It’s about time, that the real serious Domain Business gets together and pushes a good alternative to our current market leader. SEDO has turned into a bazaar for unserious buyers and sellers that are harming our Domain Business. Alone these two experiences I have had this year probably talk for many other similar domain deals.
A Domain Sale
In May this year, I received an offer for one of my better domains (high 5 figure). Before agreeing to the sale I contacted SEDO to make sure it was not one of these fun bidders you get every now and again. They assured me that the buyer was serious and had already bought domains in my price range and higher. So now I could feel safe, knowing that the deal is correct and the transaction can be settled within a few days. Well, after that I heard nothing for the next two weeks. After asking SEDO what’s going on, they answer that the buyer is waitig for the funds to be aprooved at DomainCapital.com. SEDO is also supporting the the application at Domain Capital, so I should not worry, I should just have a little patience.
Another two weeks later, on July 4th, I get a simple notice from SEDO, the customer has not paid yet, so the transfer has been canceled. After asking again what is going on, my SEDO contact informs me, that the fund application is still being reviewed and the transfer can be reinitiated as soon as the customer pays. What should I say? Until today I have received no further notice, let alone payment for this clear legally valid Domain sales contract. Now we are considering legal action in this issue and will be going public with all details in the next few days.
A Domain Purchase
Here the whole thing gets even worse. domain purchase at "buy it now" price on October 28th, payment sent via Paypal minutes after the purchase. So now I’m normally just waiting for the Authorisation Code to be able to initiate the transferof the domain (a .com domain). Instead, I see the domain for sale again the next day, with a "Seller’s price expectation" a multiple of what I had already bought it for. One day later, October 30th, I get an email from SEDO saying this a mistake due to a "misconfiguration" of the sale offer. Bullshit, here the seller just changed his mind and SEDO has nothing better to do, than to just accept this fact without considering any consequences. After my protest at least they removed the new sale offer, but other than that I see no kind effort or consequent action to get this matter settled. By the way, according to my research the seller owns about 35.000 domains and has them parked and for sale at SEDO. All details to this issue will also go public in the next few days.
Even though I pretty well understand SEDO’s domain broker role, it is in my eyes unacceptable that people that just don’t want to stand to their own legal contracts, do not even need to fear beeing excluded from the SEDO domain platform. SEDO seems to prefer to keep this kind of crooks (that probably earn SEDO money otherwise) on their platform and allow them to carry on scaming other people. The fact, that they are just ruining the Domain Business with this attitude seems to be part of the business.
German version: Domainverträge sind bei SEDO nichts Wert
Unfortunately you have had the pleasure of the Sedo experience.
I don’t know how they can run their business year after year with this insulting behavior.
I guess the answer is volume. Since most transactions are probably very smooth, they don’t have anyone in charge of bad transactions and figure it is just cheaper to let bad transactions just dissolve rather than put the manpower in place to work through the issues.
Either that or it’s just German customer service.
Eaven after more than 12 years SEDO did not understand that we are PARTNERS, and not just clients.
And we want to be treated as such.
Seems they never will get the clue ….
great post! i had one domain sold three times through sedo, but we still own that domain 🙂 as the value was increasing over the years i am thankful in that case! otherwise i totally agree!
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