So there is one helluva back and forth about a deal gone awry on Namepros. But it didn’t just go awry in one place and tears at the constructs of many beliefs people have about different parts of the domain industry.
I remember during the CQD.com episode many people asked me, “Doesn’t using escrow protect me from buying stolen domains?” Short answer, NO!
Platforms will protect their client right? That’s complicated.
So here was the deal on this transaction, two 5N.com made their way all over the net and a few people got screwed.
First the domain names, 28924.com and 82742.com.
These names were at auction on GoDaddy back in September, you can see where they closed by reading the Namebio report here
The two names sold for a total of $740.
The debate on Namepros started today when member @Draco stated he purchased these names on Namepros for $700. But GoDaddy repossessed the names from him after acquiring these names from another Namepros member.
He posted:
I paid with PayPal and the domains were pushed to my GoDaddy account. Three weeks later, I was notified that the domains were repossessed by GoDaddy. They told me,
“The original purchases of the domains in question were charged to an invalid payment method, resulting in the repossession of products and subsequent refund for initial cost. If the seller reverses charges for the services they purchased on your behalf, we “repossess” the purchase meaning the products are removed from your account. The original price of the domains must be paid in full before they may be returned to your account. We offer you the option of purchasing the domains for the original price of $761.34. This price is the cost of the original receipts connected to these domains which has been refunded.”.
The Seller is claiming that they bought the domains from someone, and they weren’t the ones that paid with the invalid payment method or did the chargeback. The $761.34 GoDaddy wants is actually more than I paid for the domains. The Seller claims I’m trying to get a refund from the wrong person, because they didn’t do anything wrong. I feel it’s their responsibility, since they sold them to me. They should go after the person they claim they bought them from.
Originally he said he would give me a refund after he verified the information with GoDaddy. Then he said he wouldn’t do it because he thought they were stolen. Then he asked me to post here anonymously and he would issue me a refund if he was convinced it was 100% the right thing to do. When I asked him what it would take to be 100% convinced, he wouldn’t answer.
I opened a dispute with PayPal. He lied in the response, claiming GoDaddy told me there was something wrong with my account. GoDaddy never told me there was anything wrong with my account. They just gave me the option to buy the domains back from them. It’s an option, not a debt I owe them.
So after Draco posted his side, in came the other member with his side:
This is the true version:
I bought 2 domains from Undeveloped.com (82742.com and 28924.com) on September 20th.
I held them for a few time and then William Efron offered me 700$ for the domains so I sold it to him on October 17th.I transferred the domains to William’s GoDaddy account, William confirmed to me that he got the domains and the deal was successful.
On November 7th William got a message from GoDaddy that his domains are repossessed by GoDaddy and if he wants them back, he can purchase them from GoDaddy for 761$.
You can see the email William got from GoDaddy here (William sent me the copy):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dmnrnkj2yx2u86i/GoDaddy’s response to William’s Email.png?dl=0GoDaddy took the domains from his account and added them to his cart so if he wants he can purchase the domains for 761$.
William is saying that I bought the domains with a stolen credit card and this is why the domains were repossessed, but it’s not true.As I said I have paid for the domains via PayPal as you can see here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bw3m3l3n41ae1mu/Completed Payments I made for Undeveloped.png?dl=0Also, these are the Invoices from Undeveloped.com:
Invoice for 82742.com:
https://undeveloped.com/invoices/asxw24br/buyer.pdf
Invoice for 28924.com:
https://undeveloped.com/invoices/kw0m4lp0/buyer.pdfI did not cancel any payment, I just bought 2 domains from Undeveloped.com which is a well-known domains website, and sold them to William because he offered me 700$ for them.
William contacted ME. HE wanted to buy the domains from ME. I did not force him to pay for the domains.
William just offered me 700$ for them so I accepted it.Now GoDaddy is telling William that something is wrong with his account, and instead of trying to solve it with GoDaddy, he looks for the easy (and the wrong) way to get his domains back which is getting a refund for 700$ from the seller (which has nothing to do with the fact that GoDaddy took his domains) and then purchase the domains from GoDaddy for 761$.
