A few weeks ago Namejet.com and SnapNames.com announced that if you placed a backorder on one of the systems for a deleting domain name backorders would be placed for the deleting domain names on both systems.
It makes a lot of sense since saves the effort of putting the same deleting domain names into both systems.
The idea is if the domain is caught by one or the other service and there and are no other bidders then you would get the domain for the $69 minimum and the two services could combine all the tags they have to catch domains.
However if either SnapNames.com or Namejet.com get’s the domain it will create an auction at snapnames.com and namejet.com for the same domain and you will be a participant in each auction.
Actually if you are the only person who backorders the domain it will still create an auction.
So lets use an example.
I placed the only backorder for the deleting domain name messingup.com. However since a backorder at one service creates a backorder at both services, as you can see below, it shows as two backorders even though in my case I was both of the backorders
For those domainers that have multiple backorders lets say 5, 10 or 20 at a time, we are geared to react to outbid notices by often raising our bid or proxy.
In my case (and this is no secret) I use the bidder ID of hiphop on all backorder services going back at least 10 years.
So you can see that Snapnames shows the initial bid (or backorder) of $69 on same date at the same time also with Namejet.com
As you can see from Snapnames.com bidding history I was the only one who placed i backorder on this domain, but it still appears as two backorders .
When I logged into snapnames.com today, saw two bidders on the domain and that I was losing, I placed a higher proxy bid since I don’t like to sit around to the end of auctions.
The proxy bid at snapnames.com then caused me to be outbid at namejet which generated an outbid notice.
So now I saw that there was an issue so decided to test it out.
So I placed a higher bid at Namejet.com but below my proxy bid at snapnames.com
So currently my Snapnames account shows me with a winning bid of $366, but my Namejet.com auction screen is showing me as losing to a high bid of $366.
I informed Namejet.com that their joint backorder system created the unintended consequence of allowing bidders to bid against themselves on two different systems, even if there were no other bidders.
The problem is that bidders namejet’s accounts are not associated with their snapnames account even if both use the same bidders name.
I was assured that in any such situation brought to their attention, the bidder will wind up pay the lowest amount, but I wanted to make all domainers aware of the situation, so they can pay special attention to outbid notices they receive from either snapnames or namejet on deleted domain names, so you don’t wind up doing what I did, which is bid against myself.
Nice catch 🙂
Nice pun.
so funny. I was looking for the first guy that would bump into this. a disaster waiting to happen and so obvious when the system went up that I can only assume this was done in bad faith.
there are a few chinese backorder services that bid on both platforms for their clients, and most of the times they can only bid on a proxy service if the highest bid is not currently of that proxy service. it is easy to get a lot more bid action this way until someone notice it. people bidding against themselves and against other chinese bidders that can by this use the same proxy service.
“I placed the only backorder for the deleting domain name messingaround.com”
You are MessingUp.com Mike 😉
Everything snapnames does is borderline fraud disaster, I wish they would fix their platform it is a nightmare. I hope they just merge everything in to namejet but that doesn’t solve using some strange registrars when I win an auction at snapnames it is never my first choice.
All of Web.com is a disaster!
Thanks for the heads up.
For pending delete backorders stick with SnapNames only. Prebids and sale amounts are not made public with them.
Isn’t that how its supposed to work now that you are no longer bidding against your broker which was considered kind of unethical?
Thanks Mike!
For clarification, placing an order at either SnapNames or NameJet does not create an order on the other platform. The only way to end up bidding against yourself is if you have manually placed a backorder on a name in both systems. In rare cases where this happens, both NameJet and SnapNames work with the customers to ensure the correct amount is adjusted. Thanks for all the support!
That is not true Mike
I placed a backorder for the domain name laughorCry.com on snapnames and its on my action list on snapnames.com and namejet.com showing as 2 bidders but I’m both of the bidders.
Have the screenshots if you care to see them
NameJet and SnapNames can fix this problem.
All they need to do is make a table of bidder alias pairs – i.e. showing which ID at NameJet corresponds to which ID at SnapNames. Then, if bids from 1 ID are already present, they can exclude bids from the second ID. They could issue a popup warning, which the customer could manually override. The customer could also choose whether to see that warning on an ongoing basis or acknowledge it once only.
This means sharing bidder alias data between the 2 platforms. If that’s a hangup, then they could ask their customers to opt-in. I suppose automatically pairing bidder IDs could result in some false positives, and that might exclude a bidder who isn’t really bidding against himself. For instance, if 2 different people share the same full name, the 2 auction houses might suppose they’re linked. But a manual popup would alert the person to this kind of issue, and with the override feature he could still place a bid while also reporting the problem.
Alternatively, the customer could manually enter their own matching bidding alias at the other platform. But this would require some sort of verification email. Otherwise 1 customer could block another person from bidding.
Fixing this glitch isn’t instantaneous. But it seems pretty straightforward. In my opinion, NameJet / SnapNames ought to fix it rather than relying on customers to ask for refunds when they bid against themselves.
when you think about it though even though a user would deem this a problem .. how much more profit is this making Namejet/Snapnames via having domains sell for much higher amounts because by accident the bidders are bidding against themselves unknowingly and driving up the prices? Everywhere you look you see these little “software gltiches” in design that seem like accidents at registries, but oddly enough they always have one thing in common (besides being sneaky lol )
they are grabbing the money!
Great information to know Mike. Thanks! I wonder how much more profit this system has created for these two registries since they merged and if they would of stopped this practice if you had not pointed the problem out? Information like this is why I haveThedomains .com bookmarked as my favorite domain site!
This is better advancement by both the domaining websites as it will really help the domain businessmen to maintain a proper list of backordered domains.
Thanks for the blog as it will save my time too.
This just happened to me. 2 bidders on the auction and both of them are me. sheesh. They’re different handles so I almost outbid myself on name jet.
Thank you for the info. However, what was a point of this experiment? Just place a backorder at only one of these, and everything will be okay with no mess.