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Sedo and Music.Mobi
December 7th, 2007 by 
Jay Westerdal
A very interesting thread going on at NamePros right now:
Hello everyone,I have been a part of this SEDO .mobi auction auction and I am the one responsible for the bid $611,000 for music.mobi
.
However I stopped bidding at the point where I realised that the NEW auction was a scam because the two bidders that were bidding me up were NEW bidders who were not even involved in the initial auction.
The initial auction closed with me winning the last bid at $66,000.
I received an invoice and 2 emails regarding the winning bid.
Let me ask everything this key question? If you are bidding on eBay and you have a 7 day auction and you take a chance and wait til the last second to bid what if your DSL line or connection or even your computer crashes? I think many of us had this experience in the past. I know I had this happen last week on eBay when my computer froze and in essence lost the bid. Did eBay care? NO! Does SEDO care if you WERE going to bid and failed to do so if your computer crashed or had a slow connection? NO! Well, wait a second in this case they do.
They proclaimed me winner send me 2 emails, sent me an invoice. I considered the bid finished and was ready to go and play guitar and record this new song I was working on in the studio. By chance, I get an email by whom? BOTH the .mobi MTLD who started INVITING people via a bulk message hyping them up that the servers have crashed and that there is huge demand for the .mobi auction. Then Sedo followed. So 2 bulk messages sent to the world inviting them to attend a NEW auction. Not only that, they extended the auction to 2.5 hrs NOT 5 minutes.
Anyhow, I seriously have been negotiating with .mobi since 2006 about music.mobi
So, I am really upset, they caused me to miss my jam session and on top of that they allowed NEW bidders to the new auction. I say I have NO PROBLEM with old bidders that were active in the original auction bidding their maximum. Even though I was invoiced $66,000 I emailed SEDO and MTLD letting them know that I would pay them $81,000 because bidder 9 (I was the last bidder 12 to bid for the name in the original auction) rebid his maximum at $80k.
So there comes along NEW bidders 13 and 14 who did not even attend the initial, legal auction. They probably got the bulk email fro both SEDO and MTLD and invited themselves to the dance. HOW can an auction that has ended have NEW bidders? I have no problems bidding with the 12 bidders that have bid against me in the initial auction but NEW bidders who were enticed by HYPE emails? Have you ever heard of a closed auction then an hour later having a new bidder say I will outbid the winner even though i was not even in the auction? NO!
Anyhow, the bid to $616,000 is illegal. I sent the MTLD and SEDO an email and let them know that they should retract all my bids ($611,000) that were automatically placed by SEDO as a result of NEW bidders who were not even active in the original auction. In the new auction, the only legal bidder was bidder 9 who was also in the original auction. The bidder bid for $80k and i outbid him.
How can I be declared a winner then told that I am not the winner then they invite new bidders? Also how can they say that their terms of services states that they can redo the auction and there is no legal agreement? REALLY? I checked it and i saw no section that related to servers crashing and technology interruptions.Tough
Sedo I have bought numerous domains for tens of thousands of dollars and I refuse to park them and make money off parking (Domain King you can do that and **** the internet up for all of us). I will NEVER do business again with thieves especially the MTLD. They are making bank and playing everyone.
OK my story is not done yet. I stop bidding at $611k because in my mind I should not be bidding against NEW bidders (yes I did realise it at the end) who had no place in the auction since they did not attend the original one. So i stop and half an hour later I get a message from SEDO asking me if I was interested to buy mp3s.mobi
I suggest a class lawsuit and I seriously will BOYCOTT both SEDO and MTLD. I loved SEDO and have been a client for years but this money hungry, sleazy, unethical tactics are unacceptable. For all of you complaining that you did not get a bid in the last 5 minutes tough luck, you had 7 days (considerable time that is). I took a chance and won. I would have bid higher but I am not going to fill SEDO and MTLD’s pockets with my hard earned money because they screwed up royally.