If I was responsible in any way, GoDaddy would have contacted ME, and added the domains to MY cart. but that is not the situation. They sent William an email and gave HIM the option to purchase the domains from them because HE is the owner and held them for more than 3 weeks in his account before GoDaddy contacted him.
*I* didn’t take the domains from William’s account. *I* didn’t cancel any payment. I am 100% legit, you are more than welcome to check my payment history and you will see that I NEVER did a chargeback or my payment wasn’t accepted.
I really don’t understand why he opened this case instead of keep contacting GoDaddy and explain the situation to them until they give him his domains back. After all, if they are giving him the option to purchase them, they can also give them back to him.
I can’t control GoDaddy’s actions and as much as I want to help, I will not take the hit for GoDaddy’s actions.
So there are four players involved:
GoDaddy who handled the initial auctions, the closing prices can be seen here, https://namebio.com/blog/daily-market-report-for-september-11th-2018/
The second player is that winner who spent $740 at GoDaddy then sold the names to the third player for $550 on Undeveloped, the fourth player being Mr.Draco who bought them from him for $700.
Do you believe GoDaddy justified taking names from Mr Draco, someone who did not transact business with them?
So even though the closing prices were $740 it looks like GoDaddy is telling Draco he can have them for $761.34, they want the renewal fees added?
Undeveloped apparently has a buyer protection program, Draco posted:
Undeveloped has a Buyer Protection Program.
https://undeveloped.com/help/trust-and-safety
**** should take advantage of it. I can’t. I didn’t buy from them. And Undeveloped can’t say anymore that no transaction has turned into a nightmare.
But Undeveloped apparently paid the seller in Bitcoin so they can’t get their money back.
There are so many variables to this story, if GoDaddy got conned do they have the right to take back domains from someone who purchased them on Namepros?
Should we all as clients of marketplaces state we will not be party to a transaction, where crypto is involved? Meaning I know a crypto transaction cannot be reversed, so if I am cheated by a seller the platform will just say sorry we can’t get the money back. Ok, I want to avoid that potential problem, so the seller cannot be paid with crypto on my transactions, can’t do that? Great, I am not doing business with your platform then, because you cannot give me the protections I desire.
One person believed the crypto angle was the heart of the scam, they might be onto something, Namepros member DNCafe wrote:
That seems to be the scam, using stolen credit cards to buy sought after domains that will sell fast, push to the users GoDaddy account, have the buyer approve the escrow and get your Bitcoin return….all before GoDaddy has caught the stolen credit card.
Once again we are shown that even in 2018 domaining is still a dirty, non transparent, inefficient business and analogies made to regulated businesses like real estate and the stock market are fairly naive.
It also shows how thin of margins people are trading names, if the transaction was legit, the guy who paid $550 was only looking for $150, it’s not terrible to flip quick but one wonders if the juice is worth the squeeze?
first approach to a solution: do not make deals with payments in cryptos. if the broker/marketplace has the option of paying in bitcoins have them clearly accept not to pay the seller in that or else the deal is off.
I don’t think I would want to use a platform for that (but never say never), but selling a domain for Bitcoin is great. Did it last year and everything was completed in about an hour or two. My only regret was cashing out before the big run up because it was on a temporary dip.
there is a lot to unpack here, thx for reporting on it. I don’t understand undeveloped’s position with buyer protection. How would paying thru btc void that?
Undeveloped provides buyer and seller protection to all customers that perform escrow at Undeveloped for the transaction conducted on our platform regardless of the payment or payout source.
Here’s a summary of the situation from our perspective and why Undeveloped can’t offer it’s buyer protection program in this case as the liability shouldn’t be placed with us:
1: The original Godaddy auctions user had bought the two domains using a credit card
2: The original Godaddy user receives the domains and sells them via Undeveloped to another person (Omer)
3: Omer receives the domain from us in his Godaddy account (transaction closed)
4: William then acquired the domain from Omer directly via Namepros
5: Godaddy now puts a block on the domains and tries to recover a chargeback initiated by the first auction user from the new owner of the domain.
If the original auction buyer had bought the domain at Undeveloped and performed a chargeback with us, we would have never even notified the seller of it and handled the case ourselves. All Undeveloped users are protected from chargebacks and what not performed at Undeveloped but not on other platforms.
