A word of warning to Sedo users

[worlddom]

I’d like to give a chronological breakdown of a current dispute that I am having with Sedo regarding the sale of one of my domains recently. I’ll publish the figures to emphasise that the amount in dispute is insignificant, it is more about the principle and a surprising lack of customer service.

Following the sale of a name for £1000 and the subsequent transfer, I received the usual email informing me that the accounts department had processed payment and funds had left the escrow. (great, I can buy myself that new tv and treat myself to a slap up meal!) Taking into account Sedo’s commission I expected £900 to be hitting my account within a couple of days, so as you can imagine I was therefore a little surprised to receive £869 and a debit for an additional £7.50 flagged ‘SEDO’.

No problem I thought, I’ll just let Sedo know and I’m sure that they will quickly resolve the issue (err, think again!). Obviously I will not name the account executive with whom I have been corresponding.

Response: The payment was sent in Euros. (full stop, no further explanation)

Me: No, I think that you are mistaken. I list my names in GBP with sedo.co.uk, the transaction statement sent is in GBP, the account that you send my funds to is a sterling account, all previous fund receipts from you have been in GBP and I am sure that the buyer sent payment in Sterling (not confirmed) as he is from the UK. The TAG will not be changed until this is resolved (didn’t realise that the tag change request had already been processed by the buyer). I did not list this domain for 1318 Euros I listed it for £1000. (surely this will do it!)

Response: Please make sure that you have a Spanish address. Address is listed in Spain payment was sent in Euro. (never mind that they are sending funds to the Sterling account registered with my Sedo account)

Me: (now I am starting to get a little ruffled) Please find attached two transaction statements from previous sales of similar amounts billed to our Spanish address and paid in Sterling. Note that we are not prepared to accept £861.50, will take further action if this is not resolved, will inform the domain community and will remove our remaining 200 domains from your service. (something’s got to give now!)

Response: (get this!! exact quote)” Due to many questions from different users at sedo we changed this payment method at the end of april this year. Therefore your previous payments of ****.co.uk and ****.co.uk have been created in GBP and also have been send to you in GBP. Since the beginning of may or end of april we changed this method. Now all payments from UK accounts will be send in GBP and
accounts from europe will be send in EURO. By accepting our sedo policies you have also accepted our payment methods”

Me: (upset now) How convenient that this immediately followed my last sale and that I have never been informed of this change in policy. Please could you give the details of a senior level manager to whom I may make a formal complaint and also forward details of the regulatory authority for the escrow industry.

This covers developments so far and I will update the thread with progress reports. I know that I am pushing a point here and that some may consider this petty considering the amount, however I think that this is a valid point and a warning to all sedo users of the kind of customer service that they may receive should an issue arise.

Now to inform other domain forums of my plight and perhaps have a quick chat with a couple of blogger friends to get their opinions.

 

[robrob is verified member.]

I had a payment problem - http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/sedo-exclusive/8782-sedo-payment-issue-domain-sales.html - basically sedo worked on the 1 : 1 exchange rate for USD$ and GBP£ .

Not great

 

[retired_member6]

Tell them to pay up or sue them, your sale was £1000 GBP, irrespective of how they pay out, the money should translate to £900 in euros or sterling. Sedo never could figure out the difference in value between sterling, euro and dollar, they're the worst exchange rate company in the world.

 

[sedosedo is verified member.]

Hi!

Could you please PM me with the domain name? I'll make sure it gets taken care of!

Kind regards,

Brad
[email protected]

 

[retired_member9]

I had similar problems and it took ages to hear from Sedo support why payment received in GBP sent in EUR.

It's a shame Sedo's issues resolve service is soor poor unless complaints brought in public...

 

[Brassneck]

Thanks for starting this thread off Worldom, I'm going to check through all my recent transactions to make sure I didn't suffer in the same way.

Stephen.

 

[worlddom]

I appreciate the forum's support and have pm'd Brad details of the sale. I too am disappointed to have to resort to public shaming, it surprises me that the account manager in question did not view ignoring my threat to do so as possibly being a bad PR move. Not to mention the loss of any future income from my domain sales, for the sake of £38.50 (which is mine anyway!)

Will bring you up to date with results.

 

[sedosedo is verified member.]