What can I say? I am ready to kick some serious butt here. And sue these guys for emotional distress. SEDO seriously, you lost one of your top clients and super domainers. Lost my respect and you have robbed me and others in all fairness. I seriously will NOT let this go. If justice is not served, I will sue, I will go to the press, I will tell my story, I will post all the emails I got, invoices and screenshots of my winning bid and I am sure it will reflect future SEDO=MOBI auctions. Did anyone say sex.mobi
The world record is not real people. It would have been if other original bidders bid me up to $615k. The new bidders in my mind either are internal fake bidders or new, illegal bidders who came in after being sent bulk emails by both SEDO/MTLD full of hype.
If they do not accept my winning auction and fair win versus the original bidders even in the new auction, then I WILL pursue this since I do have some spare change here now.
Costa
MusicMusic.com
Music.us
Music.pro
Music.im
Music.fm
MP3.fmBlog: Entrepreneur.pro
PS After 3 years of development, I will be launching the biggest music site in the beginning of 2008, so if anyone knows any bands who would be interested, let them know to sign up their email at music.us
Read the full thread.
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Posted in Sedo |
24 Comments »
December 7th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
What your take on the high/medium end auctions on SEDO? Are they credible?
December 7th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Hmmmm….
On 12/5, I had logged on to my Sedo account and saw the auction extension message, and I wondered about that then. I wasn’t part of the bidding, just curious and had been following the auction all week.
Was it supposed to be a closed auction? I didn’t get that sense, that if I wanted to bid I could.
Bidders jumping in at the last minute isn’t all that uncommon or even all that suspicious. Happens on eBay all the time. For 25 cents, you can hire eSnipe.com
to place proxy bids six seconds before auction’s end. Really cuts down on shill bidding because eSnipe holds your bid on their servers (not eBay’s). That way, other bidders can’t “nibble” bid by trying to out guess your top proxy bid. When I was building my jewelry collection, I bought some nice pieces for cheap by sniping.
On the other hand, my intuition says that some shill bidding may be going on in the domaining world. I can’t say that the Sedo auction was shilled, but I have to admit: those .mobi prices just don’t make sense to me. Speculation is one thing, but, to me, that looked more like financial suicide.
The best way to get a TLD known: advertise it to END USERS, and get it out there so that businesses are using it to draw customers.
Just yesterday, I was telling a non-domaining friend about the .mobi auction. She asked, “What’s mobi?”
Just a thought or two.
Ms Domainer
December 7th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Okay, I see what the musicdotmobi was saying: that the relaunched auction should have been open ONLY to the original bidders.
I agree. It’s suspicious, and…
It stinks.
Ms Domainer
December 7th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Dot Mobi is a total joke. Why would anyone type in a Dot Mobi when you can browse the internet normally on an iphone?
Costa, consider your self lucky you lost this domain. I wouldn’t pay more thean 10k for it. And the only reason I would buy it would be to sell it to some sucker.
The only new extentions that have a remote chance of being worth anyhting are dot US and dot info. You’ll probably have to wait ten years but you might make a few bucks with these extentions if you have good one or two word generics.
December 7th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
You were defaced to day.
More info here:
http://warintel.blogspot.com/2007/12/islamic-hackers-hacker-alert.html
I couldn’t find any email adr for you.
Gerald
December 7th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
I don’t see where a registry should ever be “selling” domains. They should register them for the person interested in registering them. So I’m hearing this and thinking this registry took the cream of the crop in the .mobi tld and put those names up for auction?
And then I hear this fellow (as he says) was told he won and then invoiced for his winning bid. Then, after the fact, the auction was reopened and the name he says he won bid up 10X his winning bid. I can’t help but think this sounds like some kind of insider trading. Or the insiders, being disappointed by the original selling price, reopened the auction and found a innocent buyer who did bid up the price above the standing proxy bid.
But to my thinking the original bidder/winner bid $611,000 (or whatever number it was) for a domain that I wouldn’t give $35.00 for anyway. But that’s his choice. And if this happened exactly as he said, I think he should have won the original auction at the $66,000 (or whatever his original winning bid was). The auction was done at that point.
As far as the new owner saying he has no plans to develope it? Well, that’s his perogative. This guy who originally won the auction – then lost in the re-auction, had great plans for the domain but, to me anyway, that’s not pertinent to what is being told here.
The first thing is to get the domain you want then you can build the site you want when you want. And when you want may be as far away as forever. Or you could change your mind and sell it. That could be a loss to the connected world but a win to the next buyer who might then build the name into a grand site. Or again sell it.
