If you won any auctions on NameJet today, you probably noticed the new “Online Admin Fee” fee being charged in the Order Confirmation emails the company sends. I won an auction today for $109, and the 2.5% admin fee added $2.73 to bring my total order to $111.73. This new fee was implemented for the first time today.
The news was announced in email sent to clients informing them of the ability to add funds via PayPal and Alipay. From what I have heard, the additional payment options are good for bidders who have difficulty paying for their auctions with other payment methods. For me, it’s a bit of an annoyance having to record the additional fee instead of simply putting in the winning bid amount.
The email NameJet sent is below for your reference.
We have some exciting news to share!
Beginning December 14th NameJet will offer the ability to Add Funds to your account via PayPal and Alipay! This will make it easier than ever to win and pay for domains on NameJet. Simply click on the Add Funds link in your My Account page and proceed from there once those features are live.
You will also be able to delay the automatic billing so you can adequately fund your account post-auction. The limit for adding funds this way will be $5,000 USD (instead of the previous limit of $2,500.) That new limit is also being extended for adding funds via credit card!
Also, in order to provide these types of features and to continue improving the NameJet experience, beginning December 14th NameJet will charge a 2.5% Online Administration Fee for all payments made to NameJet via any online method, such as credit card (regardless of what credit card is used), PayPal or Alipay. This fee will be applied to any payments billed for auction wins when utilizing an online method (including the credit card on file) and for adding funds to a NameJet account via an online method. Please note that paying for domains via wire transfer will NOT incur this fee.
Thank you for your business and have a safe and happy holiday season!
The NameJet Team
“the additional payment options are good for bidders who have difficulty paying for their auctions with other payment methods.” …at everyone elses expense, literally.
Moving my backorders elsewhere.
I would rather pay the fee than lose out on names that NJ catches or has on exclusive.
I appreciate that they didn’t simply increase the minimum bid to $79 across the board.
Fair enough – where i don’t have a choice, obviously I’m stuck.
And agreed – happy that i had enough backorders locked in at $69, although can’t say lucky enough that many of them close out at that amount.
That said, considering the fees they are collecting on seller commissions, and what i have to assume are much larger margins on expired domains, seems like this fee could have been baked in elsewhere. Or charge extra ONLY to Ali/Paypal users.
Just feels very nickle and dimey of them.
Yes – nickel and diming is annoying.
When I received the email from NJ, I thought how stupid to nickel/dime their customers over pennies. Will they get away with it? YES.
Enom thought they would get away with nickel/diming their loyal customers. Plus, charge higher prices than the other major registrars.
In the past 30 days, 4 domainers told me they are moving all of their domains out of Enom and sending them to Uniregistry. Everyone complained about feeling abused by Enom. 2 did it over 1 month. 2 are doing it in stages since enom makes it very time consuming to move each one.
It seems that Frank is the only one giving domainers a break.
If all of the domains end up in uniregistry, he might become the next namejet.
The reason the internet works so well is for the most part it gets rid of the middle man, the retail space, the upcharges, what namejet is doing is a step backwards, it is just plain old greed.
But namejet bidders are yuppies, I don’t know if they sponsor you, so you might not be able to say anything negative about them, but they don’t pay me, so they can suck it.
They are not an advertiser right now. The large banner on top is advertising my own auctions on NameJet.
“But namejet bidders are yuppies,”
I don’t agree with that. Bidders on NameJet are from all over the world and span the entire spectrum of investors. Some are the most successful people in the business, others are hobbyists, and others are end user companies looking to buy one or two domain names. A blanket statement like that is a bit silly, with all due respect.
Yuppies? I have not heard that word used in 20 years.
What did ever happen to yuppies?
Forgot that the 2.5% was starting today until I saw the Online Admin Fee of $12.50 on an order confirmation. Seems like peanuts, but that would translate into $4,500+ in extra fees over the course of a year if done daily.
Their bread and butter customers who pay on time, every time, immediately after an auction ends, shouldn’t be paying extra to help out those who need more payment options (if that really is the reason).
Frank’s domain archive is already doing this, and why on earth would taryn waste their time bidding on namejet, they will just start warehousing the names for their own inventory, as he has the sales team, and platform already in place.
Godaddy is a better solution, every sale at uniregistry, just end up wasting $9 transferring back to godaddy to push it into the buyers account.
Huh?