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Wow, the questions coming in quick.
Martin:
There are cases like yours that are tricky. Previously, the line was that if the domain is listed with Sedo, no matter who is contacting you (be it us or an individual), the seller would be liable for the 10% fee. Since then, things have changed a bit. Essentially, in the situation where you've just mentioned, we have 2 parties (both buyer and seller) technically liable for one 10% fee. You have to take into account a couple of things. First, the reason a lot of people do order our service is because they saw the name as listed on our site for sale and would rather not spend time negotiating back and forth. Second, the buyer is paying for the service (the $49 fee), so we're certainly not negotiating for free.
Of course, you do certainly have a very good point. The way we do it now is we make clear at the beginning of the process that since liability for the fee is in a "gray area," one party does have to pay it and that this fee should be part of any negotiation process. I personally agree with your point, and it's good to know that this is a major concern for some others as well. I will take this upstairs and see if we can get the policy changed for the better.
Andrew:
If only we did have automatons running the transfer department. Unfortunately, they are a fine international group of living, breathing, people. And they do have kids to feed, so we do have to pay them. You're right that the buyer and seller are a bigger part of .co.uk transfers, but I think the company looks at it from a point of view that the transfer should cost more since these transfers do drag on longer than most and are still more assisted than for instance swapping a .com between Godaddy members. The time spent on a .co.uk transfer vs. the aforementioned .com does differ by a pretty large margin. But I promise that Sedo isn't discriminating just against .co.uk owners, as most ccTLDs are being charged the same rate. I do know that we are working on creating a more streamlined (and cheaper!) transfer process and that will hopefully be up at some point in the future.
Ash
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