Archive for the ‘Domain Names’ Category

Selling on Sedo.com: What Happens If the Buyer Does Not Pay?

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

A few weeks ago, I auctioned off a domain name on Sedo.com. It fetched a little over a thousand bucks so I was happy to sell. One day after the auction ended, I promptly received an email message from Sedo, which informed me that they had already invoiced the buyer and were expecting the payment for the domain to arrive soon. Since the entire process was dependent on when the buyer sent payment, Sedo didn’t specify a date when the transaction would be completed.

A couple of weeks passed and I didn’t hear any update from Sedo. Then I started thinking, “What happens if the buyer doesn’t pay?”. I’ve had encounters with time wasters on some of the domaining forums, but there are no formal or legally binding contracts for domain transactions on those forums, so there’s really not much that you can do. You get to scratch your head and mutter curses to an unresponsive screen — that’s the closest thing to compensation that you could get. But this was Sedo, possibly the biggest domain auction house on the Internet!

I decided to contact Sedo — surely a thousand bucks is worth more than one email message. I didn’t get any reply though. They usually reply within a day or two, but not this time. I checked the Sedo contract again, but it didn’t say anything about what happens if the buyer does not pay — whether Sedo will twist his arm and make him cough up the money that he promised to pay when he placed his bid. Nothing. The only clause that was remotely related was this:

Payment must be remmited (sic) to Sedo with five (5) business days from the creation of the payment request.

It didn’t say what happens if the buyer doesn’t pay within five business days. Maybe Sedo doesn’t want to think about that part.

Anyway, I needed confirmation if I was still legally bound to sell considering that the buyer had obviously defaulted on his payment. Since I wasn’t getting any reply from Sedo, I decided to contact a Sedo employee who lurks on one of the domaining forums that I frequent. I got a reply within an hour. He wrote:

The buyer has five days to confirm payment has been sent and then the seller can choose to cancel.

That was my way out of the contract. I wasn’t happy that my domain didn’t sell as I thought it did, but I was glad to have found closure on this issue. A few hours after I got the answer from the Sedo guy on the forum, I finally received an official reply from Sedo:

Unfortunately we have had no choice but to cancel the transfer for this domain name. Despite repeated emails and contact attempts the buyer has failed to make payment for this domain.

The contract in place for this transaction is legally binding. Should you wish to pursue legal action, the buyer's applicable contact details have been made available for your viewing. You will now find them on the contract for this transaction within your Sedo account.

I’d wasted enough time on this buyer, so I didn’t even think about whether I should pursue legal action. It was a lesson learned: A domain isn’t sold until you actually receive the payment, regardless of where you sell it.

One week after this all happened, I received an email message from a guy who made an offer on the same domain a few months back. He was asked if I had decided on the selling price for the domain. I said yes and asked for 150% of the winning bid on Sedo, plus Escrow.com fee. He agreed. So I was able to sell the domain for more and all is well.

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How to Create a Go Daddy Account

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

Just because I buy and sell domains as a hobby, people ask me all sorts of questions about domains. One of the more frequent questions that I get is “How do I create a GoDaddy.com account?”.

It’s getting boring to explain the steps again and again. And telling them to go to www.justfuckinggoogleit.com for instructions doesn’t work (one guy actually came back to me and said, “I couldn’t find any information on www.justfuckinggoogleit.com). So I’ve decided to just post the instructions here.

NOTE: The easiest way to create a Go Daddy account is to purchase a domain name from them. Before you can check out and pay, the domain registration process will prompt you for your personal information and create an account for you.

To create a Go Daddy account

  1. Open your Web browser, and then go to GoDaddy.com.
  2. On the right side of the page, click the Create a New Account link (right below the logon box). The Create A New Customer Account page appears. Too lazy? Just click here then.
  3. Under Enter Your Contact Information, fill in the text boxes that are marked with an asterisk (*). The asterisk indicates required information.
  4. Under Stay Informed, indicate whether you want to receive promo and announcement email messages from Go Daddy. If you do not want to receive these types of email messages, click No for all the options in this box.
  5. Click Create a New Account.

The form refreshes and automatically logs you on to the GoDaddy.com Web site. You may now start purchasing Go Daddy products.

You should also receive an email confirmation from Go Daddy (at the email address you specified when you created your account), with your Go Daddy customer number. Record this number and keep it in a safe place. You can use your customer number (as an alternative to your logon name) to log on to the Go Daddy Web site.

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Undoing a Go Daddy Domain Transfer: Is It Possible?

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

If you have transferred domain names (also known as ‘account change’) from your Go Daddy account to another person’s Go Daddy account, you would probably recognize the email below. This is the email message that Go Daddy sends to the old domain registrant after the new registrant completes the domain transfer process.

