Sedo Introduces Authentication System
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
After many complaints about incomplete deals, company offers three-tier verification system.
Sedo sells a lot of domains, but many of the domain sales on its site are never completed. A number of people — including readers of Domain Name Wire — have recommended that bidders be authenticated to cut down on bogus bidding.
Today Sedo introduced a three tier system for verification. Here’s how it works:
1. Tier 1 lets you bid on any domain under $10,000. You just have to provide a valid credit card.
2. Tier 2 lets you bid on any domain up to $99,999. It requires you to validate your email address, complete an application, and fax a copy of a government-issued ID and a recent bank or utility statement.
3. Tier 3 lets you bid on any domain. In addition to tier 2 requirements, you must make a $1,000 deposit via wire transfer.
I applaud Sedo for making this change. Now we’ll just have to wait to see if it should have been implemented before the Pizza.com “sale”.
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Its about time. Any word on pizza.com transaction?
This sounds very fair. I think that this will prevent many unsavory types from bidding. I hope that there is some financial incentive in this process to make sure the deal “closes” in a timely fashion as well…an earnest deposit for example..
My take… big deal.
How many domains are bid on over $10k at Sedo.
I know someone who bid six figures on a name yesterday and was not asked for any verification other than logging into their account. There is no way I’m sending them $1000 for the privilege of making a bid.
Good intentions but bad idea from Sedo.
They should have an ebay or Forum type ratings system. Simple as that.
@ Domainer – word is the pizza.com deal isn’t closing any time soon.
[...] that Sedo has a new bidder authentication system. So don’t wait until the last minute to bid if you aren’t already [...]
[...] coattails of the Pizza.com sale? The auction ends in 4 days, and now that Sedo has implemented its buyer verification process, this deal is likely to go [...]