OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
I logged into my account at Namejet today to see what auctions are ending in a few hours. I saw I had 2 that had 2 bidders in the auction. That usually means that it was only me and another interested bidder that backordered the domain names 3 days ago.
Not this time. I clicked on one of the domains only to see that the other bidder was someone named “NameJet Reserve”. Of course this someone is not a bidder. It’s the Namejet reserve that has been set by a person or company that is auctioning it’s domains at Namejet. These are not expiring domains. So it was only me against the reserve. Initial price was the usual $69 at Namejet. I made a bid for $89 only to be outbid by the reserve with $99 and now the minimum bid is $109. So worst part is I can only bid in $20 increments!
I am sorry Namejet but this is not going to happen. This actually seems like a bug. The correct way to handle it would be for me to be the high bidder but with “reserve not met” I wouldn’t win the auction. Or I could have the same bid as the “Namejet Reserve” but I would be losing. This needs immediate bug fixing from the Namejet support as increments are set at $10 at Namejet, not $20.
I contacted Namejet support but all I got as feedback was this:
“The reason that you are seeing this in your auctions is that there are reserves placed on these domains. As the increments come in $10 bids, the reserve bidder will also increase by $10. The bidder namejet reserve will increase until the reserve is met.”
This doesn’t explain why I am bidding against myself and I might end up paying $10 more that the reserve.
After checking whois I saw that the 2 domains are auctioned off by Yummy Names that is owned by Tucows Inc.
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Why blank out the domain name? No one can jump into the auction once the auction starts.
Since I am not going to win the domains now, these are going to be auctioned off again in a few weeks.
I just found myself in exactly the same situation bidding against myself/Namejet Reserve.
@Konstantinos, can you give an update as to how the two auctions finished and if the domains that you were bidding against yourself get re-auctioned afterwards ?
I didn’t win the auctions because I didn’t want to bid in $20 increments.
I think the seller can re-auction the domains but after a certain time.
I think that is at least one month. I haven’t seen the 2 I lost again.
This is also true on Yin.com. I bid this up to 20K and Namejet Reserve is still winning. Kind of annoying.
Take a look a namejet these days and more than 90% of their top domains now are marked as “reserved”. It’s a joke because I used to bid on domains pre-auction and be the only bidder so I got them for $69. I hold around 200 premium domain names, but these days namejet inflate the price every time.
I’m no longer interested in their service.