SnapNames was on the receiving end of auction winner backlash, after it reversed the outcome of more than a dozen domain auctions and issued refunds.
After communicating the issue with the SnapNames support team, its team lead supervisor got in touch with an explanation of what took place.
We now have the official response that was delivered over email and was discussed further on the phone. Here it is:
SnapNames apologize for any inconvenience this canceled auction may have caused. Please be advised the domain name was listed in error through our expiry feed, and as the domain name is not expired the auction could not be fulfilled.
The current registrant of the domain name had nothing to do with the listing as it was an errant listing via our expiry feed. We have identified the root cause and corrected the issue. Once again, we apologize for the inconvenience.
I also understand your concerns regarding the representative’s response, and I will definitely coach this individual on this issue.
Although the response addresses our own case, the SnapNames team lead supervisor assured us that the same issue affected other domains and auctions.
We were told that basically these domains ended up on the SnapNames expired domains feed through an error and were not listed by their private sellers.
The explanation from SnapNames was plausible enough for us to close the ticket, but it does not explain why the domain in question was listed for sale “in auction” by a NamePros member. If the seller were aware of the domain being auctioned and we won it outright, they should be penalized on the forum for not delivering the domain, contradicting the SnapNames’ support statement.
