Be Mindful of Minimum Bid at NameJet

There have been a number of changes at NameJet due to the integration with SnapNames. Most noticeable for me is the backorder deadline time change. I can now place my back orders one hour later than I could before the integration. One issue that has tripped me up more than once is the minimum bid difference on some domain names. Instead of the standard $69 bid, I need to place a $79 bid in order to backorder the domain name.

The $10 difference is not generally a problem, especially considering it is now rare for me to win an auction for the minimum bid. The issue is that when I click the “Place My Bids Now” button, only the $69 backorders are placed unless I manually change the minimum bids for the auctions that require a $79 bid.

Here’s what happens when I do not update the bid to meet the minimum before placing my backorder:

You can see that the $69 bid is placed but the auction with a $79 minimum bid shows an error message because the backorder was not placed. This is not a huge deal, but there have been a few times where I almost walked away from my desk after clicking the bid button and nearly did not notice the error message. In fact, it is possible that there have been times that I did walk away without placing a backorder and did not even realize it.

An easy fix would be for NameJet to automatically input the $79 minimum bid in the bid field rather than $69 on those auctions. They would have to make sure it did not alter the bid to match all minimum bids because of the occasional really high minimum bid, such as the $2,344 minimum bid required to backorder Gallbladder.com on NameJet. I can only speak for myself, but I doubt people would mind if the change was made to the $79 auctions.

Until NameJet makes the change – or changes the minimum bid to $69 for all pre-release auctions, this is something bidders need to remember when placing bids, especially if the bids are made right at the deadline.