Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,
I have been using NameJet for years and never had any issue until the end of last month when I received an email from them stating that:
“We regret to inform you that a domain you recently purchased through a pre-release auction has been cancelled, as allowed by the NameJet Agreement. Unfortunately this domain was listed in error and was not available for sale.All efforts will be made to assure this does not occur again.
As a result, we will be refunding your auction fee within the next few days.”
To make things clear, I won a domain LLL.org through NameJet on Sep 17, 2016 and the above email I received was on Oct 29th, 2016; right after 41 days of winning the domain through an auction.
My card was charged on the same day of winning the auction. However, I responded them with the following message:
“What the hell is this? It’s been more than 1 month since I won the domain and now you are taking it back?? Kindly give the domain back to me or I will make you guys popular in every domain forum and my blog AbdulBasit.com which is widely read among domainers community.”
Their technical support member responded back:
“This domain was listed in error by the seller likely due to a typo in his submission and as such, there is no domain to deliver. You were never delivered the domain in this case due to the error in listing and as such, there is nothing that we can return.
We do apologize for the inconvenience as this is a rare occasion.”
After which I contacted them again and asked to either ban the seller or verify the domain ownerships and listings before making it live for auction for which I didn’t hear anything.
Also I was not delivered the domain during the entire 41 days and I forgot to ask them as well because I buy domains from many different places and sometimes I forget to check and transfer out domains. As many readers of my blog already know that I keep all my domains with Uniregistry and try my best to move all domains which I win at different marketplaces as soon as possible to Uniregistry in order to keep it at one place and that’s easy way to organize and manage my domains.
At first, this ridiculous mistake should not have happened from NameJet.
Secondly, if it happened, why they took 41 days to inform and even more time to refund my money? Hijacking my $1,000 for that many days is not the way of doing business. This amount might not be big for someone but it’s not about the actual figure whether it be $1 or $100,000. How can you hold my funds for over 40 days and come back with lame excuse?
I’m sharing my recent experience with you all to beware using NameJet and don’t think the domain is yours until the name is transferred to your account.
I would invite my readers to give their feedback and share their experiences if they had any like that in past.
Thanks!
Sorry to hear. Actually they can even take the domain from your account so the domain is (probably) yours after you have transfer it out.
Happened to me too unfortunately:
http://onlinedomain.com/2014/12/02/domain-name-news/namejet-rightofthedot-mistakenly-auction-turner-broadcasting-owned-domain-names/
Thanks for sharing Konstantinos. I heard they took the domain back after the domain was pushed to our account and taken back after that but didn’t found until you shared this. That’s why I always prefer to take the domains out of any place I win any auction and move out to Uniregistry where I keep all my domains on permanent basis.
It’s just part of the whole domain game. Don’t let it get to you.
NJ can’t help it if their sellers make mistakes. If they start banning sellers for a mistake a lot of great inventory will never make it to market. After all, there are only so many people with good domains to sell, it’s finite.
Since they can ban the buyer for non-payment, why not banning seller? There should be rules equal for everyone.
I agree with Shimmy. It’s impossible to get private sellers to push all their names to Enom before the auctions. And some sellers have thousands of names. Occasionally there is a mistake. It’s even happened to me but I figured it out after the auction was a few days old. The rules could be changed to make it 100% sure all names were in the transfer account but that we keep most of the sellers from putting their names up. And I think we all agree that we love the inventory of Namejet. I think if the numbers were analyzed… Read more »
Thanks Shane for your feedback and kind words which is appreciated.
I agree it happens rarely and for me it happened for the first time. Also I like the inventory at NameJet which is of good quality compare to other platforms. But there should be rules equal for both buyers and sellers. If anyone doesn’t oblige, simply kick those people out and make the platform much cleaner.
On the other hand, NameJet should have informed much earlier than taking 41 days!
Yes, the time frame is wrong and should never happen. To me that is the part that should not have happened. And non payers are always kicked off ( I can think of one exception ). I think it really depends on the person that is putting the name up for auction . If a person puts up 5000 names every year for a few years and screws up one then they get a pass. If he screws up regularly or in his first attempt I imagine they aren’t allowed to put name up. Again, it comes down to what… Read more »
Thanks Shane for detailed explanation. I appreciate that 🙂 As I have been dealing with NJ for several years and had first bad experience with them which shows they take things seriously and if the mistake was from any side which *may* be accepted but the biggest issue for me was they informed me after 41 days and held my money as well which is never accepted. I hope they inform the buyer much earlier if such type of incident happens ever. I agree with your last sentence because you have been actively selling domains through them on regular basis… Read more »
Hello Abdul I really appreciate you posting this. I was just planning on making a few purchases on some names I am interested in on namejet for the very first time and somehow saw your blog post update on my email before I dived in. I don’t quite understand the issue here, did the seller list the name they own by mistake or listed the name they don’t own? If the latter is the issue, I would have thought namejet verifies ownership just like sedo does, isn’t that the case? If not then then there’s seriously a problem with them… Read more »
Thanks for your feedback Lifa 🙂
Just because this incident happened with me, I won’t suggest not to purchase domains from them. Feel free to buy from NameJet and I will still regularly use them to purchase but just wanted to inform everyone else about what happened and hope take necessary measures next time to stop such waste of time and holding money of buyer.
They never clearly mentioned whose mistake was actually but just said what I shared.
Exactly! 41 days is just not acceptable and holding money for that entire period too!
So they used your money for 41 days free,didnt they?
Not 100% sure but most probably YES.
I had a similar experience with a new registration of a new GTLD name. Very frusrating. But,luckily, the refund was made fast.
Seems you had similar issue like Konstantinos shared. Sad.
That is namejet for you. I also had that sort of experience with them. I backordered a domain and was charged for it before i was asked for verification but it was taken back less than 24 hrs I won it before I had the chance verify. Plus my enom account was locked so I couldn’t access my previous domain.
Thanks for sharing your experience and it sounds you didn’t had a good one too. What really happened after the account was locked and you couldn’t access it?
I have had this happen to me before, not with NJ but with others. I just chalk it up to experience these days. I remember getting pretty mad at the time though.
I suppose people do make mistakes on submission forms, it did take a very long time for NJ to address the issue though which is annoying to hear. 41 days holding your money is just not good enough!
Thanks Richard for sharing your experience which doesn’t seems good too.
That’s really annoying.
Would you mind me asking you a question unrelated to the post, by the way?
I went to do a Whois loookup on one of your domains, Aald.com (I wasn’t planning to buy it I guess. I’m just a 16-year-old and was curious who owned it) and realised that it was registered on “1970-01-01” and expires on “1970-01-01”
Why is that the case? Is it some sort of technique which prevents a domain from expiring? Seemed pretty cool. You can contact me by email at aaldentnay@yahoo.com.sg if that’s preferred! 🙂
I’m just really curious!
Not sure where do you see that but looking at http://whois.domaintools.com/aald.com shows correct registration and expiration date.
Let me know if you have any questions.
I think it is a glitch in the Whois tool I used, http://who.is
Only https://who.is/whois/aald.com shows it.
Haha, still a rather perculiar glitch for a Whois service nonetheless! Thanks for your reply. 🙂
Yeah, definitely a glitch.
Always welcome 🙂