You don’t walk away empty handed when installment deals fall through.
I received an email from Dan.com this week letting me know that someone had canceled an installment purchase they made for LifeIsLong.com. The domain had a buy now price of $3,288 and they made four monthly payments of $150 before canceling.
This is the type of domain that can take time to sell, so it would have been nice if the buyer continued through all 24 payments. But I can also look at it another way: someone paid me $150 a month to take this domain off the market for four months, and it sure beats domain parking revenue!
With Dan.com installment sales, you have to transfer the domain to Dan.com’s control at its registrar during the installment period. Transferring it back to my GoDaddy account was simple; Dan.com unlocked the domain and provided the authorization code. I had the domain in my GoDaddy account within one day. Dan.com also immediately listed the domain for sale again.
I’ve only done a handful of installment sales. This is the first time a buyer has stopped paying, and I’m fine with keeping the money paid to date and listing it for sale again.
Adam says
Did they get to use the domain? I personally don’t like the risk of someone using the domain and possibly “sullying” it through bad actions.
Andrew Allemann says
They do get to use it but they didn’t. Certainly if you did this with a very valuable domain, you’d want protections in place.
amplify says
Glad to see that I’m not the only one eerie on the idea of having installments, at least that low. Some damage can be done to a domain beyond just having sullied archived pages… These things would take time to fix and could be the difference of having a customer or not, if you realized what happened from the beginning. Of course, that would be the next buyer’s problem, but it could come back and cause issues if not disclosed, even if you weren’t aware of the problem.
Dan says
The buyer & seller are bound by our Lease to Own contract which provides protection and introduces legally enforceable penalties when the buyer damages the value of the domain while under contract.
Due to this, buyers are aware of the consequences and avoid engaging in activities that can hurt the value of the domain.
End-users also inherently wish to become the owner of the domain and so the buyer has no incentive to hurt the value of the domain.
We’re handling Lease to Own transactions for years now and have not seen transactions where the buyer willingly or accidentally hurts the value of a domain.
Only in one instance a buyer hosted a webshop on a domain that wasn’t appreciated by the seller (for good reason) and we took down the page and canceled the transaction within 24 hours when that occurred.
The reason why we share the above is because we hear some industry participants rehash old notions about payment plans due to (unchallenged) fear of potential extreme edge cases.
This prevents some domain investors from unlocking the maximum potential of their portfolio which is a shame if you ask us. Especially because domainers can build recurring income from instalments when done right.
Our experience and data indicates that when you have the right processes in place, you can trust doing business with a third party. That’s one of the added value that marketplaces introduce.
We hope this helps,
Dan
Snoopy says
Reccomended putting the price up.
Andrew Allemann says
Why? You’re referring to my asking price for this domain?
K Thileepan says
one of my Spotor.com domain also same issue from Dan user. i got sigle installment only, but i got $350 and two years domain renewal free,
Joe says
It has happened to me a few times but as long as the name is making money I’m fine with it.