Back in 2016 we started a series here that looked at the best and worst about companies in the domain industry. Over the last 30 months a lot has changed at many companies so we are revisiting the good, the bad and the ugly.
Each post will deal with just one company, readers are encouraged to share their positive and negative experiences. Suggestions for improvement are also encouraged.
One of the goals of the column is that company representatives will see how their customers think of them. This can lead to a conversation on fixing problems.
What is not allowed:
- Personal attacks on individuals at the chosen company
- Promoting a competitor
- Posting domains for sale
The company in the spotlight today is NameJet.
Founded in 2007
Auctions that never end, and everyone is a domainer bidding against other domainers. They should lower the 69 minimim bid to 39 to attract more people all the time. 69 is pricey and expensive to risk on regular names. 12 + reg like godaddy makes more sense
wait a minute…
you are only paying $69…
they charging me $79 minimum…
Too many damn platforms to buy/sell domains.
All it takes is one good one that populates all across the domain universe .
Since GD is the biggest and the most popular ..that the one!!
The worst ones are the ones that charge you a fee..what the point
Show us the data of how many domains being sold.
GoDaddy charge you a fee to belong to their auctions. OK. it’s only a miserable $5/yr. But more importantly, you need the DDC @ $120/yr (OK sometimes their are coupon codes for multiple years) if you don’t want to pay their full price renewal for .com’s $14.99 (?) instead of the DDC renewal price of $8.29
Estibot “appraisals” compulsory under very domain.
Obviously causing and has caused much harm to everyone, but few are willing to say anything.
Wake up and get a clue.
every*
Estibot like Godaddy Value tool are a joke and waste of time and money
NameJet support sucks, what is the bogus surcharge?
I agree. Takes days for them to answer support tickets and if you call about it, their phone support people have nasty attitudes. They get real short with you on the phone as if you’re bothering them and they’re doing you a favor. I don’t like being treated this way … especially when I’m sending a wire for almost $10k for a domain!
Namejet doesn’t accept bitcoin. It’s a huge loss for them, as there are customers who are willing to spend money.
The Good – Higher visibility than most domain marketplaces. A place that many domainers buy from. It is a great place for us to sell our domains. I also really like the Features Auction/Seller page. Then last but not least, I really like the actual Bidder ID’s. There is so much talk about other marketplaces not having Bidder ID names and how easy it is to not hold BS bids/bidders accountable. NJ makes auctions more legit w/bidder ID’s
The Bad – 2 fees to pay. Commission of course (which is normal), then the additional fee of a transfer fee to Enom so they can take domain out of Enom account and into new buyers account.
The Ugly – That BS Estibot appraisal right next to your listing. I wish there was a way to disable that when we list our domain names there. It really was embarrassing seeing those appraisals right next to the reserve prices during the NamesCon/ROTD auction.
> “The Ugly – That BS Estibot appraisal right next to your listing. I wish there was a way to disable that”
Great job, Vito, thanks for commenting.
You would think the basic common sense of a 12 year old would be sufficient for that, but “nooooooooooooooo,” can’t allow allow any minimum of common sense, common decency, and even slight recognition of the sensibility of the “golden rule” in society that would lead any person concerned about such things to allow an option like that. Lions and tigers and bears – oh my.
Even if they did, however, they would doubtless still make it so potential buyers could easily “Click here to use Estibot before bidding!”
I would suggest to “follow the money” as to why they have been so irrationally stubborn about this till now.
I would also suggest not using NameJet. I would have gladly used them if it weren’t for this absurdity and refusal to budge. Left them in the dust a long time ago now already.
Yeah, I saw your comment up above and I really think that is the ugliest part of their auction page when the Estibot appraisal is so much lower than the reserve range. It seems to happen often on more valuable 1-word generic dot coms. I really am surprised they don’t have a simple option to enable or disable that Estibot appraisal on our NJ auction page.
In some cases sure it can help. So having it as an option to display or not would be so much better than eliminating it totally. But if it is an all or nothing idea, then I vote 100% for it to be gone.
As for you suggesting domainers not use them. I disagree. As every platform is gonna have flaws all based on our individual opinions, none will ever be perfect. GD has their appraisals there also which is worse imo.
NameJet is a nice source of revenue for domainers that want to hustle their domains. It has been good to me and I am thankful they are around for buying and selling.
We really need them to exist and do well. We cannot have GD be the one and only player in town. We need the competition. We need Companies that work for us to really have the need to get better and not lazy since they control everything.
We will all get destroyed financially if only one Marketplace controls all aspects of domaining. All of us domainers having multiple MarketPlaces to buy and sell is critical to any future growth for us all.
Any sales venue that includes an automated (fake) “appraisal” feature is a 100% deal breaker for me, will never use. Including if they allow you to turn it off but effectively invite people to use such a thing as suggested above.
It’s been raised with NJ before and they are simply 100% stubborn about it. All or nothing. They don’t care. The companies which do this make money through “churn.” They obviously believe their self-interest precludes a more enlightened approach to this issue. Perfectly happy for you to leave $millions on the table if they make a commission now vs. much later. But it’s misguided, short-sighted and mistaken thinking.
Crypto.com sold for $12 million, but biggest Estibot “appraisal” (yeah right) I’ve seen so far for it is $56k. I’ve also seen a .com that has had at least one known real offer in the $millions appraised by them at low $x,xxx. Sick stuff. The *extremely* rare times when Estibot gets it in the right ballpark only *occasionally* benefit an infinitesimal few domain investors while harming everyone else.
No argument there. You are positively right about your Crypto.com appraisal example. Probably one of the most incorrect appraisals I have seen. They must not update their pricing based on new rising and fading trends. Not cool.
I had 2 domains @ NJ where the appraisals were so lopsided, but it actually worked both ways.
These were both 25k- 50k reserve.
(1) had an Esti appraisal of almost 200k.
(1) had an Esti appraisal of less than 10k..
So of course if there were an option to turn on and/or off showing Esti appraisal, I would have done so on the under 10k appraisal domain.
I felt strongly when I first posted my original comment here but since then I just scanned a list I created, I am actually quite shocked. I really figured at least 90% of the domains I have seen listed at NJ had an Estibot appraisal that was much lower than their reserve ranges.
I was wrong.
It appears like it would be very close to about 50% work out for seller, and 50% work against them.
So, I created this list of about 600 DNs on auction for the NJ/NamesCon Jan. Vegas 2019 auction. Here is the page…
http://domainnamesmatter.com/2018/12/2019-namescon-rotd-namejet-brent-oxley-auction-reserve-research-info-for-buyers/
I have them all listed on (1) page here with reserve ranges and their Estibot appraisals. If you scan the list, it shows you that the higher priced domains it really looks bad, but the lower priced domains, the majority looks like they actually enhance the value. I dont feel like counting the entire 600 domains and doing the math but it sure looks pretty close to 1/2 of them all.
So, I stand corrected when I say that the majority of Estibot appraisals are BS. Looks like they can actually help us out on many of the 100k and lower DN’s