How to avoid to be scammed when buying domains
Everyday, many scammers try to take advantage of the domain market in many ways.
On ebay , the scammers usually are new registered users or users registered some time ago but with little or no feedback and are offering premium names at bargain prices. As many say: “if the offer is too good to be true , probably it`s not true!”. Other scammers simply get quick feedback by buying or selling low priced items just to gain feedback and be ready for their plan. Obviously not all of the new ebay users are scammers but would you take the risk when PayPal does offer any protection over “non-tangible items” such domain names? I won`t.
So, what can you do to make sure you are not in front of a scammer?
well, first of all, check the whois information of the domain , see who is the registrant and the Registrar, expiry date, anything! Then if you have doubts, because the seller does not appear to be genuine in some way, just send an e-mail to the e-mail address of the administrative contact in the whois. If the seller is genuine, will respond to you. Many times, there have been scammers on eBay trying to sell names without owning them.
Ok, you have verified that seller and admin contact are the same. You are safe now…..No! You are not safe yet! How about if the scammer hijacked the e-mail address and changed it with his contact details? That`s the hard part…..in this case, which luckily does not happen very frequently , you have little ways to be safe. One of them is to google the domain name and the e-mail address and see if you find anything suspicious.
Nothing suspicious yet? Good…..you may pay then….NO!! Not that easy……how if the seller has just decided to change and scam now right you as first victim? Well….in that case you may going to learn a lesson…..but if you have not paid him yet, you may ask the seller to use an Escrow service , a genuine seller won`t refuse that especially if you offer to pay all the fees , which is common practise. If the seller make up stories and force you to pay by PayPal or eGold…..then you have a chance that the person you are dealing with is not that genuine. Well known domainers pay eachother by using PayPal up to $500 or even $1,000 but everytime they do it, they know they are running a risk and I won`t personally advice any newbies to take those risks just to save a few dollars in fees, just use Escrow , make sure it`s a good Escrow service , it may be slower but it`s worth it.
Hello Lorenzo,
You have some good points there.
however I have to add something to it. As a domain seller, I prefer to use Moneybookers. It is more safe than the almighty paypal, and it has less fees.
I need to make this comment, because otherwise people would not trust sellers who prefer to deal with alternative payment methods such as Moneybookers.
Besides that, MB offers one of the cheapest escrow service (if not the cheapest of all). They charge 1% of the sale price. So, if sellers want to use Moneybookers, and you do not trust them, tell them you will use Moneybookers escrow service, and in this way both the seller and the buyer are assured that the transaction will be complete. Their staff is prompt, as they are smaller than Paypal.
Personally I had only headaches with Paypal, as from day one when I created my account, they suspended it because that number that appeared on my account did not match on their site (?). And this was back in June, and my account is still suspended, because they are very slooooow to respond to emails. I sent them so many times my documents, even my electricity bill, and still the account is suspended upon further verification.
I do not want to deal with a company like that, and even if in the near future (it seems), I will finally have paypal, I will still prefer to use Moneybookers, and always recommend my buyers to use it, maybe for safety purposes, I advice them to use their escrow service too.
And if you take a look at their interface, you will find that the whole site is much much more secure than paypal.
Best of luck,
Alex
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I agree with Alex on that part. It is not because a seller wants to use PayPal or another type of known payment method that he/she is a scammer.
Thanks Alex for pointing me that. You`re right, MoneyBookers offers a very good alternative, I tested it personally now and so I removed the comment regarding it.
Thank you