06|21|2008 5:36 pm EDT
NameJet.com - Employees Not Allowed to Bid
There’s a bit of controversy swirling around the expiring domain name after-market as reports of “insider bidding” have been raised at NamePros and DomainNameWire.com. According to DomainNameWire the topic of NSI and Enom employees bidding at NameJet was discussed with an employee over the phone.
Enom Sr. VP Taryn Naidu informed DomainNameNews.com that this is not the practice at Namejet.com
I have no idea how anyone got the ‘information’ that Namejet allows employees to bid but I can tell you that it not the case. We definitely do NOT let employees compete in auctions. Even if controlled, that practice has bad news written all over it.
We have both report monitoring of account purchases and also IP monitoring of backorders and bids.
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9 Comments
Andrew
June 21, 2008 @ 8:54 pm EDT
Interesting that their phone rep would have such a canned response for the question if it wasn’t true
Frank Michlick
June 22, 2008 @ 7:45 am EDT
Andrew, more importantly apparently the phone rep does not know that he is not allowed to bid in the auctions.
Aside from letting employees bid at the auction, it would be interesting to have some statistics on a) which companies bid in their own auctions and b) which registrars take over pre-release domain names that never make it to the auction.
Oh and while we’re at it, let’s also see which companies c) operate a domain marketplace and buy domains for their own portfolio at that marketplace and d) which companies register/taste domain names based on the domain names in their customer’s portfolios.
Eric
June 23, 2008 @ 7:06 pm EDT
I am 99% certain a bidder with username Taryn had the high bid for the NameJet auction for possums.com (DNJournal sales charts: http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/domainsales/2008/domainsales04-15-08.htm). From the comment here I assume it was just a wild coincidence, but never having seen anyone with that name before it surprised me to see what I presumed was an eNom staff member take the winning bid (it would be like seeing a user named “Sahar”, no relation, bidding on a Bido.com auction). I like NameJet’s approach to domain auctions and hope the controversy is not true.
Frank Michlick
June 23, 2008 @ 7:11 pm EDT
Eric, I am pretty sure that the bidder with the user name Taryn is not Taryn Naidu, but rather a domainer who thought it would be funny to assign this bidder name to his account.
As for Bido.com, check their House Rules. There it says:
Taryn Naidu
June 24, 2008 @ 10:46 pm EDT
Eric,
Frank is correct. I can assure you that the Bidder Alias of Taryn is not me.
Troy Leaver
June 25, 2008 @ 6:09 pm EDT
FYI, today I won a NameJet auction, after a last minute bidding war with NameJet user “taryn”, whose bids ended driving the ending price up to $4,000. (I won the auction.)
windows web servers
June 25, 2008 @ 11:53 pm EDT
If this type of thing actually happens, it is very unfair. The domains need to open to everyone and insider bidding is an event that should be heavily frowned upon.
Adam Strong
June 26, 2008 @ 5:46 pm EDT
Bidder username “taryn” = name administration FYI
Frank
June 30, 2008 @ 11:12 pm EDT
Troy Leaver
June 25, 2008 @ 6:09 pm EDT
FYI, today I won a NameJet auction, after a last minute bidding war with NameJet user “taryn”, whose bids ended driving the ending price up to $4,000. (I won the auction.)
———————-
It’s not a person, it’s a bot. I’ve recorded several auctions with this “Taryn” bot coming in to drive up prices in the last 5 minutes. Surprisingly enough, he/it is never in the original bidder pool. Every time the bot wins an auction, the DNS changes instantly. Normally this is a 24 hour process.
This phantom bidding happens with Netwo*ksolu*ions deletions. I’ve moved all my domains out of Netwo*ksolu*ions after several incidents with them. I will not give them any business and I definitely DO NOT recommend them as a honorable or reputable business.