sedo - lost money - serious complaint !

[chungju4]

Im writing this on behalf of a friend,

Ive been a good customer at sedo, and this guy is also a big account.

anyway, after purchasing a domain for the 'traffic' from the sedo database and going through the 'secure broker' service, including commission charges, turns out it was a fake.

domain as a descriptive term iteself was worthless, and only purchased for the traffic.

the seller had been redirecting to it or using other methods, so after the sale the domain reverted to its natural state . i.e. no traffic

after some complaints sedo refused to accept responsibility , stating they cant guarantee domains with traffic etc. well why use them then ? and why do they try and play the 'respected broker' and 'secure domain trading' image ??

would have been better off doing it through whois contact.

so this good customer of sedo, lost a chunk of money to a trickster, and sedo did nothing to resolve the issue, or return the money.

normally i dont complain, or give bad remarks, as i like sedo for other reasons, but this was a bit too much.

this happened a while ago by the way and said domain was allowed to expire because of its lack of traffic.

 

[ehdonhon]

I really wish Sedo would provide both referrer information and information about what country the accesses are coming from, both to the sellers and the buyers.

Just recently I went through a similar situation, but from the other end. I have never bought traffic for a domain that I intended to sell in my life. I went through an issue not long ago where I sold a domain that was a good name, both for its name and the traffic it was already getting (all legitimate traffic). The buyer contacted me shortly after the sale and said he was getting no traffic at all. I told him I never bought traffic for the domain, but he really had no reason to believe me (just like I had no reason to believe he was telling the truth about no traffic). I wrote to sedo asking for referrer records so I could prove that the traffic I was getting on sedo wasn't coming from anything I bought. Sedo never wrote back. (In fact I've been noticing that happening more and more recently).

Just for the record, I offered to buy the domain back from the guy, but I never heard from him again. I don't know if that was a smart thing for me to do in the situation, but since I'm new to all of this, I didn't want to start out with a bad reputation.

I think the bottom line is that stats on Sedo only prove how much traffic the site got in the past and really have nothing to say about what will happen in the future. The best practice is to do your homework and try to figure out where the traffic is coming from, and as I said in the beginning, Sedo could make that a lot easier if they wanted to.

 

[Togoodhlth]

Well, you should take their advice posted on the page that gives the traffic domain results as well as other places.

"Important: Traffic statistics can be manipulated. If you are interested in purchasing a domain primarily for its traffic, we recommend that you use our comment feature to ask the domain's seller to verify the traffic source. Sedo makes no warranty as to the accuracy of these statistics."

I think it is a good idea for sedo to show referrers or have better tracking but I would never rely on their hit counter. A message to the domain owner looking for referrers would be the best bet.

 

[Theo]

To test a domain for referrers point it to your own DNS with forward to Sedo's parking. This way you capture both the logs and the traffic.

 

[Mr Webname]

Im writing this on behalf of a friend,

this happened a while ago by the way and said domain was allowed to expire because of its lack of traffic.

:huh:

 

[fatter]

I am not so sure you can blame this on sedo, there are so many ways to manipulate traffic, they would have to hire 50 people to verify evryones traffic, I think its more buyer beware, a lot of names obviously dont get the traffic the counter says.Its like the a person who buys a car from a salesman which only has 10k miles on it and is 10 years old, which was driven by a little old lady.
i do feel sorrry for your friend, I hope it wasnt a lot of money he lost, for any big purchases based on traffic a lot of investigating must be done, generally an overture check gives the best idea, if a domain gets pure traffic with ext, then there should be 100x the traffic or more without ext. maybe even 1k times

I am not so sure going through whois is the best bet, I pretty much delete offers sent this way, unless there is a phone number for me to call

 

[chungju4]

well you are all saying, - you need to take time and verify everything before purchasing.

that kind of defeats the whole point of using sedo. It's so much easier and usually cheaper to contact the guy from whois.

The only reason I, and most people i know, use sedo is because of this 'secure' 'reputable broker' thing,. Im using them so i dont have to waste my time and go through the verification crap that you would contacting them yourself.

Otherwise it would be better for sedo to own up and write on the site ' you can buy domains here, but if they are fake,manipulated,stolen, then you will lose your money and we will keep the commission , and sorry we cant help you'

 

[freestyler]

I hope it wasnt a lot of money he lost, for any big purchases based on traffic a lot of investigating must be done

I agree. k:

 

[Biggie]

always check linkpop/dmoz/yahoo/google/overture for any name you consider buying for traffic from sedo.

also check the whois, and send an email to the owner, thus getting verification of ownership and possibly get answers to traffic's origin.

at this time, you could also inquire about any revenue statistics.

 

[stuff]

Sedo most stop counting "scripts hits"!

 

[chungju4]

always check linkpop/dmoz/yahoo/google/overture for any name you consider buying for traffic from sedo.

also check the whois, and send an email to the owner, thus getting verification of ownership and possibly get answers to traffic's origin.

at this time, you could also inquire about any revenue statistics.

my friend and i are not newbies. traffic revenue is xx,xxx monthly , everything you are saying we know already, but it does not apply on sedo.

and what is the point of using sedo if u have to do everything you said above ? I only do that on private transactions.

you use sedo for the conveience, laziness, and it is supposed to be secure trading with some sort of guarantee.

if you are using their brokerage on good faith and they let scammers on it, whilst still taking commission, surely they are too blame or liable for your loss.

They sold something which was false. If the purchase had been done through credit card, a chargeback would have been possible.

 

[Togoodhlth]

You have been lucky as hell until now if you have been relying on sedo to do your due diligence.

Sedo does not check the traffic quality of a seller nor do they make any guarantee of traffic. In fact they tell you POINT BLANK that they want you to contact the seller to verify the traffic. Didn't this bring up a red flag with someone in your organization?

Sedo could provide better stats but they don't. You know that, I know that and they state it on their site.

It seems as though you misunderstood sedos role.

sd

 

[JuniperPark]

Sedo most stop counting "scripts hits"!

How the heck would they do that? I see new IP's every day, with brower stings, that I KNOW have to be scripts because they visit thousands of pages an hour. The IP is usually dynamic.

Buy 'traffic' names IS VERY HIGH RISK. If you don't know exactly what you are doing you WILL get burned sooner or later.

And don't get me started on the people that think they can quote how many 'type-in's a domain name has. The number is bogus 100% of the time because there is no way to detect a type-in.

 

[mark]

i think sedo's role is similiar to ebay...as a venue for selling. ebay does not verify details of the items people place for sale except in cases of questionable or prohibited items. i agree with the previous posters--due diligence should be performed on any contemplated domain purchase.... by the buyer...any time in the past for example when i have purchased a used car, i have always had the car evaluated by a independent third party--same general principle.