A 5-Figure Domain Sale That Almost Didn’t Happen

I got an inquiry in March for a 3 word .com domain name and I quoted a low 5 figure price. It was a 9 character domain name.

The buyer said he only had a $1,000 budget and said he would come back when his business was launched. Meanwhile he received 3 automatic reminders by DNS exactly like I have it setup..

He came back a couple months later saying that he wanted to proceed with the sale and that he had just gotten approval from his boss.

Konstantinos, yes, I would like to buy this URL. I received formal approval from my boss an hour ago. Can we chat to discuss the details?
Can I pay with a business American Express credit card? What is the process to properly document our purchase? How does the URL get transferred to our company?

I send him a detailed email with the process that also included a link to the escrow.com transaction guide. I went ahead and created the escrow.com transaction. Then the buyer disappeared for a few days.

I then received an email about this same domain name from a well known domain name broker with a $2,500 offer. I asked him if his client was my buyer and of course it was the same person. I said that we had an agreement and that the domain was in escrow.

The broker said that the buyer was confused and that he never agreed to the 5-figure price and the price went up to $5,000.

I explained that there was no confusion. The buyer received 5 emails with the price before coming back saying he got approval and wanted to proceed. The broker understood what had happened and I assume that he told my buyer that he couldn’t help him.

At that time the buyer resurfaced and emailed me asking me to proceed with the original escrow.com transaction:

Konstantinos, as you may know, ******* may have reached out to you on my behalf. Simply put, there have been a few a series of escalating miscommunications and truthfully, at this point I just want to close the transaction. I’ll fund the escrow.com account shortly and look forward to completing this.

He paid immediately and the transaction was completed within a couple of days.

I never emailed the buyer while I was talking to the broker and I never asked the buyer what all that was about after he resurfaced. I tried to avoid any confrontation. But I was thinking to let the escrow.com transaction expire and then raising the price higher if the buyer ever came back.

The worst thing you can do to me is agree to a deal and then lower your offer for whatever reason.