
Should you wish to pursue the matter through the courts Matrix, you have our full support.

The minimum commission is currently in a test phase, Matrix and as such, is not globally in place.
I trust you will accept that I am aware of Sedo's pricing and commission structure.
However, should you have any other questions, our customer service representatives would be glad to help you.

I trust that I have made our position in the matter of the breach of sales contract clear for you - I will not be commenting on the matter again on the forum.

While I understand buyers' frustrations in instances such as this, I think it might be more productive to actually contact the transfer agent or Sedo directly and resolve the matter effectively.
As previously stated, you have our full support.

As I have pointed out on several occasions, this forum is supposed to be a place where Sedo customers can discuss aspects of Sedo's products and services, with occasional input from a Sedo representative to comment on general queries.
It is not supposed to replace customer service.
I post here because we find all your feedback and constructive comments very helpful and see them as a valuable resource in adapting Sedo to meet changing needs.
To that end, thank you to everyone who contributed to this thread.

Should you wish to contine this dialogue with a representative of Sedo, I would ask you to contact us directly via email.

I think we can all agree that disagreements and complaints are best handled on a one-to-one basis rather than on a forum where the subject of the thread can sometimes be mired in other topics and where emotional responses can negatively affect the outcome.

Anyone else with comments or questions pertaining to our pricing structure, the upper limit placed on fixed asking prices, sales commissions or otherwise - I would also ask you to contact us directly if you want a response from Sedo.
The email addresses to contact are [email protected] and [email protected].


Kind Regards,

Nora Cotter
Domain Broker
_______________________________________________

SEDO.COM :: Buy and Sell Domain Names and Websites

tel +49 (221)-420-758-287 :: fax +49 (212)-202-3951
email: [email protected] :: url: www.sedo.com

_______________________ :: make a name for yourself.

 

[paymaster7]

I think we can all agree that disagreements and complaints are best handled on a one-to-one basis rather than on a forum where the subject of the thread can sometimes be mired in other topics and where emotional responses can negatively affect the outcome.

I completely disagree and once again don't know how you can say that we all agree on this... Issues and complaints regarding any domain sales aspect of any company or organization should be made public and analyzed for what they are... as this is a domain name forum... filled with people who sell domains.... This sort of information or issue SHOULD be made public, so that people know the potential for difficulties in any method, AND so the companies themselves have some sort of accountability/reason to improve.

Again, my two cents, but keeping everything private indicates a pretty obvious denial of any wrongdoing/ i.e. accountability for anything.... when it's certainly not clear that that is the case.

 

[carlton]

Should you wish to contine this dialogue with a representative of Sedo, I would ask you to contact us directly via email.

Kind Regards,

Nora Cotter
Domain Broker

I found Sedo's customer service reps to be excellent. Whenever I have written with a problem or snag, I have always received prompt attention and a resolution to my issue. Nora has been consistently helpful. All companies have their unique qualities, problems, strengths. My opinion.
_______________________________________________

SEDO.COM :: Buy and Sell Domain Names and Websites

tel +49 (221)-420-758-287 :: fax +49 (212)-202-3951
email: [email protected] :: url: www.sedo.com

_______________________ :: make a name for yourself.[/QUOTE]

 

[paymaster7]

Uhhh.. I don't understand what that has to do with the topic.

I found Sedo's customer service reps to be excellent. Whenever I have written with a problem or snag, I have always received prompt attention and a resolution to my issue. Nora has been consistently helpful. All companies have their unique qualities, problems, strengths. My opinion.
_______________________________________________

SEDO.COM :: Buy and Sell Domain Names and Websites

tel +49 (221)-420-758-287 :: fax +49 (212)-202-3951
email: [email protected] :: url: www.sedo.com

_______________________ :: make a name for yourself.

[/QUOTE]

 

[carlton]

Uhhh.. I don't understand what that has to do with the topic.

Don't overanalyze. Just some perspective on Sedo's customer service. No attack on you.

 

[SLushie]

Now this just doesn't sound genuine. Hard to imagine that a 'service' meant to serve the user (in this case having a max of $10k on pricing) is actually a 'service' when the company providing it benefits because of it, because of the appraisal fee.

Just have a hard time believing that it's meant to protect users from overpriced domains (do we need that protection? can't one figure out pretty quickly if a domain is overpriced?) when its end result is to encourage people to line Sedo's pockets even more by paying for an appraisal.

