Half-measures require full responses.
When Oversee announced today that a former employee of Snapnames was defrauding thousands of customers via means of shill bidding at domain auctions, they promised that the ongoing investigation would end with issuing refunds plus interest.
There is no doubt that Oversee is striving to clear the Augean stables that the Snapnames employee piled up with tons of manure; by issuing rebates, they obviously attempt to compensate the losses of thousands of people that participated in domain auctions, mainly between 2005 and 2007.
But is this a fair method of compensation to winners and losers of allegedly as many as 50,000 auctions that Nelson Brady – known as “Halvarez” – participated in?
Oversee must reinstate the auction history per account immediately. Such information would help determine the amount of fraud that Halvarez enagaged in. Currently, there is no such information per account that displays bid succession as it was removed several months ago.
Personally, I can only recall from memory one such incident where Halvarez bid me up to $2,300 for a domain I won back in 2005. So how am I supposed to cross-check all the auctions I won, if I can’t view their bidding history any more?
There are more issues at stake than plain damages; Oversee is a high profile auctioneer of domains and owns the Moniker & DomainSponsor business platforms. If Oversee fails to promote transparency with this Snapnames incident, the downfall of other companies under its umbrella will be unavoidable. Customer fidelity depends a lot on business integrity.
Oversee: reinstate all Snapnames auction history immediately!
Take and keep screen caps of your auctions and any info that may be removed later.
You are correct, Owen – can’t be overly paranoid these days.
Acro, did you say that you couldn’t access the 2005-2007 history starting several months ago? A lot of people have suggested that Snap suddenly took down access to that, but I think they’ve never looked before. It’s probably not malicious that they just took it down.
That said, I think you’re right, they need to restore all of that data.
Hey Andrew – Rob from Snapnames, in a Namepros thread mentioned that it was taken down months ago. If I started to question current statements by Snapnames employees I wouldn’t know what to think anymore. However, who’s to say that the investigation wasn’t ongoing for months and it involved the removal of such important data in order to protect corporate interests?
Agreed! To have a scandal like this and not allow auction bid history is going to throw Oversee / Snap under the bus. You need to allow all your users to be sure they were not taken advantage of. If there is nothing more to hide – reinstate bid history!
Pre 2007 bids were definetly taken down a few months ago. I beleive him 100% because I used to check them quiet often and noticed them missing.
Of course that does’nt mean they were’nt taken down earlier to cover up something. Who knows but it does make you wonder.
We should have the option to check them ourselves.
In fact, we have EVERY RIGHT now to be able to check the records; it’s transaction history between a party that engaged in fraud – Snapnames – and our wallet!
Of course it’s hidden. That’s leverage in a class action lawsuit. Now nobody can see who has been taken by Halvarez and count up their refunds. They can refund you anything they want now.
It seemed that Halvarez is in just about every auction I was involved in. He did not always win the auctions. I think he bid on so many at a time, he was unable to keep up.
As per the previous email, I won hundreds of names on Snap Names. The registration info is all there, but they seemed to have deleted most of my bidding history and only have a couple left with Halvarez involved.
They should not people handling the investigation from within.
Acro,
I remember reading that the investigation started in october. Do you think that’s when this information disappeared?
Jake
Jake, right now don’t believe anything you hear and half of what you see. Who knows what is accurate? All I know is that Rust Consulting is working for Oversee’s interests, not ours. They want to minimize collateral damage. And that’s good for the majority of the cases, however – I WANT TO BE ABLE TO REVIEW MY DAMN AUCTION HISTORY. I should be able to confirm that the results by Rust Consulting match mine. And so far, I have a loss of $2,300.
Have you tried emailing snapnames and asking them?
The way I see it Snapnames only released this crook as they had no other choice.
I also believe snapnames removed auction histories from customers accounts deliberately. It’s plain old “Damage limitation.”
Snapnames quite rightly realise that this crooks actions may have literally resulted in buyers paying in excess of 10s of millions of $s over the years.
Trust me this is the tip of the iceberg. Hell for all we know there are / have been other shill bidders at play ~ the difference is that this one has been caught and as such had to be unearthed.
REINSTATE THE BACK AUCTIONS ASAP!!!!
You have to wonder how endemic shill bidding (be it official or unofficial) is on all domain auction sites
From sedo to namejet to snapnames to tdnam to even the domain forums.
Is this company warehousing Oversee and Snapnames domains?
Portfolio Brains, LLC
515 South Flower Street, Suite 4400
Los Angeles
CA
90071
US
As announced at TheDomains.com and in various forums, the Snapnames full auction history has been enabled!
e scrotum carborundum