On various forums and some blogs, I’ve seen people ask the question, “who is the NameJet bidder called NameJet Reserve?” Most of the time, it seems that people are upset because this “mysterious” bidder is the only other bidder in a particular auction, it shows up at the last minute, and/or it increases its bid just above or below your bid.
The NameJet Reserve bidder almost appears to have the hallmarks of a shill bidder working on behalf of the auction house, but that is most definitely not the case.
The NameJet Reserve handle is not actually a bidder at all, and as the name itself suggests, it is the reserve price set for a particular domain name that has been placed in a private auction at NameJet. My understanding is that the Reserve bidder was created as a way to enable reserve auctions on a platform that was not built to support them. According to NameJet, there are plans to roll out a true Reserve Auction format, but I am not sure when that will happen.
You won’t see NameJet Reserve bidding in pending delete domain auctions, just infrequent auctions for privately owned domain names that have reserve prices. If you happen to be the only bidder, it will continue to bid along with you until the reserve is met. One good thing is that once you’ve surpassed NameJet Reserve in an auction in which you are the only other participant, you are going to win that auction and don’t need to track it until it’s over.
Once again, NameJet Reserve is not some conspiratorial bidder that is shill bidding on behalf of NameJet 🙂
