Comments

1. BrianWick says

   March 4, 2014 at 6:26 am

   GoDaddy –
   Auctions and everything else – these are not my people

2. cmac says

   March 4, 2014 at 8:48 am

   i bet it gets renewed.

3. Tony Lam says

   March 4, 2014 at 9:08 am

   Looks like they’re less than an hour from me. Time to make another road trip.

4. Paul Nicks says

   March 4, 2014 at 5:25 pm

   Hey Ray,

   We verified fraud on the previous high bidder and rolled back all of his bids rather than having the next highest bidder honor the $105k bid. We feel this is the right way to handle this sort of thing, so that’s why the number fell all the way down to $5k saving the true winning bidder a lot of money.

   -Paul

5. Raymond Hackney says

   March 4, 2014 at 5:51 pm

   Thanks a lot Paul.

6. Acro says

   March 4, 2014 at 5:59 pm

   Would be great to know the locale of the shill bidders and how they planned to collect such ransom from an unsuspecting buyer.

7. Brad Mugford says

   March 4, 2014 at 7:07 pm

   Paul,

   I have seen this type of bidding activity before many times. I explained what normally happens in the other thread. I have also pointed out specific examples of this in the past to various parties @ GoDaddy.

   In summary, this normally involves at least two bidders running an auction up past a reasonable price, then the high bidder does not pay and the 2nd bidder gets it for a huge discount with their bids removed.

   One thing you have to realize in this specific situation is it took 2 bidders to run the price up to $106,000. Even if one bidder is a shill, the current high bidder also had to bid for the price to make it there.

   Is it plausible someone would legitimately bid $100K+ on this domain name? I don’t think so.

   The fact that GoDaddy allows public anonymous bidding just leaves this open to games like this. Changes really need to be implemented to stop this sort of thing from happening as often as it does.

   Brad

8. Richard S says

   March 4, 2014 at 8:42 pm

   I was willing to pay $7k for this domain, as I have a invested outside interest in it. I was unable to do that, because bogus bozos had it into 6 figures. Are you telling me bidder 13 was willing to pay $105K for the domain?

9. Brad Mugford says

   March 5, 2014 at 12:50 am

   @ Richard

   That is exactly why the bidders are doing this. They run away from the pack in a 2 way bidding war to block any other bidders from getting between them.

   Let’s say you were willing to pay $7K, and 2 other people were willing to pay $10K and $12K. With two bidders running the bid up to an absurd level it blocks any other legitimate bidders. Then when the non paying bidder is removed, the new winner gets the option to buy it with all those bids removed for far less than it would have sold for otherwise.

   I also just noticed biomedics.com which sold for $4K+ at expired auction on the same day as DiscoverIndia.com, now shows a price of $2,850.

   The system is broken. You are bidding vs people who have no intention of actually paying.

   Brad

10. BrianWick says

    March 5, 2014 at 1:16 am

    “They run away from the pack in a 2 way bidding war to block any other bidders from getting between them.”
    “You are bidding vs people who have no intention of actually paying.”

    domain should be re-auctioned – done

11. jose says

    March 29, 2014 at 5:46 pm

    totally agree. there is only one fair and honest way out of this: start another auction.

    you registrars are so full of your privileged position, collecting all the bucks with minimum risk, that you don’t even care what it takes.