Scammed at the
auction house
How I won a domain name at auction,
and now it’s been stolen back from me.
I had hoped that my first Medium post would have been a little happier (I have a post almost done, even!), but it seems like a good place to discuss this little issue. If you’ve dealt in “domaining” for any appreciable amount of time, you’ve likely had to participate in an auction for a domain. They’re pretty mundane affairs typically. Most brokers have mechanisms to prevent sniping and overall (unless you’re trying to nab like a three character .com or something) they’re benign in terms of bidding wars. Likewise, they’re not very complicated in terms of product: if you win, you pay, you get the domain and if you lose, you don’t get the domain.
Unfortunately, NameJet has taken it upon itself to change these simple rules.
I’ve been working on a project in the nerdcore hip hop space lately, and so I was surfing around randomly last month when I stumbled upon nerdcore.com. Incredibly, it had just ticked over to “expired” and was into its redemption period, but the registrar (eNom/Namejet) had decided to place it into auction if it actually expired. “Cool,” I thought. “Probably no chance of winning but why not?” I threw down a minimum bid to get into the auction, and I thought no more about it until the actual auction started.
So the auction rolls around, and surprisingly, I win it at a somewhat low price ($112). Though I was impressed at the price, I wasn’t totally taken aback given that, frankly, there probably aren’t a lot of nerdcore projects around looking for that domain at that particular time, and it also appeared that most of my competition was either spammers/bots (with account names like “aaaaaaaa”) or domain squatters (the only other “real” bids were from an account named “domainbank”), neither of which probably wanted to spend a whole ton to get a domain that likely wouldn’t net a great return. The auction was marked finished and won by me in the NameJet system.
A day or so later, I got an email from the domain’s holding registrar, eNom, telling me they’d setup an account for me. It included instructions on finishing my registration, ensuring the domain was in my account, and so on. So, I finished my registration, plonked down the $40 (!!!) to renew it for another year just in case, and set about telling some of my friends that I’d acquired the domain.
I mean, whois said I owned it now, so that’s that, right?
Apparently the answer to that is no. Three full days after the auction ended, I received an email from NameJet:
Please be advised there was an intermittent technical issue with one server during the closing minutes of a few auctions on Saturday, August 2nd. You were involved in one of these auctions,
As a result, in fairness to any bidder that was attempting to place a last minute bid, we will re-run 3-day private auctions for all participants. All bidders will be included with their last accepted bid amount.
We will issue a full refund for the domain you won:
Domain nerdcore.com
Order [redacted] $112You will receive an email notification later today. Additionally, you will see the domain on your list of active auctions, with the new closing date/time posted in your account. These auctions will be active for three days, starting on August 5, 2014 and ending on August 8, 2014.
We assure you this is a very rare situation, and corrective measures have been put in place to avoid this happening again in the future.
I, of course, was furious. I had rightfully won that domain, “technical issues” be darned. I have never, ever heard of eBay, for example, restarting an auction because it was “unfair” someone couldn’t bid due to eBay’s technical incompetence. For goodness sake, NameJet’s terms literally say:
NEITHER NAMEJET, ITS MEMBERS, OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES AGENTS, MAKE ANY WARRANTY THAT SERVICE(S) LICENSED HEREUNDER WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE, OR ERROR FREE
And they also say:
We do not guarantee continuous, uninterrupted or secure access to our services, and operation of the Site may be interfered with by numerous factors outside of our control.
One thing the terms do not say is that “unfair” auctions can possibly be restarted. There actually isn’t even a provision in there for them to restart auctions “for any reason” or anything like that. The only provisions in there state that auction winners, once they’ve paid the auction price, will be given the rights to the domain to the best of NameJet’s abilities (you’re not all the time buying from registrars so they can’t guarantee individuals will fork over the domain; it makes sense).
I filed a support ticket immediately, but the response was basically “sorry, I understand you’re frustrated” and completely sidestepped the issue of their terms never stating this was even a possibility.
If you check whois now, it shows the domain as registered to a private owner. My eNom account shows me having 0 registered domains. The domain has brazenly been stolen from me after having been granted to me by an auction process. The new auction is open and, conveniently for eNom’s and NameJet’s collective pocketbook, is already over double the previous purchase price thanks to “domainbank.” I have a bid in, but I have no confidence I’m going to win it this time. It ends tomorrow, but I’m guessing more bidding action will happen between now and then.
Now, I have no evidence of any of this at all, but I feel like one of two scenarios happened. One, “domainbank” is a big customer and to keep them fat and happy, they restarted an auction they lost (whether due to a technical glitch or due to just losing it) but wanted to win. Or, NameJet felt like the purchase price was too low and could/should make more money off of it, so they restarted the auction in order to get a better profit.
Two facts bother me about this incident. First, they claim that we would be reinstated with our highest bid. That was, in fact, false. I was reinstated with my winning bid, which was lower than my proxy bid by a good bit. All other participants were reinstated with their highest bids intact, and had I not been paying attention and reset my proxy bid, I would’ve been outbid by now. The most bothersome fact, though, is that the whole thing came about 3 days later rather than immediately after the auction ending (or at most, a day later). I’ve worked in web apps for a long time, and a delay like that tells me that “technical issue” is probably a cover for something else disgusting or stupid. Or both.
Whatever the scenario is, I’ve now had a piece of property I purchased taken from me. Yes, I was refunded (though I don’t think they’ve refunded my $40 renewal yet…), but that’s like buying a TV then having Best Buy forcefully take it back from your house and leave a check on the dresser because someone else thought it was unfair that their car broke down on the way to the store. It’s patently ridiculous.
I’m just amazed to hear domainers willing to play this game. This whole “oh we had a glitch thing” isn’t unique to my situation. I found a few instances of it happening via Google at other times also (example), so I guess those “preventative measures” get taken out every once in a while. If I was spending oodles of cash to trade domains, I’d steer wide and clear of these jokers.
I have no clue what to do. I’d love to have the domain back. It’s apparently been out of the “nerdcore scene” for a while after one of the folks actually producing nerdcore let it lapse in 2002. It’s been with squatters and what not ever since, so I’d love to return it to one of the folks in the community or build up a nice portal or something. Instead, I’m pretty sure it’s going to get stuck in some squatter’s list and be hocked for thousands of dollars for another decade.
If you have any suggestions as to what to do, hit me on Twitter (@jm) or e-mail (first name + last name as one word at the GMails).
