In October I wrote about a person listing domains on eBay that he didn’t own. When someone would bid on the domains he’d subsequently register them. He also added a bogus $15 transfer charge to the domains. This insured that he never lost money. (See Nailing an eBay domain name scammer).
I followed this seller, TopNotchDomains, on eBay but stopped watching after it appeared he was no longer on eBay for the second time. When searching for his ID on eBay I received a message that said he was “No Longer a Registered User”.
Out of curiousity I checked his username again this morning. And he’s baaaaack!
The seller researches decent domains that are available for registration and then creates a listing for them starting at $.01. As soon as someone bids on a domain he registers the domain. He has fine print in his listings that say there’s a $15 transfer fee. I challenged him on this scam back in October, and here’s what he had to say:
“I apologize for the confusion, but maybe your registrar’s information was not updated when you checked (sic) because I registered this name with my account executive at Godaddy this morning. The other main reason for the transfer fee is that it takes some time to transfer the name, and to me, that time is worth well more than $15, but as a courtesy, I only charge $15 (sic). Additionally, sometimes I have to initiate the transfer more than once for a variety of reasons, and this takes more of my time. I am sorry if the $15 fee at the end makes my auctions out of your price range, but I would hope you might reconsider when you see that I have 193 positive feedbacks from my auctions and no negatives. I wish you all the best!”
For the record, it’s against eBay’s policies to tack on outrageous shipping or other fees. They consider this “fee circumvention”. It’s like someone selling a Porsche with a starting price of $.01 and a shipping fee of $75,000.
Amazingly, TopNotchDomains still has no negative feedback. He has received one neutral rating from someone complaining about his transfer fee. Apparently his buyers haven’t caught on.
not says
WHAT U EXPECT U CCCCCCCHEAP BUGGER TO GET GOOD DOMAINS FOR ONLY A DOLLAR ?!? THE SHAME IS REALLY ON YOU IN THIS CASE!
Editor says
That’s an interesting response 🙂
Perhaps posted by TopNotchDomains?
I’m not looking for cheap domains. I’m looking to not waste my time by clicking on an auction with a start price of $.01 only to find out it’s really a start price of $15.01. And I’m looking for someone that doesn’t lie in his/her auction postings, e.g. “this domain has about 1 year of registration left”.
Ted says
How about going after the real scammers out there? I don’t see how what this guy does is a scam. If he clearly discloses his fee, then the buyers have read it and agree to it.
Also, if he sells a domain that is unregistered, so what? He’s providing a service to the buyer by introducing them to a domain that they might want, so he earns his profit by helping them find it. Without his help, the buyer would never have found out about the domain being available, so I would think they would be grateful for that.