Where Is My Domain? Olney Please Interfere

[Giant]

I posted "SOLD" to this sale:

http://www.idnforums.com/forums/3561-%E7%AB%8B-com.html

But the domain was transfered to the other buyer without getting my consent first.

Here's the PM the seller quoted:

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Originally Posted by Wot
Hi,

I pmd 3 minutes before giant posted.

Let me know.


Cheers,

Wot

------------------------------
Quote:
Originally Posted by ljp198
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wot
I will take them all if you will accept payment by escrow or in to a Namecheap.com account. $210


I accept Namecheap.com account. but 立.com have been Giant to decide the time.
so, I will push 6 domain to you,OK?
-----------------------------------------------------------


The PM said "3 minutes" before my post? This needs to be checked.

Even if it's true that this PM arrived 3 minutes before my SOLD post, this PM cannot be considered "SOLD".

"I will take them all if you will accept payment by escrow or in to a Namecheap.com account. $210"

The seller read this PM almost an hour after my post, whether he agreed to this PM or not, it's long time after my post.

"I WILL take... IF such such..."

This is a conditional sentence. The buyer "WILL" take only if the seller agrees, the buyer WILL NOT take if the seller does not agree. So the action of "take" did not happen before my post.

Olney, please help me get this domain back. Thanks.

[bramiozo]

The time of the sellers approval is irrelevant, the names were claimed before your post or in any case a sale was initiated, the handling of the sale is after the fact and is therefore irrelevant.

[Rubber Duck]

Unfortunately, the post does not say Post to Claim, if it did then the seller should disregard PMs unless the first poster yields. In this event, the first communication to the buyer should in my opinion take the domain, but it is unsatisfactory as the process is not transparent. The other point is that accepting post by PM clogs up your mail box and it is nightmare to administer.

I would therefore strongly advise all seller to include " Post to Bid. Post to Claim." in the instructions.

[Olney]

Yes unfortunately I can't just make the seller give you the domain if they claim the PM came before your post. He doesn't specify Post to claim.

I know it was a steal & don't take it personal but I can't enforce a sale if they didn't specify which way of contacting. He also posted this on multiple forums & didn't write that.

It would have been good if he messenged you to tell you...

[markits]

Yeah it was a steal even the character is mostly used in compound words.

I am sure Olney is more than happy to help if possible. But just as stated by Olney, he can not enforce people.

Cheer up Giant, they are plenty of steals around.

[gammascalper]

Giant posted SOLD for the one domain at a fixed price of $30.

Wot claimed all of them by PM 'IF' the seller accepted a certain price.

Wot's conditional was still undecided when Giant posted SOLD based on the conversation posted.

Giant should get 立.com.

[Giant]

Yes unfortunately I can't just make the seller give you the domain if they claim the PM came before your post. He doesn't specify Post to claim.

I know it was a steal & don't take it personal but I can't enforce a sale if they didn't specify which way of contacting. He also posted this on multiple forums & didn't write that.

It would have been good if he messenged you to tell you...

The main problem here is, I posted to claim this domain publicly on a forum, if the seller received any message privately and decided to sell the domain to other buyers, at least I needed to be consulted first. I received his quote of the buyer's PM after the domain was already transfered.

Just for the sake of argument:

Toronto time:

5:58 pm Seller posted domains for sale.
6:31 pm I posted SOLD for 立
7:42 pm Seller posted SOLD for the rest

When I posted and claimed the domain, I was held responsible for paying it. Now supposed the seller could not accept the buyer's condition at 7:01pm (30 minutes after my post) and co-incidently and at that time I wanted to back out from the sale, am I allowed to do that? Apparently I am NOT.

Anything we claim publicly should have the priority, especially the sales did not mention PM as an accepted form of claim. A sale on a public forum should be a public sale.

[Giant]

Just to let everybody know that the seller offered me of a different domain to make up for 立.com that I did not get, and I took the offer and bought it . This one is better than 立.com, so this dispute is considered "satisfactorily resoved".

Just for discussion purpose, I want to clarify things a bit because I believe we will see similar disputes happen again.

When I started this thread, I did not care about the domain, I just used the domain to show how inappropriately the sale was handlled. I have bought a few names on this forum -- just for fun, I did not really need these names! If you like any of these names (not the ones I bought privately), you can have it, I will sell them to you with the same price I bought.

立.com is "a steal" at $30 but its value is not much more, because it's not a good word to be used by itself. Names like 酒.com is valuable because it's always used by itself.

I don't know much about law, but here are my "common sense" suggestions:

1) Always let the poster bidder know what is happening before selling the domain to a PM buyer. I have seen so many times domainers handle incidents like this one in a very civilized manner, I don't understand why the seller and the buyer of 立.com wanted to do it differently.

2) Selling at an auction or on a forum, time is critical to decide who is the winner of the sale. We should make decision base on when the "contract" is signed rather than on when the "communication" is received. A "contract" is a legally binding commitment to purchase, and "communication" can be anything -- an inquiry or an hypothetical intention that cannot be enforced.

Just imagine in an real auction, everybody raised their hand and attached a condition "...if the machine is still working", "...if my bank account has enough to cover it" or "... if I can pay by my IBM stock". No, an auction can only work when raising hand means a "contract" to buy. If you have question, go and find out first and then raise your hand. That's why people post "SOLD" on a forum using past tense to mean it's a done deal, a "contract".

Another error (in my opinion) that some people suggest that the time the enquiry or discussion of the sale is initiated is the time the sale is done. In fact there are a lot of big sales take many years to complete. If the talk of a sale was initiated 3 years ago and the sale was signed today and we annouced that the sale was done 3 years ago, that would be a lie!

