Last Summer, a prospective buyer made an offer on one of my domain names that was too low for me to accept. I had sold a similar name for substantially more, and I told her my expected price range. Out of the blue in late December, she upped her offer substantially to a number that was in-range. I counter offered about 20% higher and did not hear back. After doing some research specific to the domain name and similar names, I came to the conclusion that her offer was very fair, and I sent her a purchase link via Dan.com.
When I didn’t hear back from this prospective buyer after a few weeks, I figured she had either chosen something else or opted to not reply as a negotiating tactic. Perhaps she thought that I might have even more flexibility if she came back in the future. She may have assumed that if I was willing to lower my price to her offer, perhaps I would be willing to reduce it further to salvage the deal. Another thought was that her offer wasn’t backed by any funding so she couldn’t buy it. Whatever the case, I let the deal die on the vine.
Last night, I received an email from this prospective buyer. When I saw her name, I was expecting it to be some sort of counter offer. Instead, she emailed me to let me know she was proceeding with the deal and had already sent her wire transfer to Dan.com. It was a bit of a surprise since it had been radio silence for a few weeks and I did not receive any email notification from Dan.com. This was a bit peculiar.
From my iPhone, I looked at the domain name and there is a “sold” landing page on the domain name rather than the “for sale” page that had been there before. In my Dan.com account, the domain name is listed in my portfolio under the “sold” filter, which makes some sense since the payment is pending. The domain name is not listed on my Sales Activity page under any status.
In my opinion, I think Dan.com should list domain names that are sold pending payment on the Sales Activity page and not just moved to “sold” status in my portfolio. This should be done for the same reason that I think Afternic should notify customers when their domain names are pending payment. Had this buyer not emailed me directly to let me know she was buying the domain name, it could have been listed for sale on other platforms even though the buyer sent her wire transfer to Dan.com already. I assume this has always been the case, but most platform buyers aren’t directly in touch with me before paying.
In general, the chances of selling a domain name on multiple platforms while payment is pending on one platform is slim. There are times that a keyword or phrase becomes instantly popular – think “meta” – and a domain name could conceivably be purchased on different platforms. If these platforms were notifying customers of a pending payment, the customer could decide whether to take the listing down elsewhere or keep it up until payment is confirmed.
It’s great to see a pending sale, and I think sales platforms should be more proactive about notifying customers.