Kind regards,
Reza
Undeveloped.com
Thank you for the update Reza. This transaction is kind of nuts.
Haha, I agree.
Reza, while I understand your position and you could very well be within your TOS in regards to not covering the transaction… it strikes me that Undeveloped.com was used as a type of clearing house for names the seller knew were purchased with either a stolen card or a charge back could tale place.
I assume Undeveloped.com would have covered the initial sell by the godaddy auction winner on Undeveloped.com to Omer if the charge back and godaddy reclaiming of the names had taken place within Omers’ ownership, correct?
In this case we have one more degree of separation (Omer to Namespro member William) so essential time is what mattered here. If the time that had transpired between Omer and William been different then Omer would have been refunded since he still owned the name which was bought on your site, correct?
I suppose I just said that two ways lol
In many ways this is a story of buyer beware. If a name from hence forth has been won at auction and immediately flipped than both the second party (Omer) and third party (William) should beware!
Its a $700 lesson and no more since Undeveloped.com did not act in any malicious manner (knew name would be taken back) when it was sold to Omer and thus has no legal or moral responsibility to William, sadly for William.
As it stands unless William can prove (doubtful) that Undeveloped.com or Omer knew that his name was purchased with a stolen card or a charge back was imminent then no refund could be expected.
Just my two cents, some lessons in life are cheap, some not and in this case $700 seems like a cheap lesson, imo.
Hi Josh,
We have tens of thousands of sellers and over 4 million domains listed on our marketplace. So it’s not that strange that one of the transactions were conducted on our platform.
If we were informed by Godaddy that those domains were bought in a fraudulent transaction we would have blocked the transaction. At the time we processed the transaction we weren’t informed by anyone that those domains were acquired at Godaddy auctions and or if there was a chargeback conducted.
The entire situation escalated a week or two after the transaction at Undeveloped was processed. This could have happened on any marketplace, we happen to coincidentally be the marketplace involved.
Kind regards,
Reza
but if Omer had been left with the hot potato and GoDaddy noticed the charge-back or that the previous transaction was fraudulent, then they would also seized the domains and the seller would still be laughing all the way with their bitcoins because you could not reverse the transaction.
So where is the buyer’s protection?
@jose
I read it as Omer bought the names on Undeveloped.com and therefore should a charge back happen and the names taken back from Omer by Godaddy… because Undeveloped.com handled the transaction between him and the seller the loss would be covered for Omer.
It would matter little to me (Omer) how any funds were paid as it is moot. Undeveloped.com said my transaction is covered, so cover it, btc, $$$, sticks with markings, salt, what ever equaled $700 or less in that case. Uneveloped’s ability to recoup is none of my (Omers’) concern. Their policy does not only apply when they are able to first recover funds and if so its worthless but I doubt that is the case.
@Josh, if that is the case then it is a good system. However i have some doubts if it involves larger sums of money and Undeveloped.com response here did not clear this up. Is it a no limits protection? what are the small letters?
I wouldn’t mind Undeveloped.com chiming in here to confirm this, well?
@Reza
Is there a hitch in the small print or not?
Hi Jose,
Undeveloped is not an insurance company for other platforms. All transactions and payments conducted on Undeveloped are protected.
The domain was resold after the initial buyer bought it at Undeveloped and then Godaddy repossessed the domain and requested the latest owner to pay up (which I’m not sure is even legal).
We have chargebacks at Undeveloped on a weekly basis and we never forward the bill to the seller. That’s how all Undeveloped sellers are protected.
There are no small prints at Undeveloped. Transparency is what we stand for.
@Reza,
Thank you for trying to clear that up but what I am reading is any domain offered for sale on your platform is covered during a trade within it and nothing more or less. Therefore this situation could happen again.
What safety measures are in place to prevent undeveloped.com from being a type of clearing house for names either stolen or acquired via GD auction where a charge back or take back is possible? Perhaps a clear disclaimer stating Undeveloped does not cover names offered where such an event may have transpired? That way any buyers have been warned the name they successfully purchase within undeveloped is not protected from such an event. jmo but better to cya
And totally understandable/reasonable.