Go Daddy confuses buyers by presenting unpriced domains as being in an 80 day auction. Most of these domain names are being send by Go Daddy’s partners such as Afternic and Sedo that recently started a partnership. Sedo refuses to remove domains from Go Daddy. I believe this is confusing to buyers and hurts domain name sales.

All unpriced domains for sale at Go Daddy come up as:

xxxxxxx.xxx is available through Go Daddy Auctions!
Minimum Offer: $xxxx.00 | Auction Ends: 2/xx/2013 6:05:00 PM PST

If you have set a minimum offer at Sedo or Afternic then it appears at Godaddy. If you haven’t then the default $500 minimum appears. Either way this doesn’t change the fact that all domains without a Buy It Now price are presented to buyers as being in an auction.

Of course Go Daddy is more US targeted but nevertheless Go Daddy will destroy domain sales worldwide. Prices are going to come down on domains listed at Go Daddy and fewer sales will happen.

I had never listed a single domain name at Go Daddy and suddenly all my domains appeared there overnight.

Go Daddy perpetually lists all domain names as being in a 80 day auction. Nobody in their right mind will make an offer for a domain that is in auction. They are going to wait for the auction to be close to the end and then make the lowest bid and expect to win the domain. That will not happen. So you are going to have a disappointed and confused buyer and no sale. And you would have wasted 80 fu***ing days. I have had numerous buyers emailing me that Go Daddy has my domain in auction with a $500 bid. That is not true and I will not allow it to happen any more. I don’t put my domains for auction. Not everything is about auctions.

Sedo and Afternic want to target the $500 market and that is their choice but I will not be dragged into that. I don’t sell domains at that price. I don’t even sell below $1500. At least Afternic offers an opt out option of listing your domains at Go Daddy. You just need to contact support and they will remove all your domains from Go Daddy. But Sedo refuses to remove your domains from Go Daddy so the only option left is to remove all your domains from Sedo. I have already removed 3k domains. They didn’t seem to care so I will remove another 3k today. Goodbye Sedo!

So the time to choose is here for all domainers. List at Sedo and have all your domains listed at the Go Daddy garage sale or leave Sedo? I know that a trend is already forming…

This is what is happening to buyers in this email I got:

I’m interested in your domain ***********.com. I bid on 8/10/12 and you counter offered for $*****. I will go no higher than $****.
You’ve had this domain for seven years and I was the only bidder in your auction. This is your one chance to sell the domain.

There was no bid on my domain. The buyer requested a price from the GoDaddy aftermarket and then Afternic asked me to set a price for my domain because it is listed in Afternic. The “counter offer” was me setting a price for this domain name at Afternic that was pushed to the interested buyer. Buyer also seems to think that the domain is in auction and for the past seven years (the years that the domain is registered) nobody has made a bid. This very disturbing. GoDaddy should make it clear that most domains in it’s system are NOT in auction. Just because their aftermarket is called Go Daddy Auctions it doesn’t mean that all domains listed are in auction!

I tried searching for my domain name at GoDaddy and of course it appears to be in auction. Auction ends on 9/13/2012 and says “Minimum Offer: $500.00″ although the domain is now priced. My price is nowhere to be seen.

Then a week after the email above I got an offer through email for one of my domains for $300. I politely declined the offer for my 14 year old .com domain only to get this reply:

What are you looking for?
It is listed on GoDaddy Auctions for $500.

No it’s NOT! GoDaddy confuses the buyers by presenting the minimum offer at $500 instead of what it is and also by implying that a bid for $500 will win the domain in the auction if there are no other bids. Buyers then get the real price and they feel cheated and angry.

And here is another email:

Dear Sir or Madame,
I noticed you have for sale the domain name: ****.info .
The minimum to trigger auction appears to be $500.00 .
I’d be interested to learn what you would accept to buy the domain please.
Thank you.

 

I also get questions from blog readers that ask why does my domain shows as auction at GoDaddy.

Yesterday someone searched at google for “what happens make offer godaddy auction” and ended up at one of my posts. People don’t know what’s going on and are trying to find out. I am not getting any sales tat Go Daddy and potential buyers are confused by the whole process.

And here is the last email from today:

I find this domain on an auction and there was a start price for 1278$ and there were no bids… I will do this price bid like a chance to have this domain, but this auction were finished early.

That is enough for me.

Related posts:

1. Go Daddy – Confused buyers waiting for an 80 day auction and lowball scavengers
2. Afternic starts sending minimum offer amounts to Go Daddy – The Go Daddy problem remains
3. How and why to keep your domain sales private at Afternic and Sedo
4. Go Daddy and Sedo integration having more problems
5. GoDaddy is trying to sell me my own domain names