I bought a name on Afternic but the lister doesn't own it

You'll get full refund, That's all Afternic support will say

Afternic only checks conflicted domain names to verify ownership: ones that exist in another user's account. Many domains remain in user accounts at Afternic long after they have been sold, expired, and no longer belong to the user. Once an issue occurs, like yours, then they remove them, but not before then.

They don't do a DNS prune like Sedo to remove unregistered domains from a user's account either.

They're garbage.

I just spent 30 minutes on the phone with Afternic mostly on hold. What a terrible company they are. They initially suspended my account because they thought it was suspicious that I created an account the same day I purchased the domains. Since they suspended my account the transactions were deleted from their system and the customer service team couldn't even find the transactions and had to talk to their escrow department. The whole deal costs me a few hours and about $15,000 charged to my credit card that will take a couple of weeks to receive credit for. What a waste of time. Afternic sucks.

I purchased a domain on NetworkSolutions, that was apparently listed on Afternic (affiliate sale for netsol). It was under $3000. I paid. They transferred to me a few days later.

It was an impulse BIN purchase for me. I only learned later that it was the PRIMARY ACTIVE DOMAIN FOR A MULTIBILLION DOLLAR Investment Firm. You read that correctly. I had full control of their domain, DNS settings etc. for about 30 days until the bank realized and had it reversed through NetSol.

I got a refund, but only after following up. NetSol IMO was NOT fun to deal with through the whole thing. I'll post the full story at some time in the future when I'm not so busy.

Still not 100% sure what happened, but guessing it was still listed there by the person they bought it from, and all of the machinery that was supposed to catch this missed it. So many problems here. Should never have happened.

I learned 3 lessons.

1. Many domain listings are old/inactive. Don't get too excited by a low BIN price.
2. NetSol IMO is a mess. I will not keep high value domains there. I barely keep anything there.
3. If you are a billion dollar bank, DON'T LEAVE YOUR DOMAINS IN REGISTRARS THAT HAVE INSTANT TRANSFER.

the same with DomainNameSales.com/Uniregistry.com .. someone listed my EUROPE.NINJA on DNS and Uniregistry.

scammers everywhere...

When listing a name for sale on Flippa, they send a confirmation email to the WHOIS to verify ownership. Pretty obvious process that works well. I think that Sedo does the same. Afternic told me that they sometimes look at the WHOIS to make sure it matches the lister of the domain. One of the domains I purchased was in use by a large corporation. The customer service rep also told me that their system isn't 'fail proof'. That is an understatement! It seems that their verification system is to list everything and then to figure it out later if a transaction goes bad. This is a huge hassle for buyers. Spend time reading through their garbage domains. Finally find some good deals and it turns out to be illegitimate.

3 letter for $4,000 - does it raise a red flag???

RU said:

the same with DomainNameSales.com/Uniregistry.com .. someone listed my EUROPE.NINJA on DNS and Uniregistry.

scammers everywhere...

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It could be the previous owner who dropped it, scammer is a strong word, as it would never pass escrow

I have had similar issues. Afternic and Uniregistry listed my domain for SALE on their sites UNAUTHORIZED. It's obvious they don't care the Who's owner. I suggest domainers needs to check theirs domains. People making money of your properties via all kinds of sources, this is super "Unethical Behavior". And of course once you find out this kind of activities, they will come up wiTH all kinds of lame excuses. DO NOT TRUST, Check who's and ASK question about the domain legitimately before giving them a.$

Excuses such as, previous owner might have been listed it for sale; how long it supposed to be listed for sale from the previous owner. How about the current owner of the domain. How about a system that can delete previous owner listing of this domain. Making money of others people properties unauthorized is UNACCEPTABLE AND UNETHICAL BUSINESS PARCTICE.

fogfever said:

i saw a 3-letter .com with a buy it now price of $4,000 and a couple other domains with good prices so I bought all 3 of them.

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might be true, if you used the way-back machine

http://www.srossi.net/2011/01/mr-peabody.jpg

Ok, so I find a name I like that you own that is listed at Godaddy. I then list your name for sale on Afternic for a lowball price. I proceed to buy the name and instantly it is fast transferred into my account. I now own your domain for pennies on the dollar.

Is this what you're saying is possible? I find this to be totally insane if true.

More like this:

1. Seller lists DOMAIN on several platforms, including Afternic.
2. Buyer A purchases DOMAIN from seller somewhere else. Put it to use.
3. Seller never removes Afternic listing. DOMAIN is still listed for sale.
4. Buyer B comes along and purchases DOMAIN at Afternic or through Afternic affiliate.
5. Buyer B is Instantly given Buyer A's new name, as Afternic misses the checks necessary to assure Seller still owns asset.

Several of these registrars participate in "Instant Transfer" for market listings.

Knowing what happened in my case, this scares the hell out of me.

Def Domains said:

Several of these registrars participate in "Instant Transfer" for market listings.

Knowing what happened in my case, this scares the hell out of me.

