It used to be that SEDO was a premiere domains sales and auctions listing service. If you received an offer from SEDO, the sale regularly completed – serious buyers & serious sellers.

But now, SEDO accepts offers from GoDaddy. Not only is GoDaddy a terrible company (mysogyny & animal cruelty, torture) on many levels but they don’t back up their SEDO bids with any guarantees.

This allows buyers to negotiate for domains in bad faith. And, it makes it harder for sellers to know who to spend time negotiating with.

I recently received a $2,650 sale of a domain through SEDO via GoDaddy and the buyer just changed their mind and went away. I also received an $8,000 offer for another domain at that time which I now believe was equally unsecured.

On June 7th, SEDO wrote: “Please note that the payment for the domain has now been secured.” But apparently, that was wrong. They later wrote: “The domain has been sold though the website from Go Daddy. Therefore Go Daddy is fully responsible for the buyer and the payment. ” Then, “Go Daddy can not guarantee the funds but they are doing everything to secure the money from the buyer and will inform us asap.”

SEDO finally said, “If the transfer will be cancelled Go Daddy will be able to give you every information about the buyer. As this is a legal binding contract you will be able to take legal steps against the buyer.” But the buyer is Chinese (I know this because he emailed me during the negotiations). SEDO is apparently telling me I should go to China and hire a lawyer.

So, just a warning to you domainers, offers on SEDO run the risk of being fictional/unsecured. They don’t allow you to exclude GoDaddy from making offers. And the company doesn’t seem to care.

Why a company with a good reputation such as SEDO would connect with a company with such a terrible reputation makes no sense to me.

You can see my domains listed for sale here.

Posted by Jeff Reifman

Jeff is a technology consultant based in the Pacific Northwest.

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