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.
Attila says
Same here different players, friedman@thedomaininvestors.com 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.
Karin Wagner says
I just fell for this too….appears another site is also http://www.trademark-valuation-agency.com/appraisal.htm
Email came from:
business@cheap-web-hosting-search.com (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……:(