Late last month, Sedo added every single domain – even the ones that were listed with a “make an offer” option – to the GoDaddy TDNAM.
Right now I have a record 10 open transactions at Sedo, all of which were initiated at GoDaddy. All of them can’t proceed any further, because there is no option for the seller to communicate with the buyer!
Meanwhile, here’s what the buyer receives when they place an offer via TDNAM:
Congratulations, your offer has been received for Item Number ###, a***.com, in the amount of $***.00. An email has been sent to the seller of a***.com notifying them of your offer.
You may track the status of your offer by logging in to your account. The seller should reply with an acceptance or counter offer by 10/15/2012 04:30 PM.
Your bid is valid through 10/15/2012 04:30 PM. After that time, your bid is no longer binding.
Please keep in mind the seller may be negotiating several offers for this domain at any given time. We encourage you to respond promptly to the seller to increase your chances of registering a***.com.
After receiving an offer for a domain name, the seller may choose to convert the listing to a 7-day public auction. If the seller converts your bid to an auction, then your offer is set as the first bid and the domain name displays in your Bidding List. If the seller converts another bidder’s offer to auction, the domain name displays in your Watching List.
Based on your bid amount, if the seller accepts your offer, this transaction will be processed through our Transaction Assurance program at no cost to you.
A similar email is dispatched when the seller responds or changes their counter-offer, via Sedo.
It’s apparent, that GoDaddy wants the transaction to be handled locally, in its marketplace. The buyer has no immediate knowledge of the fact that the seller is on a completely separate platform.
The cherry on the pie, is that if the seller decides to cancel the negotiations – and that happens often, as the TDNAM bids are notoriously low – there is no notification of the buyer. No email arrives to inform them that the seller dropped the ball.
Currently, I’m testing alternate platforms for handling such transactions, including Frank Schilling’s Internet Traffic outfit. The TDNAM/SedoMLS connection has failed to attract any serious bidders and it does not work for me.
nice catch Theo
I am this close to drop both Afternic and Sedo. (and godaddy with them)
I am also testing Internet traffic but I have lots of problems there too. I am thinking of building a simple wordpress lander to handdle all inquiries.
I park with Voodoo and use a sales banner and as a result,
I have sold two names without paying a commission!
In the last month or so I have sold 3 domains, 1 at afternic and 2 at cax.
I have accepted an offer at sedo but the money was not sent by buyer.
In my opinion buy it now and category designation is very important.
I only have about 70 domains, all .com and mostly fairly short and generic.
I am enthusiastic about the future.
@Konstantinos Zournas – Afternic gives you the option to opt-out of listing your domains on GoDaddy. If this is creating issues for you just contact Afternic customer service and your domains will no longer be listed on this site. This will not affect listing on other Afternic partners.
Also offers received via GoDaddy can not be pushed to auction on Sedo. I received an offer this morning on a domain I haven’t had any offers on in a while and I thought I’d send it to auction, but I could only accept or counter the offer as it was received via GoDaddy.
Also note that I had not opted this name for SedoMLS.
Even for SedoMLS fixed price domains, godaddy search give a motivated buyer some confusion like
domainname.com is available through Go Daddy Auctions, Current Price: $XXX.XX | Auction Ends: 1/2/2013
Although we are longtime customers of godaddy, I just don’t thing that they really get it anymore. I think they are so large that they just don’t have the passion that they used to. For that reason and others, we are looking at other alternatives.
Same thing happened with me, I had listed my domain at afternic.com and once upon a day i have received an email from j****@namemedia.com regarding my domain sale and he instructed to me that if buyer contact me, forward it j****@namemedia.com.
Buyer telling me i have paid $3***.00 at godaddy auction and even i was blind that whats happening also i have marked these emails an spam, finally the afternic agent called me and informed me about all flow of godaddy auction sales.
I have seen very slow results, or heard of others having same slow results from different auction sites. Why don`t people just build wp sites to market there domain names, and then after a sale, they just turn it over to the buyer? I have quite a few names listed on my website, and i also have the recent valuations for most of them. Some of them also have cpc stats. I would much rather someone contact me through my own website with offers, than have to deal with the auction process. Don`t get me wrong…the auction process is well, and good, but only for about 30% of the domain names out there. Plus it is so diluted with names, it can be a hassle to navigate. This is why i chose a domain name that has to do with buying, and selling them. Getting traffic is slower than i hoped it would be, but at least i can interact with the buyer, or seller. As well, anyone who wants to list domain names for sale/buy, can do so on my website`s forum. I do not mind at all. Whatever gives people a platform to actually be in touch with each other is the best solution to me. A rising tide floats all boats! domainbuggy.com is my site. I am always working on it, so if you have any suggestions, please feel free to email me.
Thank you all for the comments. So, the consensus is, that the point of failure is GoDaddy and how it interacts with the established Sedo platform. It’s a downgrade of the process.
We also had problems with GoDaddy. We had more than 200 domains in there and now just have 4. They have a policy with old members than we don´t understand. They treat very nice and do bargain prices for the new ones and increase the prices for the old customers like us. We changed to Dynadot that is more correct and warn about any prices changes.
I didn´t yet had the problem discussed here because the one i sold by Godaddy it was a ridiculous price that had no problem at all.
Thanks for warning the community on that issue.
Carlos
About a week ago I got a $60 offer for a one word domain with 230,000,000 SERPS. So I countered at $5 million (way overpriced) and was pissed I couldn’t counter with a $5 trillion dollar offer just to make the point that both buyer and seller can make asinine offers.
My usual Sedo response is something like “frivolous offers deserve frivolous counter offers”, and then respond with my usual $5 million counter (the highest Sedo allows). Unfortunately I couldn’t send a comment with my counter.
sheesh.