Issues with Undeveloped.com

[JordanH]

So, undeveloped seems like a great place to get some decent domains. It is my first time dealing with them. Unfortunately, it has not been the most desirable experience.

My first issue is having to place a legally binding bid before being able to be in contact with the seller. However, at the same time, I have to say that I still respect why it is there. With that said, I first placed an offer on a domain on the 29th of September. Got an email back saying the seller had accepted the offer and instructed me to pay the generated invoice.

This is all great and all, but what happened to my "make an offer to get in contact with the seller" option? You see, the seller enabled the "Buy in installments" option, so I was going to use this route for my first purchase using undeveloped. I was never given any access or information on how to contact the seller once my bid was placed like the site states.

Figured I would send out an email to Simon. My escrow agent. Never heard anything back from him. So I used their contact page. Never heard anything back from that. I tried going to their '"help center". However, it's pretty much just an FAQ. Nothing there to actually help with any issues. several days go by with a few emails going out with nothing. So went to the live chat they have on the website. Left the tab open for about 8 hours, no response. Closed the tab, went to sleep.

I have sent several emails trying to reach out to them. Started getting the "Payment reminder" emails instructing me to make payments within so many days. It is now October 14th, (15 days after my first attempt at contacting Undeveloped) and I finally just ended up replying with

I have sent several emails and contacted the live chat, with no response what so ever.
Think I'm going to have to pass with dealing with undeveloped.com

To my surprise, I got a reply! Shocking how that works. I now seem to be speaking with Laszlo who must have been from the live chat. He says "seems that these messages did not come through or might have ended up in your junk mail" which, unfortunately, can not be the case. I use Google's Business version of GSuit and send and receive a lot of emails a day. Never had issues with it, nor any other problems from any other contacts. Must be something on their end as I got all of their payment reminder emails, and a response after me saying I'll move on. (And no, it was not in my spam/junk folder)

Either way, I finally got a response. After some back and forth emails with Laszlo, who I will admit had been helpful, I finally made my payment on the 18th of October.

Got a reply with

Great to hear that Jordan!

The next step will be sending the transfer instructions. Within 24 hours from now will you receive your first instructions from your designated escrow agent Simon. He will guide you through the transfer process and ensure you will receive the domain as soon as possible.

Congratulations on your purchase and have a great day!

Awesome. Now I can move on

Or so I thought :/

I got an email from Simon which included an attachment for the additional agreement between me and the seller. (Due to me choosing to make the payments in instalments) Which is fine. I figured as a first-time buyer of undeveloped.com, I'll take the safer route. There are no extra fees for using instalments, and you can even use the domain while you make your payments which is great. Once the final instalment is paid, the domain is transferred to you.

With that all said in done, I sent an email to Simon specifying what nameservers I'd like the domain to point to. No response. Sent a couple, the last one being 14 hours ago. I have also been getting these emails:

What??!!?? Great :/ So I send an email to Simon once again. Asking if this email was in error. I made my payment. Once again no response. I fear this will be a recurring issue for the rest of my payments. I also sent out an email to Laszlo inquiring on another issue which also states

I'm not sure what's up with undeveloped, seems the others aren't checking their email, or your the only one actually getting my emails. Anyhow, I can't seem to get ahold of Simon who is my escrow agent

This was 3 days ago. This time no response from Laszlo either

24 days since my first inquiry, and 4 days since my first payment. Little worried about my decision going forward with using undeveloped.com

It's very unfortunate. Because despite my payment, and despite my several channels of communication I tried to reach them by, I have been having a difficult time actually communicating with them.

If the seller who I purchased my domain uses NamePros and sees this thread, I'll gladly deal with you directly, or even through another escrow service from here on out. Otherwise, I apologise to you personally for having to wait so long before receiving payment. As I'm honestly just thinking of saying lesson learned, and no longer continue my payments and just forfeit my first payment and count it as a loss. Just know, it wasn't a bad buyer, but a bad middleman.

