Happy Birthday Rick !

Any that "take joy in reading [those] words" are complete f'in idiots.

Just sayin.

How many of the other auctions were bidded up by this guy?

These fake bidders should be put in jail and fined!

Can anyone bid online or do you need to be pre-qualified?

It's a true plague and I will say +30% of sales, auctions from any domain marketplaces never complete successfully due to this kind of behavior.

This is what pushed us to ask a $10 time life fee to can bid in our markeplaces. And you know what? This works!

Truly sucks, but what can you do? Maybe what Francois mentioned, take a small fee or deposit to show they're serious bidders. Hope the extended auction will sell these two domains.

BTW, Happy Birthday Rick!

The reality is that most people don't register to bid until right before the auction ends. In order to verify the bidders one must sacrifice potential real money coming into play.

It's a balancing act and unless all auction companies move towards deposits (forcing buyers to get in the habit of being prepared), it won't work.

Happy Birthday Rick.

Yeah, this is a serious issue and a damn shame too! Because of those bids, another serious bidder may not have stepped up thinking that the price was already too high now or that it would get driven up further.

I have to admit, I was a bit shocked by the sale of Shock.com at that price, but BVI.com (British Virgin Islands) should sell. That is a hell of a name!

I agree Rick, there has to be some sort of uniform policy enforced - and fast. One solution is to enforce refundable deposits of $500 for all bids over 25K and $1,000 for all bids over 100K (any bidder who objects to this is raising a major red flag in my book). This is the zone where the fraudulent buyers do the most damage because of the ensuing negative press they generate that damages the credibility of all auctions (you rarely read articles written about buyers pulling out of $500 bids because it's not newsworthy enough). I believe that if one auction house does this they all will because this will immediately eliminate most of the major fraud and make that auction house more attractive and trustworthy to sellers.

I agree with David, but then again nobody knows his business better than Rick himself. It seems to my Sedo has some type of certification process, but they also may cater to a slightly different crowd.

Sorry this happened Rick but you have to wonder why
Proxibid doesn't require a deposit of some kind before they
accept a bid of that size. Before I would accept a bid for
the kind of money Shock.com and BVI.com sold for, I would
need a pre-certification process that
includes in the very least a banking reference, a name,
address and phone number........that way if they did not
go through with the sale, I would at least be able to sue
them for my commission.

Sorry to hear this Rick.

I think BVI.com is a premium name and will make a great geo site for British Virgin Islands resorts,flights,yacht charters, etc.

Having developed a few travel related GEO sites, it's always fun to pick beautiful places that give an excuse to visit each year to 'check up' on. BVI (especially Virgin Gorda) is one of my favorite places in the world - especially when visited by water).

Always bad when this happens. I "sold" names in auctions and buyer never came forward or didn't pay. Maybe you take a look at 4.cn, it is a domain auction site in China and they have a system, where each bidder must deposit a certain amount of money, depending on how high he is bidding. If the winner fails to pay, he/she loses the deposit.

I encourage you to bid and secure some of these .CO

How many countries use .co as a sub-domain?
Take a gander at countries or regions that actively offer, or have reserved, a .co domain name space for commercial or company use.

Angloa – co.ao
Armenia – co.am
Antigua and Barbuda – co.ag
Austria – co.at
Burundi – co.bi
Botswana – co.bw
Cameroon – co.cm
Channel Islands-Jersey – co.je
Cook Islands – co.ck
Costa Rica – co.cr
Greenland – co.gl
Guyana – co.gy
Hungary – co.hu
India – co.in
Indonesia – co.id
Iran – co.ir
Isle of Man – co.im
Israel – co.il
Italy – co.it
Japan – co.jp
Korea – co.kr
Lesotho – co.ls
Malawi – co.mw
Mauritius – co.mu
Morocco – co.ma
Mozambique – co.mz
Namibia – co.na
Netherlands – co.nl
New Zealand – co.nz
Oman – co.om
Pitcairn – co.pn
Palau – co.pw
Romania – co.ro
Saint Lucia – co.lc
Serbia – co.rs
South Africa -co.za
Tajikistan – co.tj
Tanzania – co.tz
Thailand – co.th
Trinidad and Tobago – co.tt
Uganda – co.ug
United Kingdon – co.uk
US Virgin Islands – co.vi
Uzbekistan – co.uz
Venezuela – co.ve
Zambia – co.zm
Zimbabwe – co.zw

Happy Birthday Rick !