I have been victim to the scam in the past week. I got the standard generic with ridiculous offer of USD 10,000. I was encouraged to get a manual appraisal done – which I did at a cost of £65. The company was DomainExplorer.org. The appraisal came back at half the original offer. Here was the response…

“Your valuation looks reasonable enough and I agree with it.

To get a fair value I ordered another valuation from different site.

Since it’s not smart to rely on one valuation only.

I’ve got the figure already. It’s very close the result of your valuation.

Of course, I expected a lower estimation .

Anyway, now I see from different sources that your name has a good
potential.

My partners told me about ICANN rule that prohibits domain reselling before
two months from registration. I did not want to wait for two months.

Here is my solution:

I search for a buyer and get 14%-15% upon sale. I wrote about reselling in
first emails.

Of course, I don’t require exclusive rights to sell. You can try to sell at
the same time. If I find a buyer faster I get my 15%.

I’ve already bought opt-in lists to promote your domains. I invested about
$150 in these opt-in lists.

I was already contacted by an individual regarding your domain. His partner
was interested in purchasing. He asked for valuation certificate. I’ve
already sent him your appraisal link upon receiving his request.

Of course, I cannot list your names with brokers and auctions since I’m not
the owner.

I’m going to use your valuation in my promotio? Is it ok with you?

I think if you list your domains with several brokers and auctions it will
help us. Many buyers prefer to buy through auction sites or domain brokers.
Moreover, many brokers help with transfer. I’m not the owner so I can only
use my database to promote your domains and I cannot list. As the owner, you
can list your domains on http://www.eBay.com, http://www.Amazon.com,
http://www.DomainExplorer.org and http://www.Pool.com. Please don’t forget to send your
auction links.

If you list domains with DomainExplorer.org we can avoid the brokerage fee
(10% at Sedo.com). DomainExplorer does not charge commission upon sale
and offers free escrow. So we can save up to 10%-15%”.

I then made several attempts to make contact and was received with responses that were totally irrelevant to my correspondence. In the end I sent an email saying they had been ‘rumbled’. I then did get a response saying that if I continued to be abusive he would not do business!!! He then sent a further email asking for my excuses in my last mail. I have just sent him the link to this article apologising and highlighting the uncanny resemblance!

The name is Mark Greenwald
The appraisal company DomainExplorer.org

[...] Pozde.com. Then TropicalNames.com. Then NameOrange. Now the latest domain name appraisal scam has moved to [...]

[...] scam originally sent people to Pozde.com, and later changed to [...]

This scam is like… four years old.

The REAL trick is to…

Identify who is doing it. Anyone? We can complain, warn, advise, comment, post, etc…

But it means nothing unless someone identifies who these dicwads are…

just my 2 cents

[...] “Richard Smith”, “Mark Brown”, and “Jeff Lewis” . There is some speculation this is an email marketing campaign by Pozde.com to gain market share in the domain [...]