I think one thing that needs to be discussed internally at all the auction houses is, “How does this look?”
Something can be legal, but the optics don’t look good. I will say point blank, if I ran an auction site, I would have in the TOS that you cannot bid on a family member or other related party’s domain auctions.
I am not saying anyone in the business has done it that I have seen proved. I accuse no one of wrong doing. I am saying I think it looks bad completely on the up and up.
Is it legal for a brother to bid on a sister’s auction? Absolutely but not on my auction site. Why? Because it looks bad, once there is a whiff of a scandal, whether accusations prove true or not, I am going to have 500 comments about how my auction site let family members bid up each other’s domain auctions.
My take would be we don’t want that business on our platform, do it wherever you like, trade privately and save on commissions.
Optics matter.
Joseph Peterson says
July 22, 2017 at 7:47 pmPolicies can only go so far.
Ban a person from bidding on his auction? He’ll get his brother to bid.
Ban a brother from bidding on a brother’s auction? He’ll get his cousin or his girlfriend. Unrelated last names.
Ban all relatives or business partners from mutual bidding? They’ll hire a stranger.
Fake bids are cheap. Any high school student who wants $5 will shill on behalf of any domainer.
That very thing was happening back in 2014 at Flippa. I wrote about it at the time at DNW. Scammers were buying bids on Fiverr. The ads were explicit. And there was even a site calling itself “FlippaBid”, infringing Flippa’s trademark in broad daylight, selling bid packages.
Scammers are lazy if they use relatives. But prohibiting relatives doesn’t solve the shill bidding problem WHATSOEVER. It’s not a wall; it’s a speed bump.
Raymond Hackney says
July 23, 2017 at 5:27 amNever said it solved it, don’t believe I said one word about solving anything.
I said optics matter and they do, and I would not allow it.
Dn Ebook says
July 23, 2017 at 12:35 amTrust is a hard thing to get back
Joe says
July 23, 2017 at 4:30 amThe spider web that there are in the many domain online auctions have been a fraud in the bids.
I suffered one of these frauds in auction bids last minute and myself find out who was to blame after a week searching the internet with friends from Belgium because the buyer was Belgian and a woman with a non-existent address to the registration in the company of Premium auctions.
In a Domain Name Wires post find the responsible for premium domains in auctions and admit that this happen and they were trying to solve the problem but did not accept the guilt when it turned out that in the interview came out a web that was the cause of the bids fraud , On the other persoba that having suffered in 2014 the same as I suffer in 2015 this gave the reason that I have done nothing to solve this problem. I remember talking to a Los Angeles Lawyer and answering what we can do if there is nothing we can do between companies one by one help each other so we can not catch them. Legally or in an interview is valid nothing is valid nor the system of bids in auctions online premium domains.
I use my tests and deliver by email to premium auctions company, since the tests were very consistent to give the reason but not give it the same reason the very responsible domain auctions premium a week before.
I like many believe that nothing is done to put an end, and nothing will be done because there are many interrelationships created between people and companies in the world premium domain name market.