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Afternic owns me AUTO.com or at least some apologies.

Adelaide (Australia ) 02.50 AM : another night on the computer looking for good domains, news, etc.

Reading Yofie`s Blog , I learn a new trick and try my luck base don what happened few days earlier with the IREIT story (this company holds lots of domains and put for sale some LLL.com extremely underpriced). So, I search for the last domains listed…..and my eyes could not believe what was in front of them.

AUTO.com

Yes, Auto.com , no IDN , no zeros, just the real dictionary word. It was the first listing (probably just listed from few minutes), followed by another 2 nice LLLL.com ( LATS.com & SWIN.com) both listed from BUYDomains. The asking price for AUTO.com was just $10,000 with a minimun offer of $5,000.

In a PANIC ATTACK and probably scoring the WORLD RECORD for type in on the keyboard I do the following steps:

- check AUTO.com WHOIS

- check the seller`s other listings (just one and not great)

- copy and paste the AUTO.com listing to check if it was an IDN or a ZERO

- visit the website at www.AUTO.com and discover that it`s used just as redirect link to CARS.com

- consider what I`d lose in bidding $5,000 and buying it at $10,000

- appraise the domain just to make sure I`m awake by using ESTIBOT.com

- BUY IT FOR $10,000 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (see image below)

AUTO.com purchase at Afternic

WOW, I BOUGHT AUTO.COM !!!!!!!

But, I could not believe it myself. I lived the next 5 minutes thinking that maybe I was damn lucky for once. Then went on NamePros.com and shared the news with the Forum. About 3 hours later, an unofficial statement from a member (relatively unknown: 2 posts since Sept 2007), stated the following:

Hi, We removed the listing from the site earlier today. Our customer service staff is working with the “seller” to eliminate the possibility of any more false listings. Adam Gross Afternic

WOW. What a company.

Now it`s nearly 24 hours later and you know what? I stil have not received an apology or any kind of communication to my email regarding the incident. The only messages I got from Afternic are the following two:

My accepted bid for AUTO.com Escrow notification

Certainly, at least I was looking for some sort of apology from Afternic…..but in my email box there are no excuses, nothing…this is what my $10,000 bid and I am for Afternic: just nothing. And the cheerry is what I see on my Afternic home page now:

my Afternic control panel

YOU NOTICED I HAVE NOT BID LATELY ???

Oh dear…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 10:52 pm and is filed under Domain News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Afternic owns me AUTO.com or at least some apologies.”

  1. […] Ieri ho acquistato AUTO.com o meglio….pensavo di averlo acquistato, ma ovviamente AFTERNIC continua a fare casini. Se volete farvi 2 risate alle mie spalle, qui trovate la storia: Afternic owns me AUTO.com or at least some apologies. | The Domain World seen by ItalianDragon […]

  2. Our apologies for the delay in reaching out to you yesterday - we should have done so. Our service team has reached out to you today.

    The integrity of the listings to the site is very important to us. Unfortuantely, this is a case whereas the person (seller) that listed auto.com did not own the name. As soon as this was brought to our attention, we immediately took action and took the listing down from the site.

    All the best,

    David Hauser
    Director, Business Operations & Customer Management

  3. Too good to be true :)

    I wouldn’t blame Afternic too much, though the fraudulent seller should be banned instantly, it would be quite unbelievable to have listed auto.com by mistake :)

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