I have talked many times about people playing the real world appraisal game, they let the domain name complete auction at Go Daddy and then get the auth code and transfer out. Not everyone knows that you can transfer out, so many believe that someone would not pay $80 for this real world appraisal, most don’t pay $80 and redeem at Go Daddy, they transfer out to another registrar for $8.
So there was a lot of excitement about 66.biz and the bidding war taking place, the name closed at $69,000, but the whois just updated and the owner has taken his name to Uniregistry. So Namebio needs to remove and people need not quote that name as a sale, it had a closing price of $69,000 but no transaction was completed.
Oh cool so glad to see Godaddy not pocketing that money.
why do such a thing ?
Appraisal? Or shill bid up the auction to increase the perceived value, then transfer out and hope to sell it for an inflated value.
I have no idea if this is the case in this situation. But this scenario does happen. I didn’t follow the auction. And I don’t know who the owner is. But GoDaddy having anonymous bidders is a huge problem. Everyone should be identified with an alias.
Not sure I’d refer to these auctions as a “real world appraisal”. Apart from shills placing bids, the registrant can bid in the auction for his own expired domain … and then transfer it away. No shilling or “buddy bidding” (the unethical domainer’s euphemism) required.
I removed 66.biz from NameBio and manually checked all the other LL and CC .biz sales from the 11th. Almost all of them were owned by the same individual and were transferred to Uniregistry, so I removed those as well. GoDaddy really needs to do something about this, $208k in bids getting wiped out in a day is ridiculous.
I left them in the results table of the Daily Market Report in case anyone is curious to see what was ultimately removed from the database, you can find it here with the removed names crossed out:
http://namebio.com/blog/daily-market-report-for-november-11th-2015/
Thanks for the heads up Ray.
WIth godaddy you can’t count the sale until its transferred to the new owner. i’d imagine this would make things difficult for you but there are so many sales that never get completed on their auction platform for this reason.
Same old, same old with GoDaddy. At least now double-checking the reports is part of the daily routine.
http://acro.net/blog/some-reported-sales-at-godaddy-are-bogus/
no .biz domain is with that much.
So if the domains were sold via godaddy, would they have pocketed the funds? I think this is a good idea to see how much your domains are worth and if they are in demand. (Provided no shill bidding was involved)
Personally if I owned 66.biz and tried to sell without the live appraisal I probably would have accepted $2-3000, and be absolutely gutted. Now I’d know what to expect.
What better way to raise the value of your niche. Let them expire and you and your buddies drive the prices way up on the auctions for all eyes to see. Renew and transfer out when you’re done. Those names just became worth 20X more then before. This is why it is so easy to manipulate this market with a few sales that all are watching. People won’t forget these prices even if they don’t get listed as completed sales. It’s the perception that the name could be worth $69,000.
Not saying this is what occurred here but you can see how easy it is to create a false market.
for y’all that are crying “Godaddy has to do something about this” over an expired domain being recovered by its original owner, you’ve got your priorities screwed up. That Registrant is the only one that should be pocketing money from his domain – not the Registrar. Careful what you wish for, if Registrars place greater importance on letting names expire and auctioning them off over protecting the actual Registrant’s rights, you could find yourselves in the unfortunate position of losing your own domains the same way. Renewal reminders? nahh, let’s not send those, let’s skip auto renew, etc… so we can pocket the auction money. Think that can’t happen? Think again.