Daily Poll: Should a Seller be Allowed to Cancel a Deal Because of a Pricing Error?

I was reading Ray Hackney’s article on TheDomains.com as well as the NamePros thread regarding DomainNames.com. Although it was later reported that the domain name was listed for sale in error, there was some talk about it being a pricing error. Some discussion then centered around whether a seller should be able to rescind a sale in the event of a pricing error.

There have been quite a few times where I inadvertently mispriced a domain name and was fortunate to catch the error before a sale was made. In fact, last week when I was repricing some of my names, I noticed one was priced at $230 instead of $2,300. I caught it in time, but it could have been frustrating for me had it sold for $230.

My company owns around 500-600 domain names. When I list them for sale with BIN prices, I am very careful to double check the prices. When I am on Afternic, I tend to add the floor price first because if I miss a 0 on the BIN price and it is lower than the floor price, Afternic will not let me post the listing. Even with a smaller domain portfolio, I can make errors, and I am sure others with larger portfolios can make errors, too. If I were to put a LLL.com domain name on the market for $25,000 and accidentally price it at $250, I would hope to be able to cancel a deal because of an obvious pricing error. Of course, if I was buying a LLL.com domain name for $250 I would hope the deal would go through!

I am curious what you think… should a seller be allowed to cancel a deal because of a pricing error?


Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

19 COMMENTS

  1. For me, and im in the middle of having them possibly take away another name…

    im looking for a process.

    right now they are the seller, and have access to my account to go in and grab the name.

    How can i distinquish between error, and sellers remorse. In the case of domainnames.com, it wasnt like they had a price missing a number, it was in line with many other two word names, and they had confirmed the sale….

    and then, they were judge and jury deciding the name was sold too low, and pulling the name..

    could they do the same after 7 days, 30 days, even a year if the customer hasnt moved the name.?

    there should be a process, and some explanation given (even a third party) to be able to invade a customer account and take a name when the registrar is acting as custodian of my name, and the other party in a transaction.

    Page Howe

  2. With corporations they always have a disclaimer limiting damages. If a rouge employee was angry, and leaving the company, and listed all premium domains for $99, does the company have to honour this? I think they can only be responsible for the damage amount not 50x it.

  3. I will have to vote no on that domainnames.com story.

    New Ventures Services Corp is a third party seller according to that thread OP’s email screenshot. They listed the domain name on Networksolution.com for sale, they approved the buyer’s purchase and provided the transfer code to Networksolutions to allow Networksolutions to transfer the domain name to buyer. This whole transaction is total legitimate to me. It’s not networksolutions who is selling this domain name, New Ventures Services COrp is the seller, just like you and me, Can you imagine if you sold a domain name at Networksolutions.com and you contact the customer support, asking them to cancel the deal and reverse the domain for you after two days, that you priced the domain in error?

    New Ventures Services Corp is a third party seller, and they made more than one mistake, they made mistakes on each step of the transaction. Will Networksolutions.com help you and me if we made 1 or 2 mistakes like this? Hell NO.

    I think Networksolutions.com should do the right thing, transfer this domain name to the buyer. If I’m the buyer, I will sue their ass off on court, ask them to tell the real relationship between Networksolutions.com and New Ventures Services Corp to the judges.

  4. According to contract law under the common law, a contract can be VOIDED if there is a mistake by which a party can unilaterally make the claim as a defense that the contract should be voided due to a clerical mistake. Folks, this is basic stuff. Anybody believing that the seller has a legal obligation to go through with the sale is incorrect – as a matter of law.

  5. If the seller makes the error listing the price then a sale should stand. Be a professional. For example, you listed $230 instead of $2300, you should honor the sale if it sold. But, If I list a name for sale correctly and then Sedo or other sales platform somehow changes my price in error, then I should be able to cancel the sale. Though I don’t know how that could be proved.

    • So if a seller lists a $230,000 domain for $2,300, this is what disclaimers are for, just because most choose not read them, doesn’t mean you can make your own laws in your mind.

      Corporations have to protect their assets from employee errors.

    • Mistakes do happen and its unfortunate. But it just means people need to be more careful. I accidently dropped a name which i thought had auto-renew, someone else picked it up for reg fee. Does this mean i should have the right to take it back. My mistake, my loss. Same principle if i mistakenly listed the name at a wrong price.

  6. Similar kind of issue happend with me in the past, I mistakenly set a BIN price of $90 for a domain name (Star/Crypto/com) instead of make an offer at afternic and it got sold. :((

    • Had the domainer set an agreement to buy back that domain within 15 days, in a disclaimer, then you are talking something different. Most people here make no sense, because they do not draw up agreements for large transactions.

      If Netsol takes this to court they will prevail, because they have set language in their TOS to protect themselves. If this domain was priced at $100,000, and the buyer bought it, they might not care.

    • In this specific situation, netsol isn’t the seller, they are a marketplace platform. The real seller is new ventures services corp, which is a third party seller.
      They made at lease two mistakes.
      Mistake one, the seller they set the price for their domain name.
      Mistake two, a buyer purchased the domain name for their bin price, the seller didn’t notice the situation and they manually approved the sale and asked netsol to transfer the domain name to the buyer.

      Netsol set tos to protect themselves like all big corp do, but does the tos cover third party seller’s error? If it does, then every third party seller such as you and me we all have the rights to ask netsol to cancel a done deal for us.

      Netsol ISN’T the seller.

    • Taylor, the TOS is set to cover networksolutions’s ass, if they made mistake in pricing their domain name, TOS rules. If their employee made mistakes,they will be covered by TOS too. But networksolutions didn’t make any mistake, the seller did.The seller is a third party seller, just like you and me. If networksolutions covers every third party sellers when they made mistakes, then every seller has the rights to ask networksolutions to reverse their domain names from the buyer, even after a year. The seller new ventures services corp didn’t set any disclaimer.

      I am no lawyer, but as far as I can see, networksolutions is not the seller, they have no rights to reverse the sold domain name.

    • “I am no lawyer, but as far as I can see, networksolutions is not the seller, they have no rights to reverse the sold domain name.”

      New Venture Services Corp is owned by NetworkSolutions/Web.com

    • New Venture Services and Network Solutions are both wholly owned divisions of Web.com. NVS is where Web.com warehouses the good domain names that NS’s and Register.com’s customers fail to renew. It’s called ‘cherry picking’. The SEC should really look into it. Perhaps the FTC as well.

  7. Very obvious the domainnames.com sale was an error. The buyer being experienced in the industry would surely have known this when buying it.

    I don’t think we can expect people to do losing names over errors like this.

  8. Same thing happened to me with Afternic for a domain worth $3,000 listed for $300. I think there should be a distinction made. One is the case of domain worth $300,000 or $30,000 listed for $3,000. This sale should be cancelled because seller will loose a lot. Another is the case $2,500 vs $250. Of course it is a frustation for the seller to loose some money but is not worth having your reputation and your name questioned over the forums over a small amount of money.

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