Acting under pressure from domain blogs, posts in forums and angry emails and phonecalls to support, Snapnames has re-instated access to the full domain auction history per account – going all the way back to 2004.
So it’s time to compare notes.
After analyzing the data, Nelson “halvarez” Brady appears in 73% of all auctions that I eventually won! That’s up from the 46% calculated earlier, simply because in their document Rust Consulting do not list the domains where the bidding alias “halvarez” was not the 2nd highest bidder, thus not directly affecting the auction’s final “battle”.
This, however, is not entirely accurate.
By engaging in battle at its earlier stages, Nelson “halvarez” Brady affected the psychology of the bidding among the other participants; he literally, at times, drove up the price by hundreds of dollars, thus increasing interest, speculation and competitive bids among the remaining bidders. He would conveniently drop out of the battle as a “sore” 3rd or 4th, but the damage caused by his engagement was already done.
Therefore, there are two issues currently; the legal issue and the ethical issue. For each infraction, there are different penalties. The law punishes the guilty by issuing a sentence; there are also punitive damages for breaking the common ethos. At this point, it looks as if Oversee has been taking care of a good portion of the collateral damage, by issuing a 5.22% interest rate as “punitive” damages. It’s a good response that will silence many of those affected, leading them to accept the rebates and in the process waiving any future claims.
There is nothing wrong with calculating one’s true sustained damage and deciding whether to take the rebate or wait for some other type of organized reaction to this scandal. However, there is something severely damaged in this process – something that is FUBAR: the trust in a company that on February 23, 2005 was proclaiming the following:
Fair Price Guarantee: Shill bidding, sniping and other common abuses are all prevented by our advanced auction platform.
To restore fidelity to the Snapnames platform, a rebate is not enough.
What did Nelson Brady do with the domains he illegally won? Did he resell them and make a profit from them? Did he develop them and make money from that? Did he just park them and generate revenue that way? Regardless that money and business for those domains was someone else’s, the honest bidder that lost the auction. The lost business and profits from those premium domains is huge. imho.
Best.
Nelson “halvarez” Brady had used a new strategy of bidding for competing with his competitors . regardless of huge damages he however tried to manage somehow.