Seems like you're double dipping there. It's a silly rule that should be dumped.

Just my two cents and I'm clearly not alone.

in my opinion, most domainers do know when a domain is overpriced, but if domains are over priced too often Sedo could gain a reputation for unrealistic pricing. A standard appraisal costs $20, really how much can Sedo be earning from them. Setting a realistic price helps the seller just as much as Sedo.

 

[fxdomains.com]

Interesting discussion ! Just out of curiosity, the negative items raised against SEDO in this thread, how do they compare with afternic in your opinions ? Do you all feel afternic has a better grip on things like pricing (asking, fix, make offer, reserve etc) and also on enforcing sellers to sell for the agreed price ? If yes, is this due to afternic's system being better or afternic taking more responsibility ?

I'm quite curious about this as we have our whole domain portfolio with Afternic and with Sedo. We sold around 20 names via afternic and none via sedo.. not sure why

Regards,
Mike.

 

[dvdrip]

Where do you have your domains parked?

 

[fatter]

Interesting discussion ! Just out of curiosity, the negative items raised against SEDO in this thread, how do they compare with afternic in your opinions ? Do you all feel afternic has a better grip on things like pricing (asking, fix, make offer, reserve etc) and also on enforcing sellers to sell for the agreed price ? If yes, is this due to afternic's system being better or afternic taking more responsibility ?

I'm quite curious about this as we have our whole domain portfolio with Afternic and with Sedo. We sold around 20 names via afternic and none via sedo.. not sure why

Regards,
Mike.

I think afternic has a couple plusses, one they are much better at getting names listed high up in search engines, especially google, if someone types in name without ext most of my afternic names are on first page stating they are for sale, second I think afternics refferal system on domain sales is better, if someone buys a name throough their parking system then parker gets a pretty good cut, I get a lot of offers through sedo but none high enough to sell, I prefer sedo over afternic though because of their parking

 

[fxdomains.com]

My domains are parked at Afternic (tried SEDO as well but was similar in return). Although I do not make a lot of PPC earnings, I agree with fatter, the afternic referal system is paying off quite well. Also, the referal system for Sedo is not paying off for me, but their biggest let down is the fact you cannot combine the PPC and referal cash in one payment so I still have some money sitting there I cannot get out while afternic just pays out via paypal once a month or I can use it towards home page placements and appraisals - just seems much more flexible to me.

 

[urbanvilla]

The funny thing is about this is that half the sellers are members of dnforum so yes it is a joke because then they moan when it the same happens to them, as they say "wot goes around comes around" and that is true for most on here regarding the buying and sellin of domains !


Wes

 

[sevent]

Please think about it rationally:
It would be like Matrix replying to an advertisement in his local paper to buy a car for $5000.
He goes to buy the car for $5000 and the owner refuses to sell for anything less than $5500.
In this instance, Matrix' local paper is not at fault.
The seller of the car is at fault.

This is a really bad analogy. Newspapers charge a fixed advertising price, and make the same amount whether you sell the item or not. Services like Sedo charge a large commission becuase they are promising to manage the transaction with a number of services: escrow, moderated negotiation, etc. Even the $10K cap on unapprasied names is an effort to manage the marketplace for the benifit of users (or so Sedo is claiming).

If Sedo doesn't provide good mechanisms for punishing bad traders then what's the point? It makes the service about as usefull as eBay would be without user ratings or account verification. Just blaming the seller shows a really poor attitude on their part.

 

[SedoCoUk]

Hello everybody,

As I am the new Sedo moderator here, I just thought I'd chip in with my two cents.

First and foremost, I have gone to:

http://www.small-business-dictionary.org/default.asp?term=ASKING+PRICE

so that one's nicely cleared up then. I have read this thread in its entirety finding it strange that so many of you have so much against our "asking price" feature. It is only a basis for negotiation and not a fixed price.

The thread seems to have progressed from here on to two separate points:
Firstly, why we have the 10K cap and secondly why Afternic have a referral system whilst ours is not so developed. I'll deal with them in that order.

