Nigel

Thanks Ratboy for making it so clear about the search meta tags. So many of us have queried this with sedo to no avail. They must be losing a ton of PPC traffic - so they lose and so do the domain parkers. It even shows that sale tag even if the domain is not for sale. I don't believe it would be difficult for sedo to have 2 search meta tags, one if its for sale and the other if its not for sale. Hope sedo read your post and improve everyone's earnings by doing something on this very important issue.

ratboy

I'm no expert, but it seems to work like that in practice.

Also, it would be great if you could customise the title of the page to help persuade clicks, although this may breach Google's rules on parking pages.

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texidriver

[quote=domainleases.co.uk]

"there is still a £100 fixed fee on .uk domains, charged to BOTH buyer and seller."

"There are no fees for BUYING a domain through Sedo. Every purchase includes Sedo's 100% secure Domain Escrow service to protect you from fraud".

answer please Sedo?

sedo

Hi all. Ash Rahimi, Director of UK/Intl. Brokerage here. I'm sure if I've dealt with some of you before. That might be a good thing or bad thing, depending on the domain and whether you were a buyer or a seller. I just wanted to clear a few things up for everyone:
Firstly, I know how this 10% fee stuff can be confusing. Just to clarify, this fee is only covered by one person. If you list your domain as "for sale" on Sedo, and you reach agreement with a buyer, then you are responsible for the 10% fee . If you have ordered our domain acquisition service and reach agreement on a domain that was not listed with Sedo as "for sale," then you are responsible for this fee. We do have a minimum fee structure, and that stems mostly from the fact that transferring certain TLDs take longer than others. And since it does take some more time, and time is money, the higher fee stems from the fact that we do have to pay the transfer agents. The £100/$100/100€ minimum fee applies not only to .co.uk domain, but also to .fr. .nl, and .es to name a few. The fee is only half as much for .com, .net, and other gTLDs. You can check out the entire minimum commission price list at:
http://www.sedo.co.uk/services/price...id=&language=e

As for our transfer process, I can't speak from direct experience, but working with the transfer team on a daily basis I can tell you in all honesty that they are working as hard and as fast as they possibly can. Nobody wants a transfer to drag on. Not the buyer, not the seller, and certainly not the transfer agent. Delays are due 99% of the time to one of the parties involved in the transfer taking their time with either the payment or getting documents to us. Say what you might about escrow.com, but people have gotten defrauded before using them for domain transfers and when things do begin to fall apart with a transfer, it certainly helps to have an impartial 3rd party around.

Anyways, I'll be checking this forum more every so often, so if you guys have any questions about domain brokerage, domain transfers, or anything else drop me a line at ash@sedo.com or just post something here.

Ash Rahimi

mreeves

Hi Ash,

Whilst you are around to clarify things please can you clarify the following situation for me. I once had some domain names listed with yourselves, a third party had then used your "hire a broker" service to negotiate with me for the purchase of a particular generic .co.uk domain name. During the course of negotiation I asked for clarification on who was to pay Sedo 10% should a transaction be completed. I was told that as the domain was listed on Sedo I as the seller would be the party liable to pay 10%.

So in effect, if a transaction was concluded, I would be paying Sedo for the privilege of having Sedo negotiate AGAINST me! (quite agressively I might add!). The negotiations by that point has reached £25,000 GBP which would have meant paying Sedo £2,500 to have you agressively negotiate against me! We did not reach a mutually agreeable price and this rediculous situation did not help.

Has policy now changed? If not, does this mean that anyone can use your hire a broker service for free to directly negotiate with domain holders that have desired domain listed on your site?

Regards
Martin

apd

Good point Martin.

Two points here, (1) It might take longer for a .co.uk domain but still ALL the work is done by the buyer and seller, and (2) who or what are the transfer agents, and how are they involved?

I have used Escrow.com many times and never had a problem, and in my view it is probably safer. Are you saying that a seller using Sedo has never ever been defrauded before, if so I find that very hard to believe.

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Domain Names For Sale

sedo

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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apd

So what you're saying Ash, is that if Nominet by some miracle brought in a system where we could transfer a domain instantly (without forms) via their website then Sedo would charge us the .com rate?

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Domain Names For Sale

sedo

Andrew,

Well, I can't speak for the transfer team because I'm in sales, but I do know the reasoning behind the pricing, and if a .co.uk was as easy to transfer as a .com, then I don't see why the minimum commission wouldn't be the same. We've been hearing rumors for quite a while about Nominet changing things to something paperless, but nothing has changed. If/When it does, I'm sure our transfer team will revisit their pricing scheme.

Ash

allclear

A benefit of sedo is that it gets a lot of hits so someone may find your domain through searching on sedo.co.uk?

Having said that unless you are a featured domain not sure how easy you would be found!

Having bought through sedo i found the domain i bought by entering the url www.debtconsolidation.co.uk rather than searching their site.

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