High £xxx domain purchase...

[rawkinrich]

Guys,

I'm on the brink of purchasing a domain for a decent amount, however the seller will only accept BACS. I don't know the seller, though he seems legit.

What protection to I have?

 

[retired_member36]

I could be wrong but i believe you have NO PROTECTION as such. Once a payment has been made its mighty difficult if not impossible to reverse it.

There are a lot of scams goign around on facebook and gumtree where sellers request Bank transfer, and then dont ever send anything.

 

[AssetDomains]

Guys,

I'm on the brink of purchasing a domain for a decent amount, however the seller will only accept BACS. I don't know the seller, though he seems legit.

What protection to I have?

I remember seeing a story recently were a lady missed typed a digit doing an online transfer the bank were less than helpful and under no obligation in helping her get the money back so you have to beware.

If the buyer is UK based and your sure of there identity address etc. I guess you could get the police involved if the transfer didn't go through.

Would they not be willing to do ecop/escrow if you offer to meet the fees if they say no to this then it would ring alarm bells

 

[stellar73]

For that kind of money I would definitely only proceed if he agreed to use an Escrow service, seems rather dodgy otherwise

 

[Retired_Member38]

I don't think Escrow is necessary for a 3 figure transaction if both buyer & seller are in the UK.

Did you contact him through the whois info, or some other way that you know for sure he really is the owner?

If he owns a bunch of other domains, lives in UK, and you are certain you're dealing with the owner and not someone else pretending, the chance of the deal going bad is near non existent. Not worth the expense/hassle of using Escrow really.

 

[Retired_Member38]

The figure is relevant as if you can see someone has a portfolio of dozens/hundreds of good names, you know they're not going to steal £900 from you are they? All you're doing is wasting even more money and time, by insisting on Escrow.

 

[cc976a]

Also from a seller point of view they don't know you either, so they're not going to want a payment method whereby there's any chance of you reversing the payment after the Nom transfer complete - I know I wouldn't.

 

[AssetDomains]

The figure is relevant as if you can see someone has a portfolio of dozens/hundreds of good names, you know they're not going to steal £900 from you are they? All you're doing is wasting even more money and time, by insisting on Escrow.

You would like to think that but there was a recent case detailed on here where a trusted seller kept another member here waiting a stupid amount of time before finally completing the deal.
If your uncomfortable with the seller/price then escrow is a valid suggestion its all personal preference no hard and fast rules

 

[retired_member32]

China...no way, UK...Safe

 

[getmein]

I think SEDO charge 3% for escrow only - which is a small price to pay for peace of mind. Offer to pay the fees and if they refuse - consider walking away.

 

[Retired_Member38]

I think SEDO charge 3% for escrow only - which is a small price to pay for peace of mind. Offer to pay the fees and if they refuse - consider walking away.

If the domain was listed on Sedo (which in a large % of times, it will have been) then they will want the full 15% commission for an escrow transaction.

And there is a minimum fee of $50. Plus you'll need to use international bank transfers, which likely won't be free either.

 

[getmein]

I've used sedo escrow a few times this year, where the domain is listed there but where the sale was done direct and they've only charged the escrow fee. I think for a GBP transaction they still have the edge because of all the currency transaction fees for an escrow.com transaction in USD. You are right that the buyer needs to send the money to Germany, but they can do so in GBP and they payout in GBP.

 

[scooter]

http://www.transpact.com/

UK regulated Escrow. £2.99 flat rate per party for up to £10K

Small potatoes for peace of mind.




.

 

[retired_member36]

I looked at using that service before but was put off by

"Payment services are not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme." https://www.fsa.gov.uk/register/psdFirmBasicDetails.do?sid=264709

 

[scooter]

I think it is as safe as you are going to get. Are any escrows in the UK covered?

I see they have done one large sale
https://www.transpact.com/blog.aspx

3rd entry down.





.

 

[Retired_Member38]

Whisk.com? $30k at most surely? Not easy to spell, not a great domain.

 

[scooter]

This one of Dougs babies.
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/dougsscott


2013
A recent second round of angel funding also has taken the service’s total investment to more than £500,000






.

 

[Pred]

ecop.com

best escrow service and cheapest. comes highly recommended, and they do £

tbh escrow is a pain normally for a small sale like this from sellers point of view, however much the buyer thinks its a huge sum so there is 2 sides
however ecop is best all round as tbh escrow.com is expensive and only in $ so seller would lose up to 30% of sale price on charges so there is method in sellers madness, doesnt mean they're dodgy at all

bacs is safe in sense if someone did something illegal then person can be found but banks wont help you in for example you type in one digit wrong and gets sent to someone else, unless theyre honest wave goodbye to cash

 

[Edwin]

19 out of 20 domains we sell don't go to escrow. The buyers just BACS across the money. And that's for £xxx and low-£x,xxx transactions.

That's not to say "you'll be safe" only that Escrow definitely isn't seen as a must in these sort of situations.

 

[Jamie101]

19 out of 20 domains we sell don't go to escrow. The buyers just BACS across the money. And that's for £xxx and low-£x,xxx transactions.

That's not to say "you'll be safe" only that Escrow definitely isn't seen as a must in these sort of situations.

In all fairness Edwin that's probably because people trust you more than they'd trust most other people since you've been selling domains for years etc.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 4 Beta