1.
The 10K cap is, as nora said, to stop speculation and inflated prices. I receive daily emails from domainers asking why they can't list their 'fantastic' several-word-with-a-few-hyphens-&-2ümläuts.cc for the 25,000 that it is bound to fetch. Our job is to help you sellers to sell your domains. We really aim to encourage interaction between buyers and sellers as that's the best way to get domains sold. Were we to allow our users to list domains for prices that they think they're worth, we and our users would definitely see a drop in bids and therefore sales.

I appreciate that the users of this forum are a higher class of seller and have more idea of how much their domains are worth, but we still believe interaction between both parties is vital for a domain marketplace as vibrant as Sedo. If you set your 'minimum offer' price at around the couple of thousand mark, then you really can cut out your low-ball offers.

If anyone sees the asking price is 10,000, they know you're serious, they know they have to make a serious bid. If anyone is making a bid of 10,000, they are more than likely aware of it's actual value and should not be surprised if you counter with a bid of 15,000. This is not to say they WILL not be surprised by your counter offer, but their surprise will be more because of the fact they thought they were going to con you out of a name worth more than they offered. More power to the sellers' elbow... The fact is, negotiations have then started and you can both set about looking to find some middle ground. Surely, it is better to have 10 potential bids at 10,000 than one offer at 15,000?
As a final point, I would simply ask you to all go to our homepage and click on 'advanced search'. Filter the search and set the price to 10,000 - 100,000 and sort for names listed in the last week. No, say the last two days. I have 57 names in my results. Now tell me, honestly, how many of those do you really believe are worth 10,000? And if we didn't have the cap...?

As a result of this urge to increase interaction, we have this cap. As a result of this cap, we suggest people carry out a domain appraisal to find out the actual value of the domain. However, this appraisal is not simply a ticket to list your domain over the 10,000 mark - if it is valued that highly - it is one of the industry's best-recognised appraisals carried out by the industry's largest domain platform. It is carried out by real people, real professionals in the area and not by machines as many other appraisals are. They can be used as a great negotiating weapon when in talks with a potential buyer and they can even help you to get a higher price in the end. Furthermore, they are not exactly extortionately-priced. A standard $19 appraisal is a tiny 0.001% of a $20,000 domain's selling price if it is truly worth that much and can be used to press the potential buyer for a higher price.

Having said this, it doesn't mean that your domains can never be listed for more than 10,000 without an appraisal. We are usually fully aware of, or made aware of, great names that come into our system and we can make special concessions for names that are obviously worth well over 10,000.

Phew.

The second point is a shorter point. Luckily. We have put a lot of research into our parking pages' layout. We have seen that the conversion rate of referrals for domain appraisals etc. is so very low that it is a minor part of our parked pages. We and the other most competitive companies in the PPC business know that a parked page has two functions: to monetise the domain by getting people to click on the ads and to make the minority of viewers who are interested aware that the domain is for sale. It's hard enough to make people just click on the ads, let alone to make them go and buy a domain appraisal! Our CPCs are higher than afternics and our sales platform is the largest in the business and is the first stop for industry buyers, so it really does pay to park and sell your domains with us.

The last point is a bit of good news for those that don't know it yet. As of March, we will be extending the NO MINIMUM COMISSION as enjoyed by the US customers to all customers covered by the US/UK/International team! You can find out more about it at my post here http://www.dnforum.com/showthread.php?t=80468&highlight=minimum+commission
and more news will follow next week. So it really pays to park and sell with us!

I'm not going to make Nora's mistake of saying we all agree on this, because we clearly don't all agree with each other. I wanted to show you my personal opinion and Sedo's ideas on how to most encourage a vibrant forum. Judging by our great week in DNJournal's (http://www.dnjournal.com/domainsales.htm) top sales again, we seem to be doing something right at least!

Thank you all for taking the time to read this. Not sure how many of you had the staying power to make it all the way to the end! We really do appreciate all of your feedback - especially the one about an ebay-style user rating.
You can, as usual, contact me at the address below should you have any further questions you'd like to ask me.

Looking forward to reading your comments!

Ed
Key Account Manager
UK Marketing Associate
_______________________________________________

SEDO.CO.UK :: Buy and Sell Domain Names and Websites
tel within UK 0871 900 8450 :: fax 0871 900 8451
tel +49 221.420.758.156 :: fax +49 221.420.758.11
tel (US) (877)-349-5902 :: fax (212)-202-3951
email: [email protected] :: http://www.sedo.co.uk

_______________________ :: make a name for yourself.