How can I prevent another Afternic user from deleting and listing my domains for sale on Afternic?

[Arca]

I'm having some problems with Afternic user "latonas" (Rick Latona). Earlier this year, I purchased two domains from NameJet that were previously listed on Afternic by "latonas". I provided Afternic with screenshots to provide my ownership of the domains, and they took down the old listings, so that I could list them myself. However, a few days later, the domains were silently deleted from my Afternic account, and re-listed by latonas. I contacted Afternic again, provided ownership info again, Afternic took down his listings, and I re-listed the domains myself. A day later though, the domains were silently deleted from my account again, and re-listed by latonas. Somehow he is able to repeatedly get domains removed from my account, and Afternic support do not seem to think it is a problem.

I don't understand how latonas is managing to do this, as I am providing Afternic with photos of the domains in my account to prove my ownership, and I also use the same email address that is listed in WHOIS when contacting them. Since these domains are no longer in latonas registrar account, and WHOIS is not his, I am not sure why they keep letting him delete my domains over and over.

I have emailed Rick Latona about this, but he did not respond. Afternic customer support simply deletes the domains from his account when I contact them about it, only to let him delete them from my account in the following days. It seems the only way I can prevent latonas from offering these names for sale, is to contact Afternic every 2-3 days to get them to delete his listings (after he has gotten them deleted from my account).

I've been considering to buy the domains from latona at Afternic, as he would be unable to deliver the domains, and perhaps then they would take action against him. However, I have purchased domains from "big" domainers at Afternic several times before, who reneged/did not deliver the domains I bought (even though WHOIS reflected that they were the current owner) and not once did Afternic take action against them/suspend their accounts, even for repeat offenders, so I am not sure it would help much (I'd also have to tie up a lot of $$$$ in the escrow process, and getting a refund could take a while...).

If these names were listed solely on Afternic, I could simply resort to listing them elsewhere. But since these names also show up at GoDaddy and other registrars with a BIN, I feel like his listing of these names at Afternic significantly lowers my own chances of selling them.

Does anyone know how I can block latonas permanently from deleting names from my Afternic account, or anything else I can do to deal with this issue?

 

[carob]

I said it before, when a company asks staff to do the impossible they face an impossible choice: not do it, and get into trouble or get fired now, or fake the results now and later only maybe get into trouble.

 

[tonyk2000]

it is possible to have two listings for the same name but only the first listing we get has priority.

This makes sense. So what I have experienced must be a system bug that should be taken care of, namely: My domain was in fact sitting at my account in HIDDEN status originally, and with Make Offer status as one of support agents changed it to when they tried to perform a fix. I knowinly elected not to sell the domain through Afternic at that time, until the whole story clears, as I saw duplicates everywhere (Sedo and I think DNS/Uni). The bug is that the system did not respect hidden status of the domain and elected to show it as being forsale @ fixed price suggested by duplicate listing owner.

I did not yet experience - and cannot confirm - what really happens today if a domain with BIN is subsequently uploaded by a superuser with their BIN.

Also, I am unsure whether the superuser was able to list my domain in the times it had make offer status.

 

[Joe Styler]

This makes sense. So what I have experienced must be a system bug that should be taken care of, namely: My domain was in fact sitting at my account in HIDDEN status originally, and with Make Offer status as one of support agents changed it to when they tried to perform a fix. I knowinly elected not to sell the domain through Afternic at that time, until the whole story clears, as I saw duplicates everywhere (Sedo and I think DNS/Uni). The bug is that the system did not respect hidden status of the domain and elected to show it as being forsale @ fixed price suggested by duplicate listing owner.

I did not yet experience - and cannot confirm - what really happens today if a domain with BIN is subsequently uploaded by a superuser with their BIN.

Also, I am unsure whether the superuser was able to list my domain in the times it had make offer status.

I didnt ask about how a hidden status would/wouldnt impact the ability to list the name again. If it happens again to you please send me a PM with the domain and I will get to the bottom of it.

 

[tonyk2000]

Completely unresolved part of the puzzle is - what if the domain in question is not for sale at all (not supposed to be at legitimate owners afternic account even if they have one), or not for sale through afternic? Superusers would upload and reupload it, afternic support would remove it again and again by owners requests without contacting the superuser or doing anything else such as setting the system to perform a whois/dns checks whether a user, superuser or not, actually owns what they list

 

[tonyk2000]

As a side note, competing marketplace (Sedo) implemented DNS check of a txt (SOA) records for newly added domains as a way to instantly confirm ownership. If the domain has a specific unique text key in DNS - then ownership is confirmed. If the owner did not opt-in to DNS check - then Sedo manually verifies ownership (or, at least, tries to, as they also occasinally allow illegitimate listings - most notably where real owner has whois privacy).

Assuming that Afternics superusers are definitely able to maintain their own DNS servers (and are likely already doing this in most cases), implementing at least one condition - of a particular SOA TXT key to be present in all times in DNS - is not impossible, as it has nothing to do with whois parcing or domain functionality in any aspect. I'd say it is more of a management decision, the technical end is not hard to implement.