[bwhhisc]

All good points Giant. I have run into similar issues with sales at multi-forums and sellers claiming they had already "sold" the domain by pm if they got a lot of fast interest. All sales should be "Post to Claim" and buyer should post "Sold", with time stamp deciding final outcome if multiforum.

[gammascalper]

Yep, Bill.

The seller posted a firm price of $30 in the SALES section. Not the PM-ME-TO-BARGAIN-SECTION.

Giant posted SOLD.

That DNF crap should not be tolerated here.

Gentleman's rules rule.

[Drewbert]

Yep. If there's one thing that annoys me more than excessive !'s, it's people listing domain auctions in multiple venues at the same time, or running 2 bidding systems.

[Wot]

I am the "buyer" as you well know.


The why's and the wherefores of who is right and who is wrong still cannot be considered "not grey" , just look at the diversity of the replies.

I have also been on the other side of similar "sales" where I did not get "my name". I did not have the benefit of getting "better" names as a compensation - I moved on because I recognised the greyness.

It is the lack of ground rules when names are posted for sale- make it specific then nobody has a problem.I am sure that would be acceptable to all.


Just for clarification- will it continue to be the norm to post "pm's" on the public forum?

[gammascalper]

I list 3 domains for sale.

1) domainA $30

2) domainB $30

3) domainC $30

Chronological sequence of events:

-- Giant comes along and posts SOLD for domainA

-- You PM me asking if I would take $90 for all 3

-- I tell you I only have domainB and domainC available as domainA has been SOLD

What am I missing here? This is very clear to me.

I have also been on the other side of similar "sales" where I did not get "my name".

That may be true. But it hasn't been here.

[Wot]

I list 3 domains for sale.

1) domainA $30

2) domainB $30

3) domainC $30

Chronological sequence of events:

-- Giant comes along and posts SOLD for domainA

-- You PM me asking if I would take $90 for all 3

-- I tell you I only have domainB and domainC available as domainA has been SOLD

What am I missing here? This is very clear to me.



That may be true. But it hasn't been here.

If you wish to list the events in chronological order then perhaps it should be correct?

9.28-- You PM me asking if I would take $90 for all 3

9.31-- Giant comes along and posts SOLD for domainA

I would also appreciate your comments re posting of pm's- thanks

[gammascalper]

If you wish to list the events in chronological order then perhaps it should be correct?

9.28-- You PM me asking if I would take $90 for all 3

9.31-- Giant comes along and posts SOLD for domainA

You're right. My mistake in the first post:

It should be...

9.28-- You PM me asking if I would take $90 for all 3 if I could do escrow and namecheap.

9.31-- Giant comes along and posts SOLD for domainA before a deal is concluded.

OK, I agree. I see where the confusion may lie -- there should be hard and fast rules. It should be made clear that a post of SOLD to a fixed price or BIN is considered SOLD. If people want to negotiate by PM, they risk losing the domain at the posted price.

What do you say Olney?

[Giant]

I will try to use common sense logic to prove that my post of " SOLD" should be considered the winner of 立.com.

Let me borrow 2 terms that Aristotle used to explain when things come into existence: Potentiality and Actuality.

A piece of big stone and a sculptor. The sculptor can make the stone into many things, including a chair and a statue. We say the stone has the potential of being a chair or a statue. If the sculptor makes the stone into a chair then a chair exists and a statue does not, and wise versa. In Aristotle's opinion, a chair exists only at and after the moment the potential of being a chair in the stone is being actualized (completed by the sculptor). The chair did not exist before that although the potential of being a chair may have existed for a thousand years.

All humans are potentially capable of committing crimes, but we cannot say that all humans are criminals. Only the ones that "actually' commit crimes are criminals.

So, "I will take them all if you will accept payment by escrow or in to a Namecheap.com account. $210" is potentially a sale (or may not be a sale if the seller only accepts PayPal), but it can only be called a sale when such potential is being actualized (when the seller read the PM and agreed to to be paid this way).

A true description of what happened should be like this:

9.28-- "I will take them all if you will accept payment by escrow or in to a Namecheap.com account. $210" (An Enquiry)

9.31-- Giant comes along and posts SOLD for domainA. (A Contract)

10:xx-- Seller replies "yes, I accept Namecheap.com account"

10:xx-- The buyer "Then, 7 domains SOLD" (A contract)

[Wot]

This is what you said earlier in the thread before you continued to post.:

"Just to let everybody know that the seller offered me of a different domain to make up for 立.com that I did not get, and I took the offer and bought it . This one is better than 立.com, so this dispute is considered "satisfactorily resoved"."

Giant you think you are right I think I am right- it is water under the bridge and a fixed way of offering domains for sale should be implemented based on this case.

I am saying no more on this subject.

[Rubber Duck]

Actually, I agree with Giant. All sales threads should be considered open unless the deal is closed on forum. Of course there is scope for Private Negociation, but that should only be considered concluded if the buyer or the seller posts sold. With Auctions, I believe that no alteration of the rules for Auctions is can be totally fair to all parties, except to lower start prices or to close items where there has been no bidding.

[ljp198]

I have 卫.com to replace 立.com give Giant with 06-06-2006!!!!!
Sorry,I'm not to write clear~~

[Wot]

I have 卫.com to replace 立.com give Giant with 06-06-2006!!!!!
Sorry,I'm not to write clear~~


Not to worry, giant has already said earlier in the thread that he got a better name than the one that was in dispute- you have no problem. :)

Under the circumstances you have been exceedingly generous.

[ljp198]

Not to worry, giant has already said earlier in the thread that he got a better name than the one that was in dispute- you have no problem. :)

Thank you.
My English is not good, I accept any suggestion.