Hi all!

Strap in, this post is going to be very long! I’d like to address this issue as it not only concerns Worlddom, but may also concern a few others (if not now, then possibly in the future). I will not reveal private details, though.

Before April of this year, payment in GBP for UK clients was not possible. Enough people requested payment for domain sales in GBP, so we began offering it to increase transparency in domain sales.

Clients in the UK, selling domains in GBP receive exactly the amount they agreed upon (minus the commission). Continental European clients, selling in Euros also receive the agreed amount (again, minus commission).

This gets tricky when a UK client (GBP) has an account in Europe (Euros), but wants to be paid in GBP. Sedo makes all payments to Euro-country banks in Euros. Sedo is located in Germany, our bank here is German, so transactions in Euros to other Euro-currency countries make sense.

The only way for the exact amount we send to be the exact amount the bank receives is to send the payment in Euros. If we send in Euros and you are expecting GBP, even though your bank is located in Spain, you will either profit or lose from arbitrage. In the previous case, this did not work out in the client’s favour.

Let's take the following example (all hypothetical). I am an American living in the US with an US bank account. However, I want to sell in GBP, for whatever reason. I list the domain for 500 GBP. An American buyer agrees, bids in dollars and pays $850. At that exact moment of agreement, $850=500 GBP. The payment gets sent in dollars, as my bank and I are in the US. In the 2 days it takes for payment to reach me, the dollar has drastically fallen against the GBP. Now, $850=300 GBP.

I agreed on the price. The price at the time of agreement was correct. However, when I receive payment, I don't receive the amount I agreed on, because I was expecting the US Dollar to gain on the GBP, which it did not.

In retrospect, it would have been better for me to have sold in USD. Had I sold the domain for $850, I would have received $850.

The issue that our clients should be aware of here is that Sedo does not hedge funds. If a currency conversion is necessary, it is done at the point of agreement (the rate of conversion is always listed in the bill of sale). What happens with conversion rates after that point cannot be controlled by Sedo.

The best way to avoid problems in this area, is this: If you are in the UK (regardless of currency of your bank), sell your domains in GBP. If you are in continental Europe (again, regardless of the currency of your bank), sell in Euros.

Kind regards,

Brad
[email protected]

 

[Brassneck]

Brad

I am in the UK and price all my domains in dollars - because I save most on Sedo fees. I have noted on recent sales that sometimes I have been paid (by paypal) in dollars but sometimes converted to pounds. It doesn't matter either way to me but this suggests that the system doesn't work exactly as described.

I think we would all sell in pounds if the sedo commissions were lined up better - from memory I think the commission works out higher if you sell in pounds than if you sell in dollars.

Stephen.

 

[worlddom]

Brad

Thank you for your investigation into this matter and your concise descriptive to this post. I am sure that this will clarify a number of concerns that fellow domainers may have regarding multi currency deals. It is a great shame that I did not receive such a response to my initial enquiry into the matter.

All that said, unless I am missing something the response is completely irrelevant to my situation. I cannot understand how Euros come into the equation at all regarding my recent sale. As per my post:

• I have a sedo.co.uk account
• I listed a domain in GBP
• The buyer paid in GBP
• The statement received before the domain transfer was in GBP
• My BANK account is a UK GBP account
• In fact I am a UK resident and a UK national
• Nothing has changed at all relating to my account since my previous domain sale which was paid in GBP, and a much larger escrow deal last year which was also paid in GBP

I am sorry but this does not relate to the example that you have given. The only European association is that I have an address in Spain which is listed on the account.

In effect you have received £1000 from a buyer, taken £100 in commission, converted the funds into Euros and tried to pay them into a UK Sterling account which has not only caused a deficiency but also incurred a bank charge for doing so.

Please also take note that since my email to the Sedo account manager in question asking for details of a senior level manager to whom a formal complaint can be made, and the contact information of whichever escrow regulatory body Sedo is governed by, I have received no further correspondence.

I would sincerely suggest that before this thread and the ones posted throughout other domain forums continue to develop that a resolution is proposed. Principle is an important thing to me and I do not feel that I have been treated in a fair manner.

Again I look forward to hearing from you. Please feel free to post, pm or email through my account.