Figure it this way, If I and someone else offered the same amount for a domain at the same time and the only deciding factor was what we “said” we would do with it then how would our performance in building a site be judged. One guy might build a nice site that gets only a 100 hits a day while the other parks and promotes the domain to 1000 hits a day. Which is the right performance metric here? Nice site? Hits? ROI?
December 8th, 2007 at 12:20 am
I echo the comments made by Ms. Domainer on the average person’s “Huh?” factor re: dot mobi. My sixteen year old daughter who never takes a step without being wired into her cellphone, ipod and a variety of other devices had the same reaction as Ms. Domainer’s friend when I said I was considering registering a dot mobi,”What’s a mobi?”. I checked again with twenty-something son and his friends (all wired and connected to the max), none of them had even heard of mobi. They thought I was asking about the singer Moby.
Good luck to those that are selling on their mobis at boffo prices now, but I wouldn’t want to be the one left holding them. Lucky escape Costa!
December 8th, 2007 at 5:59 am
My bots picked up the page:
http://whois.domaintools.com/syrianchristian.com
which was hacked, as it was on your site they interpreted it as a hack on your site sorry.
Gerald
December 8th, 2007 at 7:17 am
While this BLOG endlessly discusses reinventing online Domain auctions, the 800 pound gorilla over at eBay is running the real thing.
http://computers.listings.ebay.com/Other-Hardware-Services_Domain-Names_W0QQsacatZ11154QQsocmdZListingItemList
Are there a LOT of junk Domains? Yes! But the administrative issues of running an online auction have been resolved a long time ago. What is need is the ability to create specialty Auction Houses under eBay where the Auctioneer has quality control oversight and is compensated for their efforts. eBay’s Live Auctions are very close to this model. The Auctioneer and eBay are compensated bases on the final sale price. Under this business model Jay could create pseudo Live Auctions, quality control the Domains, validate the bidders and let eBay worry about the mechanics of running the auction. eBay/Paypal can also verify the credit worthiness of bidders for high value Domains. Using eBay, Charity Domain Auctions could also be a real possible.
Mike
December 8th, 2007 at 7:59 am
I was following this thread at Namepros, but couldn’t find what domain it was. Thanks for the info.
The 600k bid seems really, really high for a .mobi domain, which isn’t mainstream. 66k would be more sensible, but maybe low for what they were expecting, so all this mess was created.
I’m a longtime member of Sedo and didn’t get an invitation to that auction, so at least I don’t think Sedo “bulk mailed to the world”.
But I understand your point of view. I would be upset as well, and I’ve dealt with some Sedo’s problems before.
Nuno Oliveira
CatalogDomains.com
December 8th, 2007 at 8:24 am
Hi Team,
Who’s Costa, Please???
December 8th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Hello everyone. This is Costa Roussos and I will admit to everyone that I do not own ANY .mobi domains and have been weary of buying any .mobi because I believe a mobile device is only suited to perform a limited amount of tasks that make sense. For example, I believe the mobile device would replace the iPod (I have the new N95 8Gb which is beyond amazing – 3G, 5MP camera, video camera, 8GB space, stereo speakers). However, I must say the only application I would use the device for is to listen to music, maybe view a video, use maps to find a location and of course as a gaming device. I mean yes I see other uses such as banking, adult, dating but for some other generic names, why on earth would a person use the mobile device for that? Plus my biggest concern: whatever you can do on a .mobi domain you can do with any other extension.
But in my case, my goal is clear. I am developing music.us
for the last 3 years and have been buying up relevant domains to use just like subdomains are used:
http://www.music.us (community site “us”)
http://www.music.fm (radio part)
http://www.music.im (instant messenger)
http://www.music.pro (industry networking like LinkedIn)
and last but not least http://www.music.mobi would be used to complement the user’s profile and optimize it for mobile view.
Let us say there is artist A with a profile on Music.us
:
eg http://artist.music.us
The player from the artist’s page will be taken (just like you take the youtube player) and a unique player-based mobile profile will be created for the artist:
eg http://artist.music.mobi
This way bands when they perform live can say: “Hey visit our webpage on http://artist.music.mobi on your mobile device and download our album for free and donate to the band EVEN buy our merchandise or tickets for the next show.
