Warning: avoid purchasing domain name appraisals from TropicalNames.com.
The domain name appraisal scam — which was reborn with a different tact last month — has changed its target domain name appraisal service. A new scam email requests a domain name appraisal from TropicalNames.com. TopicalNames.com was just registered on April 2.
Last month’s e-mails tried to get users to pay for domain name appraisals at a bogus outfit called Pozde.com.
The emails offer three different services to choose from; two of which are legitimate. But the scam offers a third service that is cheaper than the others. I know that some people were taken in by the scam last time, coughing up $22.95 for an appraisal from Pozde.com.
Here’s the full text of the email:
I am interested to buy your domain name domain.COM and offer to buy it from you for 65% of the appraised market value.
As of now I accept appraisals from either one of the following leading appraisal companies:
sed o.com
tropicalnames.com
accuratedomains.comIf you already have an appraisal please forward it to me.
As soon as I have received your appraisal I will send you my payment (I use Paypal for amounts less than $2,000 and escrow.com for amounts above $2,000) as well as further instructions on how to complete the transfer of the domain name.
I appreciate your business,
Thank you,
K. Brown
If you respond to the email with an appraisal you will not hear back from the scammer.
Same here different players, [email protected] emailed me wanting to buy domains. Even accepted $24,000 however need appraisal first. His emails all look template like and nothing personally written.
Kept asking me to go to an article he found online, http://www.domainexplorer.org/Archive-09-2009/8137251.htm only to notice it was a thread he started…
Posting this up here so it gets ranked good and high in the engines.
DONT GET SCAMMED FELLOW DOMAINERS!!
A true buyer will know what its worth and would never need an appraisal.
I just fell for this too….appears another site is also http://www.trademark-valuation-agency.com/appraisal.htm
Email came from:
[email protected] (obviously spoofed)
I have notified godaddy – domain-cost.com (mirror site) is hosted there. Why is this still up?
Wish I would have done my reserach first.
The ridiculous thing is… I work for a web hosting company and I should have absolutely caught onto this. However what got me was the fact that I had just uploaded a bunch of domains into Sedo…so the timing seemed right for interest. Well at the very least I can warn my entire customer base……:(