Domain Auctions

Nearly four months after Social.org sold for $228,600 in a NameJet auction where the winning bidder didn’t pay, the second public auction for Social.org concluded today, and the winning bid was $149,999.

Unlike the last time, it appears that this auction should actually close. Along with the mandatory bidder verification, I believe the winning bidder has won previous NameJet auctions. Of course, there’s always a chance that the auction won’t be completed, but I imagine it will go through.

Since it’s past 5pm and most banks are already closed for the weekend, we will most likely need to wait until next week or two in order to confirm that the winning bidder paid. For the sake of the domain owner and NameJet, I sure hope that’s the case.

In March, Social.org sold for well over $200,000 on NameJet. Unfortunately for the seller and NameJet, the winning bidder failed to pay, and his account was suspended. I didn’t receive confirmation, but it would seem that the underbidders did not opt to move forward at their high bids either.

NameJet has re-scheduled the auction for Social.org, and the current high bid is $7,501. There are almost 350 bidders involved in the auction, many of whom presumably didn’t delete the name from their backorders and were re-entered after the first auction closed. The name will go to auction in a little over 16 days from today.

The lost sale is a bummer for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest issues is that there was considerable publicity for the auction, and the second time around will probably see much less coverage. It’s too bad the owner couldn’t (or didn’t) go after the person who placed the winning bid. Perhaps he could go after him legally if the second auction ends at a lower price than the first auction.

Hopefully there will be a better bidder verification system in place for this auction.