Regards
Mark

 

[aqls]

869 pounds converted to euros is 1 283.79 Euros
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=convert+900+pounds+to+euros&btnG=Search
(midmarket price at 15.12 today)
This equates to an exchange rate of 0.6769 euros to the pound (or 1.4773 pounds to the euro)

To then have the market move against you -

[QUOTE = sedo]
In the 2 days it takes for payment to reach me . . .
[/QUOTE]

To lose £31 pounds i.e. from £900 to £869, the exchange rate must have moved from 0.70104 euros to the pound. (or 1.4264 euros to the pound)

i.e. when you changed 900 to euros you got 900 / .70105 = 1,283.79 euros.

Looking at the yahoo exchange rate graph

British Pound to Euro Exchange Rate - Yahoo! Finance

You must have sold the domain exactly on the 1st April (april fool's day) and then had the money transferral take not 2 days, but until the 1st August until this exchange rate has gone against you to that extent.

You would have also been very unlucky to have caught the years low of the euro.

So you are a) extremely unlucky having sold the domain on that date. (the lowest value of the year)
b) extremely unlucky in that the money transfer took 4 months
c) extremely unlucky that the exchange rate moved the most it had moved all year in the opposite direction to your position during that 4 months.

Hard luck.

-aqls-

 

[worlddom]

Wow, that's some incredible research. I'm glad that it supports my case and that I dont have to come up with an argument against it.

Thanks for this information aqls, to be honest I hadn't even researched the exchange rates, I was too busy being confused about where Euros came into the equation.

FYI the sale went through reasonably quickly as far as I can recall and payout was last week.

 

[retired_member11]

So you are in Spain?

 

[worlddom]

So you are in Spain?

I live in Spain some of the time, The UK the rest.

Below is a screenshot of the transaction information. $1000 dollars to the person who can spot the words 'Euro' or 'Euros' in this picture. (and no swapping letters around!)

I too would love to hear a satisfactory response.

 

[aqls]

exchange rate 4th August 2006
1.48116 euros to the pound
£900 is euro 1333.04

exchange rate 31st August 2006
1.48706 euros to the pound
1333.04 euros is £896.43

The exchange rate risk/loss was £900 - £896.43 = £3.57 at mid market rates.

The rest is trading profit i.e. spread, commission/fees, extra charges.

-aqls-

 

[aqls]

$1000 dollars to the person who can spot the words 'Euro' or 'Euros' in this picture. (and no swapping letters around!)

The word euro appeared twice in the above picture rendered by my monitor.

payment by paypal please.

-aqls-

 

[retired_member11]

The word euro appeared twice in the above picture rendered by my monitor.

payment by paypal please.

-aqls-

\

In the screen shot? Where?

 

[worlddom]

The word euro appeared twice in the above picture rendered by my monitor.

payment by paypal please.

-aqls-

lol aqls, did I mention payment was in Disney Dollars.

 

[sedosedo is verified member.]

Brad
I am sorry but this does not relate to the example that you have given. The only European association is that I have an address in Spain which is listed on the account.

In effect you have received £1000 from a buyer, taken £100 in commission, converted the funds into Euros and tried to pay them into a UK Sterling account which has not only caused a deficiency but also incurred a bank charge for doing so.

Hi Mark,

Our system is set up to send payments within Euro-currency countries in Euros. We send sterling to the UK and US dollars to the US. Our clients can choose the currency in which bidding takes place, but if you are located in the UK and choose to sell your domain in US dollars, your payment will be in sterling (the rate of conversion happens at the time of agreement).

This happens for several reasons. Mainly, most of our clients prefer to receive payment in the currency of their home country. For those who live in countries other than ones whose currencies we offer, we pay in Euros for parking or the currency of their choice for domain sales.

Sedo does not benefit from this currency issue and you certainly don't, either. Your bank does. This is a rare case (of which I have only seen happen twice, and both times were this past week). I'm going to send you a PM to go into more specific details with you, but I did want to make a post on here so others know what is going on.

Kind regards,

Brad
[email protected]

 

[worlddom]

Hi Brad

Thanks for getting back to me.

I'm sorry but I perhaps haven't made myself clear so far. My bank is within the UK, not Spain. The account is in Gibraltar (part of the UK) and is in Sterling.

Best regards
Mark