Get Better Support
Despite them saying they "respond to your chat or email within 51 minutes!" neither of these claims seems to be true. Their chat software (Which I believe is intercom) even states they typically respond within 2 hours. As mentioned above, this was not the case for me. The 5 minutes is a sales pitch and a false one at that. I'd love for them to actually show statistics proving this. I don't mind waiting a day for a response. I do mind not getting a response at all.

Buyer Dashboard
There should be a buyer dashboard. Somewhere once bids are placed you can be in touch with the seller. Perhaps an area where you can see any domains you've purchased or ones you are currently leasing/paying in instalments. Another idea is to have an area to allow buyers who have purchased the instalment option to have certain limited DNS access to make changes such as the nameservers.

Edit:
2 minutes after posting this thread I got an email from Laszlo.

Good morning Jordan,

Trust you are doing well.

I do believe your message's are coming through. However, we only provide support during weekends. Escrow is only performed during working days due to it being a delicate process. However, It might be that our emails to you are blocked considering my previous emails did not end up in your inbox as well.

In order to change your dns you will have to go through your escrow agent. However, considering how everything went last week I would like to propose that you will use me in order to communicate all desired DNS changes. Please let me know how you want your DNS set up and I will arrange for it.

I will take up his offer as it appears Simon is useless to me.
However, I do question Undeveloped's decision on only doing support on weekends. What? Only provide support for 2 days of the week?

 

[Rick Ace]

Good morning Jordan,

Trust you are doing well.

I do believe your message's are coming through. However, we only provide support during weekends.

By the end of this story, the last part had me crack up. Support only on weekends?

I've seen Undeveloped.com being mentioned before on this forum too, though I have never used it myself. There are many unanswered questions regarding support. You shouldn't be required to sit in front of a live chat to get their attention either. A single email should suffice.

 

[MasterOfMyDomains]

@Undeveloped can you help this guy out, and tell us when your support is active?

https://www.namepros.com/threads/undeveloped-com-experience.893201/page-54

 

[JordanH]

As an update, got an email from Simon finally telling me my nameservers have been updated.
Still inquired about the other emails I had received saying I had not paid the invoice.

All in all, Laszlo sent me screenshots of the conversations he had with me with some of them saying not read. It may appear it could be their chat support software that is not sending out the emails, as his screen capture was taken from that.

EIther way, not sure what Simon uses to send emails, but I received his last one no problem.

 

[LaszloSchenk]

Good morning Jordan,

I am not quite sure why you are posting this here as we've had quite an extensive conversation regarding this matter. Eventually, I even provided proof indicating how promptly I and our team replied to your inquiries. However, considering you feel the need to post this here I do believe you still feel the proof delivered did not suffice. That is no problem at all as I am more than happy to elaborate on this situation once again.

On Sunday 4:23 AM you have reached out to support asking if it was possible to submit the payment in installments. The next morning I personally replied with:

As you can see, you never opened this email nor replied to my response.

Monday, Oct 1st 4:00 AM you have sent another email mentioning you did not receive anything and was looking forward to Simon's reply. A few hours later I have replied to you indicating that you must have missed this message and copy pasted the message I have sent the day before. Again, no reply from your side regarding this message.

On Oct, 4th you have submitted a message to us again mentioning you have been trying to reach Simon (through [email protected]) but never replied to my emails. Again, a few hours later I have replied even mentioning apologies for the inconvenience which we did not cause considering I have replied promptly.

Considering I did not receive any reply from you at all I have scheduled a follow-up call with no response and even made an additional step by following up through email 2 days later.

Again, no response. On the 12th of October, I have even used my private email in order to assist you, checking in and asking what I could communicate to the seller in terms of an expected payment date. The next day I did receive a reply meaning my emails (same server) did get through!

