We deal with some pretty crazy transactions over here and there are many good stories to tell but I have one here that is worth sharing with everyone. It really goes to show that persistence and patience pays off.
On November 20th, 2009 we sent out SZ.com in our newsletter at a heck of a low price. It had a lot of takers but Aron Meystedt (Symbolics.com) was the first taker so he got the name.
Aron promptly wired the funds like a good customer. The ball was now in our court, so to speak.
When we asked the customer to transfer the name, they couldn’t get the auth code. The name was registered at Verizon Germany and the admin contact was the old server administrator for the company that originally registered the name.
Months went by with me regular making calls to the seller asking for a progress update while Aron just waited by patiently. Don’t get me wrong. Aron would email me from time to time but would reply to my replies with, “It’s ok, I trust you”. Every time he said that I got a little more nervous that I wouldn’t get the deal closed.
We even offered to give Aron his money back but he declined saying over and over that he trusts us. Our job is to get the deal done. The entire thing became an endurance race.
I had phone calls with the seller, Verizon and even the company in Sweden, which Verizon is only a reseller of, and nothing could be done without finding that server admin.
My contact (the seller) incidentally was the lawyer of the real seller. I won’t give out his details here but he was an incredibly nice older German fellow and I had no reason to think he was up to anything. He just knew nothing about the domain business or how escrow would normally work or how to transfer a name so it added another level of complexity to the deal.
On April 14th we got the good news that the seller obtained the auth code. We weren’t about to close the deal at Verizon Germany at this point so we asked for the name to be transferred to GoDaddy.com, a brand that the lawyer had surely heard of and wouldn’t have a problem with.
Well, you know those little check boxes GoDaddy.com puts new users through? The lawyer, bless his heart, checked ALL of them.
Not only did he put privacy on the name but he put an executive lock on the name. Now I needed a notarized government issued business identification document to do a registrant name change at GoDaddy.
The lawyer’s client, just to make things harder on us, incorporated in Malaysia.
Today we got the government issued proof of identification from the Malaysian government and the name is unlocked from Domains By Proxy and I just pushed the name to Aron. I’m writing this on May 10th, 2010. What a marathon.
Thanks for your patience, Aron.
© 2010
Almost 6 months.
I’m drained
Thanks for your hard work and persistence!
If it was anyone else, I’d have requested a refund a long time ago… but I knew you’d get the job done.
Thanks Rick!
Aron
surely at some point my fellow Missourian emailed “Show Me The Domain!” ?
and shoot, not he has more two-letter dot coms than me, there go those bragging rights at the stl domainer meetup!
Congratz Aron and well-done RL seeing it through
Brian,
I’d love to get together sometime… we do need to get an STL group together.
And yep, I have 3 tow-letter dot com now…
where does it end!??!?? (my girlfriend keeps asking me)
and by “tow-letter” I mean “two-letter”
DOH!
So it was YOU that beat me to that one, Aron….?….:)
Great tenacity there, Rick….As one of those that made an offer for it, I was following this saga….After 3-4 months, I’d noticed the WHOis hadn’t changed, so emailed your office….They told me the transfer was still in progress…!…Now I know why…
Good work, Rick – that’s walking the extra mile…
Aron is a top quality individual, and this shows why. Congrats on making this happen, in spite of the obstacles.
Great Story. BTW. If you don’t already know, keep clients like Aron, that is what keep businesses alive….
Wow, congrats on the name Aron. I personally live in Shenzhen city of China. I saw SZ.com come out on the RL newsletter, but damn, that was a bit out of my budget, hehe. Again, congrats and great patience story. I’ve waited patiently 2 weeks for auth codes from RL, but man, 6 months? Its why I don’t have kids now…as I don’t have that kind of patience, haha.
I’m exhausted just reading the post, that must’ve been extremely frustrating for everyone. Great show of patience from everyone involved it seems. Congrats to all parties, glad you guys got it all sorted.
Well, congrats to you Aron, for having the patience of a camel. However, I wish mere mortals like me can be able to reach Rick and have him help out with a domain sale or two, since he is simply the best domain broker alive.
Oh well, one can wish.
Cheers once again
Great job Rick. You are a great domain broker.
I remember talking to Aron before he got XF.com, he was trying to buy a 2 letter I was brokering at the time, MY.com, I believe. Congrats on getting your 3rd 2letter .com!
Thanks guys for the kind words.
It was quite a saga.
The only good thing was that Rick was in my corner, so “will I get it?” was never an issue…. I knew he’d make it happen.
If I was flying solo on the project, I’d have given up much earlier.
Rick spent so much more time than his commisson paid him.
It was really a lot of work that he did to make this happen.
PS: Chris… sorry that I edged you on this one. You got me on the Boy.com deal, so we’re even
LOL
You know how attracted I am to 2-letter .com’s, so “i’ll take it” took about 3 seconds for me.
Aron
XF.com
Also: Attila, is Shenzhen referred to as “SZ” as much as I think/hope it is?
I get about 20 google alerts each day about SZ (referring to Shenzhen).
It’s quite a large area, millions of people, and it seems to be “SZ” for short to everyone.
Aron