Hello everyone,

Some might think I always show the positive sides of Afternic which is not the case because I try to share whatever I experience, no matter good or bad.

And today is something I wanted to share. I experienced this month which wasn’t good until I was clarified by my Afternic manager.

So what happened was that I sold a domain for which the transfer was completed to Afternic from my end. The release of the payment took 16 days. During this period, I sent a couple of reminders to the transfer agent as well.

Another sale this month for which I’m still waiting for the funds to be received and it’s already been 13 days since the domain transfer is completed from my end.

I wanted to share what my manager informed me in detail and I believe this will clear the doubts of everyone who thinks why there has been delays and inconsistencies in the disbursement of funds from Afternic. Below is the response:

With non Fast Transfer sales, it is our policy to not release payments to sellers until the domain has been delivered to the buyer. This is why some payments are released the same day as the transaction and others are delayed.

In both referenced cases, the payouts were delayed because the buyer was unresponsive after purchasing the domain. After a domain is purchased directly through Afternic, the buyer is prompted to provide us with their registrar account information so that we can provide them with instructions on how to take ownership of the domain. In both these cases, the buyers did not provide us with their registrar account information and were unresponsive to our broker and Transaction Assurance agent reach out attempts. Without know what registrar/account to move the domain to, we were unable to deliver the domain. As a worst case scenario, if the buyer does not take ownership of the domain within 10 business days (two weeks), the transaction will get escalated and we will create an account at the registrar to move the domain to. We then release the funds to the seller. This scenario is rare, as most buyers do not hesitate in gaining access to the asset they just purchased, but it does happen. Our brokers educate the buyer on the post purchase process when selling the name, so I am always surprised when buyers drag their feet/go unresponsive after purchasing a name. It is unfortunate that this happened with two of your buyers in such a short period of time, but this is not a new trend that is happening uniformly on our platform.

I checked on xxxxxxxx.com and we will begin the process of creating an account for the buyer if they do not respond today, so we can release your funds.

And for Fast Transfers:

“Fast Transfer payout timeline, a Fast Transfer payout is paid out between the 7th and 10th day from the sale. A manual transfer sale can be paid out as soon as the owner takes possession of the name.“

Although I pointed out that I’m not impressed with such a long time for disbursing the funds both for manual as well as fast transfers. Especially when the sale has happened via Fast Transfer, it doesn’t make much sense to hold funds for a week or more. The reason is the domain gets transferred out of the seller’s account in minutes the sold email is received and the buyer gets the domain in their account pretty quickly unlike with the manual transfers.

One thing which can be improved is to reduce the number of days from 10 business days (2 weeks) to some 3 business days if the buyer goes unresponsive and Afternic creates an account and transfers to their own account.

I hope this clarifies for many Afternic users and I would love to hear your feedback and let your voice be heard.