After being able to establish contact through my personal email on the 12th of October we've had a possible communication channel through which we could settle everything promptly. All procedures were initiated and the first payment had been submitted. However, at one point you started to receive payment reminders as you have mentioned above. These are automated reminders initiated once payments have not been submitted. This has been set in place in order to ensure buyers do not tend to forget submitting their payment within the given timeframe. In order to ensure your payment got settled, you have replied to us asking if the payment got verified. Both me and my colleague James indicated that you could ignore this message as it was caused by you negotiating with the seller but also leaving your details once more by using our "buy it now" option. This caused the system to recognize two transactions for this domain of which one was not completed yet. We have closed the second transaction and replied to you promptly but unfortunately, again without a response.

On October 20th you have sent me a private email mentioning I was checking my emails but you've had the feeling all of my colleagues did not. I have explained the situation to you and indicated that all escrow related inquiries should be submitted to the escrow department. However, considering the emails did not get through I even offered my personal assistance in arranging this for you. Now here is the part that got me off after reading your post on NamePros this morning. Your escrow inquiry submitted during the weekend was not conducted during the weekend due to escrow processes only being performed on business days. In my response, I have informed you that we only provide support during weekends (which left you with the idea that I meant there is no support during business days. In fact, I intended to indicate that escrow is not performed during weekends). After submitting my response you replied indicating your frustrations which I completely understand considering your experiences due to our emails not being delivered to you. On that exact same day, I have provided a reply mentioning:

"I understand it is frustrating as things do not seem to go according to your wishes. However, I do feel the responsibility to notify you of how the communication took place. Your DNS change request was sent on Sunday 21st 7:37 PM CEST. We do understand the need for assistance during weekends which is why we, as the only organization within the domain industry, provide weekend support as well.

Our easy access inquiry system (chat) indicates the average time needed to reply in order to show that we do not facilitate a live chat. Otherwise, an average waiting time of 51 minutes would be outrages. However, we are located in Europe and you are located in Canada. Unfortunately, we will have to cope with a time difference meaning that we only have a brief window at which we could operate at the same time. However, when an inquiry is sent outside of office hours or nearing the end of our office hours we cannot always reply straight away."

By submitting this post and copy-pasting our email thread here without mentioning my reply you give a misimpression to all readers whilst I have been supporting you throughout the entire process and took multiple additional steps in helping you.

After providing all details and screenshots some got choosing to submit presenting a false image of our support and efforts in helping our clients. I do not intend to sugarcoat mistakes as I clearly used the wrong words regarding our weekend support but I do feel your thread misrepresents the overall experience of our clients.

@MasterOfMyDomains , Undeveloped provides a 7 days a week weekend support. However, we only provide escrow services during business days.

@Rick Ace, you are absolutely right. Clients should not be required to sit in front of a live support chat to get their attention. A single email should suffice indeed! We do not offer a live support at all. The chat function is provided in order to enable visitors to submit inquiries fast without having to go through their email servers. In addition, one email always suffices as reply extremely fast. You can read multiple threads on Namepro's mentioning we provide the fastest support service available.

Overall I feel regret having to reply on a thread like this when I have sent 14 messages/emails and conducted two phone calls over a period of 23 days in order to assist you Jordan. All in all, I still am more than happy to assist you during your installments period and would like to propose that you communicate all messages to my private email only as this mode of communication seems to work.

Best,

 

[Rick Ace]

@Rick Ace, you are absolutely right. Clients should not be required to sit in front of a live support chat to get their attention. A single email should suffice indeed! We do not offer a live support at all. The chat function is provided in order to enable visitors to submit inquiries fast without having to go through their email servers. In addition, one email always suffices as reply extremely fast. You can read multiple threads on Namepro's mentioning we provide the fastest support service available.

I've only heard good things about Undeveloped on NamePros so far. Glad you guys were able to resolve the support issue that was encountered.

I'm trying out the Undeveloped marketplace myself this week.