Again this falls in my strategy. For some people music.mobi
might be worth $10, to Sedo and the MTLD it might be worth $19,999 which was the maximum reserve price they set for it and for me it might be worth $1 million given the huge investment I have made for music.us
. It is just a business strategy revolved around development NOT reselling domains. I am not interested in reselling the domain.
Ok this message is for Nuno who said that he did not get an invitation from Sedo even though he was a member there. I received an email from the MTLD to my music.us
address which is not even registered with Sedo. There were 2 different emails going out: Sedo and the MTLD or EnronMTLD. Plus the MTLD and Sedo publically stated that they went out and blogged and posted messages all over the internet to tell people the auction would be done again without even bothering to alert people down in Australia who were up bidding late at night and went back to sleep after they won, then realizing when they woke up that they lost what they won.
Truthfully, I did break the world record with my $611k bid and would probably have gone to $1m because of my “generic” strategy but I would not have even done it if I realized sooner that I was up against entirely new bidders that were not even in the first auction. Nothing against the guy because it was not his fault. However, I do think the world record is tainted. You heard it right here from the actual guy that caused it. I dont suggest the MTLD comes out with a press release saying that their record was broken. Imagine that.
Seriously, I think paying over 3 times the maximum reserve price is a steal for Sedo and the MTLD or would be for any seller that auctions something and sells it for over 3 times their maximum market/reserve price. Especially if I have a vested interest in developing the .mobi which would benefit the whole .mobi community. I am disappointed because the MTLD “equitable distribution” premium domain allocation contract with ICANN was obviously FAR beyond distribution.
Costa Giorgio Roussos
http://www.music.us
http://www.music.fm
http://www.music.pro
http://www.music.im
http://www.musicmusic.com
http://www.entrepreneur.pro (Personal Blog)
December 8th, 2007 at 9:41 am
wow!!
what a well written mail…
aks
HugeH.com
December 8th, 2007 at 10:10 am
“As far as the new owner saying he has no plans to develope it? Well, that’s his perogative. This guy who originally won the auction – then lost in the re-auction, had great plans for the domain but, to me anyway, that’s not pertinent to what is being told here.”
Hi,
Actually it is NOT his perogative not to develop the domains he won.
The Terms of Service require these “premium” .mobi domains to be developed and there are time frames also.
Ten days to put a up a .mobi compliant Parking page.
Six months to put up a .mobi compliant site with content appropriate to the domain name.
It is prohibited to buy these domains just for resale.
The winner may have shot himself in the foot by shooting off his
mouth that he has no intention to develop the .mobi domains he won.
But…since the winning bids went so high will the development requirement be overlooked?
Patrick
December 8th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Id like to know what happened to invest.com
auction on Thursday. The last five minutes of the auction that domain disappeared. Thats the most crucial time when the serious bidders are making their move. I contacted the domain owner and he has not returned my email.
December 8th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
“Id like to know what happened to invest.com
auction on Thursday. The last five minutes of the auction that domain disappeared. Thats the most crucial time when the serious bidders are making their move. I contacted the domain owner and he has not returned my email.”
Hi,
According to GreatDomains site Invest.com
sold for $1,015,000.
See here:
http://snurl.com/InvestAuction
Patrick
December 8th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
Patrick mentioned: “The Terms of Service require these “premium” .mobi domains to be developed and there are time frames also.
Ten days to put a up a .mobi compliant Parking page.
Six months to put up a .mobi compliant site with content appropriate to the domain name.”
Oh? Then when they send me a good one word .mobi name and a check for atleast $5,000 I’ll accept one (just one) .mobi domain. Else they can keep their silly TOS and their darn silly .mobi names. (Watch one of my clients call in the next couple days and request a .mobi site and I’ll have to eat those words. Hee Hee)
December 12th, 2007 at 6:55 am
SEDO’s credibility is at stake, which is why they appear to be taking the matter seriously. Was this a technical glitch or an attempt to fan the flames of an auction which was closing, drive the price up by a multiple of 10x and thus their 10% commission?
