Employee set up an account under a different name in order to participate in domain auctions.
The company investigated the employee and two others after receiving an allegation of wrongdoing. In a blog post, Aftermarket GM Paul Nicks wrote:
This employee created an account not associated with his legal name, and participated in auctions and expiry auctions as a bidder, which is a conflict of interest and a direct violation of our policy. To be clear, our investigation uncovered NO evidence that this employee used any confidential customer information for personal gain, or that he conducted shill-bidding on auctions.
While we believe the employee did not have malicious motivations, GoDaddy does not tolerate such violations of our Code of Conduct. Indeed, many provisions of our Code of Conduct are there specifically to protect our platform. We are very clear that no employee may participate in any auction that involves bidding against our customers. Employees are able to purchase buy now and closeout domains.
GoDaddy is re-educating its employees about its rules and said it is reviewing its platform to find ways to add transparency.
It appears that the activities were limited to one employee. GoDaddy came under fire in 2008 after its then-VP Adam Dicker participated in domain auctions. At the time, GoDaddy didn’t have a policy against employees bidding in auctions.
“It appears that the activities were limited to one employee”
That sounds about right…
Was his name Lee Oswald?
I love overpaying for auctions against employees. How long has this been occurring? I see auctions were “plural” so what volume are we talking about? A handful maybe? Maybe 1000’s? This might be another SnapNames 2.0.
Give some clarity on the matter and are auctions forthcoming?
Unreal.
Jay, here are the specifics on auction activity:
1.) From 2014 – early 2018, the ex-employee was involved in 354 auctions.
2.) They won 54 auctions .
3.) Of the 300 completed auctions they did not win,
• 154 were just the $12 initial bid
• 74 had only two bids, with $25 dollars as the highest proxy bid, they were not the 2nd highest bidder on any of these
• Of the remaining 72 where more than two bids were placed, the ex-employee never finished 2nd in an auction. Meaning even without them, the auction most likely would have sold for the price the actualized price.
@Paul Nicks – thanks for the update, that was useful info.