Sometimes I am notified by Afternic that a name has sold, and then never hear back from Afternic again regarding that sale. It would be good if Afternic can start notifying sellers when they have determined that a sale has fallen through.
When a price is agreed upon through offer/make offer, the name is not automatically moved into escrow. Sometimes I accept an offer, and then nothing happens - it's like I never accepted the offer. If the prospective buyer makes an offer, Afternic should consider that a binding agreement to purchase the domain at that price if the seller accepts it. When a month goes by after I have accepted an offer, and nothing has happened to move forward with the transaction, I reach out to customer support to ask what is going on, and they tell me that the buyer didn’t buy the name. No updates are provided in any form to indicate that Afternic have determined that the person who made the accepted offer is not going to buy for it (another issues is that these non-paying buyers are not even banned from the platform).
Please start sending out emails to update sellers when sales fall through. Why is this important? When I am sent an email confirmation of a sale, or when I agree to an offer, I am obviously going to pull than name from other places it is listed for sale, and not sell it to someone else. I simply can’t sell it anymore, as it has sold through Afternic, and as I need to uphold my part of that sales agreement, i have to reserve the name for the Afternic buyer. It is frustrating that when sales fall through, Afternic never provide any notification about it (at least I have never received one). I have taken names off the market for 1+ month multiple times, before reaching out to Afternic to see if there are any updates or if there is an issue, just to be told that the seller didn't pay and they have ceased communicating with him/her weeks ago. Afternic should know that as sellers, we cannot go ahead and sell a name to someone else, after Afternic have notified us that the name has sold, or after we have reached an agreement with a buyer through Afternic through “make offer” negotiations. Sellers need to receive an update when Afternic considers a sale as having fallen through, so that we know with certainty that we can go ahead and offer the domain for sale again.
Please start notifying sellers when sales have fallen through in these situations:
a) non-paying buyer through standard/premium network (partner registrar), where the sale eventually fall through for various reasons
b) non-paying buyer who used BIN option at Afternic, but then doesn't pay
c) non-paying buyer who makes and offer that seller accepts, but then doesn’t pay for
I have had sales fall through in all these three scenarios, and I have never been notified about it, even when 4+ weeks have passed since the initial email. When I then reach out to Afternic, they always say that the sale has fallen through (with registrar partners) or that the buyer didn’t pay and they are not attempting to secure payment anymore. Effectively, the sale has been cancelled prior to me contacting them, but why are sellers not actively notified about this? The only way to obtain this info appears to be to reach out to customer support, and as I have highlighted in previous posts in this thread, customer support frequently do not reply to inquiries nowadays.
Several weeks ago I was notified about an Afternic sale, so I took the name off the market to reserve it for the Afternic buyer. Never got any updates. Eventually I reached out, and they said there was no sale. No explanation of what happened. I put it up for sale again, but pointed it to the landing page of another marketplace, and two days later it sold to someone else through that marketplace. If I had not taken the initiative to contact Afternic, I would have still been waiting for the Afternic buyer to pay, and the name would not have been redirecting to a for sale page, so I would likely have lost out on that sale.
When it has been decided by Afternic that a sale has fallen through it is essential that we are notified about it right away, so that we don't need to waste an unnecessary amount of time on holding the name for a buyer that is not actually going to buy the name, which in turn, might cause us to lose out on selling the name to other interested parties that might have showed up during the time we are holding the domain for the non-paying Afternic buyer.
Hope you can look into this -
@Joe Styler