More here..
http://tcattorney.typepad.com/techlaw/
December 12th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
Hello Costa:
I know my last SEDO experience is not directly related to your current situation, but in another way, it is. I am always trolling the auctions to see if there are any interesting names to buy/bid on. Imagine my surprise when, while doing a keyword search on available domains, I encountered three in a list of ten that I owned!!! And I have owned them long enough for the WHOIS record to reflect true ownership. Moreover, these names were not in a previous search I had done a week or so before.
How weird is it that SEDO is listing my names for sale, without my authorisation?
Here’s where it gets kinky… For a laugh, I bid on all three of my own names. Did I get an email from SEDO to say there were bids placed on my names? Nope!
But I did get emails from SEDO asking me if I wanted to increase my bids to get the owner’s attention? Yep.
I finally got an email just yesterday from SEDO, saying that, unfortunately, the “seller” (duh, that would be me) was not interested in my offers, and wishing me good luck in my domain purchases.
This is lame, as lame as your current predicament, and just one more reason why I won’t touch SEDO under any circumstances. They are as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.
And at the risk of being accused of RANTING, once again, this also points out how lame and amateurish the domain industry can be sometimes. In the real world, an auction closes when the auctioneer bangs the gavel. That’s it, done, move on to the next lot. You don’t reopen an auction after the fact. Costa, you should be legally entitled to music.mobi
at 61k, if you received a bona fide receipt for the purchase, that’s it. End of story.
The fact that SEDO’s TOS even allows for the reopening of an auction is enough to tell anyone familiar with the auction process in the real world that SEDO’s interpretation of an auction is a sham, run by scam artists.
Good luck mate…
December 12th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
I have noticed that when I buy an aftermarket domain, the former owner has not deleted the domain from the various aftermarket sites, and the domain will pop up for sale elsewhere (wrong!)
Also, it takes FOREVER to get an aftermarket domain to clear, even when you change the nameservers and the WHOIS is up-to-date.
As I said on my blog, “Sedo Silence is Deafening…”
Best,
Ms Domainer
December 12th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
BTW, Sedo did an excellent job of bokering the domain that I sold, so I know that this could be a good company, and I’d like them to clean up their act before it’s too late.
FYI, If a TOS goes against the prevailing laws, the U.S. courts will invalidate them.
Ms. Domainer
December 18th, 2007 at 12:41 am
And as time goes by, I have seen that the complete auction has been cancelled and will be hold again end of January 2008.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Hello
In addition to the complains of Costa and Steve Russell, I fully agree with them and I want to add further something unhumane. I am left with the thought that I am being discriminated by Sedo on the basis of my nationality, race or religion, I dont know. I am an owner of a very small portfolio of domains that I have bought for the purpose of resale, to be honest. I was able to sell one domain through Sedo which was very clean and great process.
I submitted my other domains for premium auctions, and they were declined the next day. Then I submitted some new ones, but they were again declined the next day giving the reason that they do not meet the quality criteria.
So correct me if I am wrong, there are some stupid names going on auction which do not even get a single bid, how do they qualify for the auction and my names do not even get qualified. Why?
I hope I am wrong, but I am forced to get this impression, that there could be no other reason why I am refused so instantly and again I see stupid names going on auction only because they are European!!!
November 5th, 2008 at 12:18 am
I entered into a contract with Costa Roussos (Roussos Group of Companies.) I hired Mr. Roussos to create a website, in the parameters of that contract, and thru other documented interaction, I was assured that I would have a final product that would be worth 10 times that of the down (30K), and worst case scenario could be sold for at least $250,000, after its completion. Upon several professional and legal assessments to my site, I have been informed my proposed $250,000 site is assessed to be worth approximately $5,000. I hired a new programmer who has spent the last two months correcting problems on a site, which I have now paid to Mr. Roussos’ company over $40,000. My new programmer has advised me that due to the severely broken codes of the site, time he would need to invest to fix them, and expenses incurred on my behalf, that I would be well-advised to scrap the site and start fresh. When I presented Costa proof of his questionable dealings, his answer to me was disturbing, “You should trust no one, not even me!” Maybe Mr. Roussos needs to look for a good attorney?