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This is fucking insane. Even more the reason to have two step verification on your account. At least you would know what is happening before it happens.

hookbox said:

This is f*cking insane. Even more the reason to have two step verification on your account. At least you would know what is happening before it happens.

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How will two step protect you from this?

I deleted my names from flippa as I kept getting a whois verification and name on their name to confirm whois wasn't even mine.I wrote to them and told them about it and they said'maybe previous owner forgot to delete names.Name that I have listed for more than a month and got a whois verification email.Couldnt stand the BS and just deleted all my domains there.Name of lister was 'Frank Asare' ,whoever that was.

domeen said:

How will two step protect you from this?

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Fast transfer won't happen without them calling me and me giving them my authorization. If they don't get that first then the fast transfer can't happen.

hookbox said:

Fast transfer won't happen without them calling me and me giving them my authorization. If they don't get that first then the fast transfer can't happen.

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I think Thats not how it works! If you have fast transfer on, they still transfer it

johnn said:

3 letter for $4,000 - does it raise a red flag???

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Sometimes the sellers do not know about current wholesale minimum prices, etc. I've purchased 3 and 4 letter domains on Sedo below their wholesale minimum value and the sellers followed through on the sale. Good deals happen all the time. Would you not buy a 3 letter for $4,000 if you saw it listed on a large site like Sedo or Afternic?

domeen said:

I think Thats not how it works! If you have fast transfer on, they still transfer it

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Maybe @Joe Styler can chime in on this

If I was to ever start a marketplace or broker names, I would have to confirm each name by sending an email to the administrative contact/registrant on the whois.. If the name is private then too bad.

It's not good business imo to have thousands of names on marketplaces that may be phony.. no form of accountability or check. That goes for Afternic, DNS, Godaddy etc... And they need to have some common sense rules when they work together.. because if one marketplace allow non sense, then that can affect who they network with. because the phony name will show up on the third party marketplace they are teaming up with.

Is it hard to let owners confirm listings via email? Not the email they sign up with(some genius ceo figured this is the way), but the whois contact.

Or Maybe these marketplaces just like to give the impression that they are big and have alot of names..so they allow this mess to blow themselves up and attract more people.

I don't know if they are still doing this,but years ago when I used sedo..you couldn't add a name unless they confirmed the whois.. And when I let a name expire and forgot to delete it .. they would have system scans and literally delete the name themselves. A new owner couldn't list the name until they confirmed ownership.

This thread is very timely for me because I was thinking of pimpin some domains there. Of course I would bump the price there to reflect their higher fees.

I have this theory that when GoDaddy first started the 12 year old child / relative of the founder did the web UI. I think this self "taught" webdev is also the data flow architect. Am I right?

If you list a domain name as a fast transfer listing BIN name you need to opt in to sell the domain. Meaning there is a pretty strict check on these. The opt in to sell the name has to come from your registrar where the domain name is registered. So if I had x.com registered at GoDaddy and wanted to sell it on Afternic. I would log in to Afternic and list my name for sale then Afternic would tell GoDaddy I want to sell the name, GoDaddy would contact me and say you want to sell x.com? Click here to authorize this listing on Afternic. I would have to click the email I receive from GoDaddy or whatever registrar I have the name registered with to approve the listing. If I do not then the name cannot be listed for sale. Once the domain name expires, or a lock of some kind is added (such as a registry hold not a typical transfer lock), if the name sells etc if for any reason the domain name can no longer be fulfilled to the buyer then the registrar contacts Afternic and the name is pulled from the inventory list. If the name sells there is a live call to see if the name is available if the name just sold to someone else or just expired etc the call fails and the name is not sold.

Is it possible for a domain to sell when the owner did not list it? Yes but highly unlikely on a fast transfer name, there has to be a really unusual situation and the current owner would have to ok the sale. I am not going to go into the specifics publicly because I know some people may want to use this to try to steal a domain, this would not be possible as we can easily unwind sales with our partners but suffice it to say the situation for this to happen would be extremely rare and hard to duplicate and in all cases the owner needs to ok the listing on a priced fast transfer domain.

Unpriced listings are also checked however there is no registrar level check where the registrar checks as well on these so there is more room for error however these are slow transfers involving manual steps and if there is an error it can be caught during a manual process we have steps in place for that as a back up in case the first ownership checks fail to catch an issue.

Joe Styler said:

So if I had x.com registered at GoDaddy and wanted to sell it on Afternic. I would log in to Afternic and list my name for sale then Afternic would tell GoDaddy I want to sell the name, GoDaddy would contact me and say you want to sell x.com? Click here to authorize this listing on Afternic.

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of-course, this is just theory (or fiction) in reality you will get the status "No (Opt-in Required)" but no email for opt in, i've just listed over 200 names with buy now and got the opt-in mail for maybe half of them.

another beautiful thing is when you waste 2 hours putting upper cases on your names on csv and everything is in lower cases after you upload.