Domain Troll Purchase...

Thanatos

So, my office was looking at buying a domain that's currently being camped by one of those companies that buys up domains and sells them at a markup. They suggest doing a transaction via escrow.com, claiming it is safe, and that we don't have to release payment until we have the site. Is there any way that this is remotely a good idea, or is my internal scam alarm just being overly sensitive?

kaliyama

Why don't you pick your own escrow agent then?

Chanus

Escrow.com has all the right certifications and seals on its site and it's https... I've never used it personally, but those are all good signs as far as I know.

L Ron Howard

Ebay recommends using escrow.com. Just sayin'. Take that as you will.

matt has a problem

Escrow.com is a legitimate site. That said, there have been various scams and fraud perpetrated by lookalike sites, and by people using phony escrow.com URLs to redirect. This usually comes in the form of the seller sending a "Here use this URL to access the escrow.com site and perform the transaction." email. So if your company does decide to purchase the domain, just make sure it's through the actual, legitimate escrow.com site.

amateurhour

Than, I'm not sure if they still do it, and I'm not a huge fan of the company due to recent events (with their CEO) but Godaddy used to offer a service where you could see who owns the domain name, and they would actually contact the company for you and you could offer them an amount for the site so you weren't paying some flat rate that's way too high. Most of them will lower their price just because they know it's too high.

Also have you tried a whois query on the domain? If they aren't using privacy protection you can e-mail the company directly to make an offer.

Thanatos

amateurhour wrote:

Than, I'm not sure if they still do it, and I'm not a huge fan of the company due to recent events (with their CEO) but Godaddy used to offer a service where you could see who owns the domain name, and they would actually contact the company for you and you could offer them an amount for the site so you weren't paying some flat rate that's way too high. Most of them will lower their price just because they know it's too high.

Also have you tried a whois query on the domain? If they aren't using privacy protection you can e-mail the company directly to make an offer.

The company gives an email address to make an offer to. I just requested a price, and they said $995, they wouldn't entertain anything lower.

I'll check out that GoDaddy thing, though. Thanks.

spool32

GoDaddy's incentive is to have you pay more, not less, for the domain. They make money based on the final price of the domain - personally, I wouldn't use their service.

bowen

$1000 domain name? Does your company hold a trademark or copyright Thanatos?

End

bowen wrote: »

$1000 domain name? Does your company hold a trademark or copyright Thanatos?

At $1000, that's probably irrelevant.

The cheapest route would be the dispute resolution process, which starts at something like $1000 to $1500 and it doesn't look like you can recover any fees if you win.

Going through the US legal system is probably way more expensive, although you could possibly recover some of your costs? That sounds like it is usually considered last resort.

I've never dealt with any of these processes personally, and nor am I ever likely to, but I am sort of vaguely aware of them.

Thanatos

bowen wrote:

$1000 domain name? Does your company hold a trademark or copyright Thanatos?

No, and we're not going to pay that. I was just wondering whether or not it was even worth negotiating with them; if they were a legit company.

bowen

You might be able to, probably not though. It doesn't really cost them much to operate these things.

amateurhour

I'd shoot them back and offer $500. It's not going to hurt anything. Past that, and per your original op, escrow.com is fine, unless they've found some way to hack it or scam it recently. I've known people who used it in the past for various stuffs and it's worked out fine.

Thanatos

amateurhour wrote:

I'd shoot them back and offer $500. It's not going to hurt anything. Past that, and per your original op, escrow.com is fine, unless they've found some way to hack it or scam it recently. I've known people who used it in the past for various stuffs and it's worked out fine.

Honestly, it's not even worth that to us. I'm making them an offer for considerably less, fully expecting them to say "no."