Sometimes it is hard to believe it!

Sometimes I get so blindsided by an email that I don’t even know where to begin writing a post.

I got an email through the contact form on this blog from a guy in the US asking me to evaluate 6 of his domains.

“It probably should only take you about 5 minutes for each domain. All we’re looking for is someone to tell us if they feel the domain is priced too low, too high or just right, and whether or not it should have a website.”

“Your honest feedback will help us grow and improve the health of our portfolio.”

I followed the link provided, scrolled down and saw the 6 domains for sale. Within 3 seconds my “evaluation” was $0 for each domain. These were all .com domains of first/last names of US athletes in basketball and football. I didn’t know any of them and I watch NBA daily. (I used to watch it, anyway…)

All domain names were prices on the website from $500 to $4,999. All domains were registered in the 2nd half of 2019 so they soon coming up for renewal.

He also told me that “Some of the domains do have a website on them already.”.

I visited the domains and found that 3 of them had a simple websites made with the GoDaddy Website Builder.

Here what the 3 websites had on:

1. First one said “XXXXX XXXXX Official Site” and the teams name at the top and said that the domain was for sale. It had a link to purchase the domain at GoDaddy for $2,000.
2. Second one said “Official Website” at the top and it had the name of player and the teams name and had a button that said “Buy This Site” that took you to GoDaddy. Price was $4,999.
3. The last one said “Official Website” at the top and had a few more details of the player and of the “upcoming” NBA games. No mention of the domain being for sale.

The guy even had a Twitter account that posts news of these 3 players and also posts links to the 3 .com domains.

Here is the best part!

His company website is rather strange offering various somewhat unrelated and vague IT services and the company is described as “a digital holding company“.

The best past if that the website menu has a “Services” drop down and one of the items says “XXXXX Law Firm”. XXXXX is the name of a US state.

The Law Firm that “has built a solid reputation” claims to be very knowledgeable in Entertainment Law, among many other areas.

Sometimes it is hard to believe how clueless some people can be. Anyone can understand this is not a domainer. He is some clueless guy that had a dumb idea. You don’t get to be a domainer over night. This guy can not have many excuses for registering these domains. We tend to harshly judge young wannabee domainers that register bad TM domains when they begin but this guy is a lot worse. Even if he is not a lawyer, someone in his family probably is. He didn’t bother to check with his relative that could have helped him avoid these domains.

Of course TM law is not so simple and someone can claim that these athletes don’t have any common law rights or TM rights but that is a different discussion…

Anyway, my advise was to delete these domains from his webpage and then let them expire because the potential legal liability is not worth it.

(Both emails addresses he gave me bounced as not existing. He got his website right but the part before @ is wrong. Oh well…)