This email is to confirm the recent change of registrant of the following domain name(s):

SOME-DOMAIN-NAME.COM

The change has been completed and the available information has been recorded in our system. If for any reason this information is incorrect or you feel this change of registrant request was made in error, please contact us within 15 days at undo@godaddy.com.

Sincerely,

GoDaddy.com, Inc.

Take note of the sentence that I underlined in the email message, especially the “If for any reason…” part. This particular clause, and the sentence in its entirety, sort of gave me an assurance that if something goes wrong with my domain transaction, I can easily reverse the domain transfer and get my domain back. By “wrong”, I am referring to, for example, the domain buyer reversing the PayPal payment. Because of this “assurance”, I transferred domain names to buyers even before they sent payment, confident that I would get my domain back if they don’t pay.

One day, a guy bought a few domains from me for a couple of hundred bucks. I transferred the domain names to his account as soon as I received confirmation that he had sent his payment via PayPal. Ten minutes after he completed the domain transfer, I received an email message from PayPal informing me that the buyer had reversed the payment. Bah, I said to myself. No problem; I’ll explain the situation to good old Go Daddy and I was sure I’d get my domains back.

So I emailed undo@godaddy.com and explained the situation. Six hours later, I received the following reply:

Hello,

Your emails have been received and forwarded to us for review. After investigating the domain name(s) SOME-DOMAIN-NAME.COM we have determined that the changes were made by an authorized party (a party that had access to the customer account). As such, we cannot assist you with the changes made to the domains.

Any disputes over the ownership or wording of the domain name(s) itself will need to be sent either to the registrant, through an arbitration forum such as World Intellectual Property Organization (http://www.wipo.int), or the local court system. Per ICANN regulations, domain registrars are prohibited from becoming involved in domain ownership disputes. Should you decide to proceed and initiate a legal dispute against the registrant of the domain(s), please send a copy of the filed and stamped complaint to domaindisputes@godaddy.com.

Thank you,
Undo Department

So what the frack happened to “If for any reason this information is incorrect or you feel this change of registrant request was made in error…”? I strongly felt that this was made in error because the buyer reversed the payment!

I emailed them back and suggested that they remove that particular clause or the entire sentence from their transfer confirmation email — because it gives the false impression that we still can get out domains back if something goes wrong with the transaction. Guess what they said… NOTHING. The same sentence is still in the transfer confirmation email, still giving domainers the same false assurance.

So is it possible to undo a Go Daddy transfer after the transfer process is completed? Yes, of course — in your dreams.

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New Go Daddy Domain Transfer Process

Monday, May 5th, 2008

It looks like Go Daddy recently redesigned the user interaction flow for pushing domain names (or transferring domain names from one Go Daddy account). Instead requiring you to enter the new registrant’s details such as (name, address, phone, and email address), the new process now simply asks for either the Go Daddy customer number or Go Daddy login name, and the email address that is associated with the Go Daddy account.

So what does this mean to users? As with almost everything else, there are two things – benefits and drawbacks.

Benefits: The new process makes the entire transfer process faster and eliminates the need for the new registrant to provide personal details to the current registrant so that the latter could initiate the domain transfer. Now all the current registrant needs to provide are the Go Daddy customer number or login name and the email address that is associated with account.

Drawback: The new registrant needs to create a GoDaddy.com account first before the current registrant can initiate the transfer. Previously, if you do not have a Go Daddy account when a domain is transferred to you, the transfer process will automatically create an account for you.

So is it better than the previous process? You be the judge. Here are the steps for initiating a domain transfer using the new Go Daddy process:

  1. Visit GoDaddy.com, and then log on to your account.
  2. On the menu, click Domains > My Domains. The Domain Manager screen appears and displays the domain names in your Go Daddy account.
  3. Find the domain name that you want to transfer, and then select the check box next to it. If you have more than 100 domain names in your account, you may need to use the Search function to find the domain that you want to transfer.
  4. After you select the check box for the domain, click Account Change. The Initiate Account Change screen appears.
  5. In New registrant’s Customer # or login name, type the Go Daddy customer number or login name of the person to whom you want to transfer the domain (new registrant).
  6. In New registrant’s email, type the new registrant’s email address. This email address must be currently associated with the new registrant’s Go Daddy account.
  7. In Confirm email, type the same email address that you typed in the previous step.
  8. Click Next.
  9. On the page that appears, select the two check boxes. One check box is for the Domain Name Change of Registrant Agreement and the other is for the (nonsensical and controversial) 60-day non-transfer agreement.
  10. Click Next, and then click Finish.

You have completed initiating a domain name transfer. You will receive an email from Go Daddy shortly with the subject “Change of Registrant Initiated”. The new registrant will also receive an email from Go Daddy with instructions on how to complete the transfer.

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