Francois Carrillo.
It seems that a recent transaction at Brandroot, a domain marketplace for brandables, went awry.
French domain investor, Francois Carrillo, shared his experience in a note on the Domaining.com newsletter that is dispatched to thousands of subscribers.
Apparently, the domain QONI.com was listed at Brandroot.com without its owner’s permission.
Francois had to file a PayPal dispute, as Brandroot customer service did not respond to his requests for a resolution.
Francois operates the short, catchy domain marketplace Catchy.com.
Here’s what happened, according to Francois:
In the last newsletter I told how I recently bought QONI.com at Brandroot.com…
Things did not go the way I expected:
I was so happy with the purchase that in the feedback box after the sale, I explained with great detail why and how I landed in this site and bought this domain, plus I signed up for their newsletter to get informed of new listings.
But after the Paypal payment the only thing I received was an automatic email template with the logo of the purchased domain (ouch!).After more than 2 days without any news, I was a bit disappointed, so I posted a message in the landing page of the domain hoping to reach the owner for prepare the push of the domain.
The owner response was a bad surprise:
He was not aware of this sale because he never listed the domain at Brandroot.com and as if it wasn’t enough, the domain was absolutely *not for sale* at the price I purchased it.
As Brandroot.com seems to continue silencious, I decided to place a Paypal dispute to get my money back asap, and yes I got it back.
But after few days still not a single email to apologize for the failed sale or at minimum an explanation of what happened… I guess this is how things works at Brandroot.com.
It’s a fact, people rarely unlist names from marketoplaces once sold and it looks what happened there, but there is always the case where the owner changed his mind and no longer wants to sell or now ask for more, this is where the help of the marketplace is expected to help clarify the situation and eventually shake the owner (and lister) to honor a sale.
The positive side note is that the owner of QONI.com decided to list his nice domain at Catchy.com, so I no longer need to buy it.
Apparently they put a note apologizing and explaining what occured with this sale when they made the Paypal refund.
As I did not realized a note could be added with a Paypal refund (I was expecting an email response) then I did not was aware until today.
All is fine for me, I will update my newsletter with this information tomorrow.
Francois – Good to hear everything has been resolved 😀