It has now been a week or so since all the Dispute.com drama.
- The auction closed at $65,000
- High bidder could not pay on time
- Elliot Silver posted about what happened
- I wrote a piece on TheDomains.com where Joe Styler added more context in a comment.
- OnlineDomain.com wrote an article that discussed the topic as well.
The domain eventually sold for $38,000. Many wanted to know what happened to the bidder that cost GoDaddy $27,000?
So kudos to Namepros member Arca who kept pressing Joe Styler in a thread on Namepros.
Arca posted:
Will this person continue to bid in GoDaddy Auctions again or not?
Because you anonymize bidders there is no way for us to know what you’re accepting or not on your platform. For all we know, he just a got a slap on the wrist and is still bidding in the auctions, despite defaulting on a $65,000 bid. We’ve seen time and time again in the past how your big spenders/corporate users play by totally different rules (at Afternic as well), and can break your rules over and over without serious consequences.
If you had bidder handles, this wouldn’t be an issue. We could have more trust in the auction process if there was a degree of transparency. So all we can rely on is for you to clarify. But it seems even that is too much to ask for.
GoDaddy is more to be pitied than laughed at. Styler seems lost when he writes, he contradicts himself all the time.
Still it’s of no use to ban that user because he will create new GD Auctions account by paying $5 and start off bidding from a different IP address, location, etc.
Unless GD doesn’t make the account opening with stricter rules and implements bidding IDs public, this will continue to happen.
We do keep an eye out for this type of thing and are pretty good at finding people who do this. We also do have a verification process in place for any bids over $2k.
As well as some amout of deposits to be made for bidding over 2K, 5K, 10K and so on… This must be implemented.