EBay Scammer is back…
In October I wrote regarding a person listing domains on eBay that he didn’t own. When someone would bid on the domains he’d subsequently register them. He also added a bogus $15 transfer charge to the domains. This insured that he never lost money. (See Nailing an eBay domain name scammer).
I followed this seller, TopNotchDomains, on eBay but stopped watching following it appeared he was no longer on eBay for the second time. When searching for his ID on eBay I received a message that stated he was “No Longer a Registered User”.
Out of curiousity I checked his username again this morning. And he’s baaaaack!
The seller researches decent domains that are available for registration and then creates a listing for them starting at $.01. As soon as someone bids on a domain he registers the domain. He has fine print in his listings that say there’s a $15 transfer fee. I challenged him on this scam back in October, and here’s what he had to say:
“I apologize for the confusion, but maybe your registrar’s information was not updated when you checked (sic) since I registered this name with my account executive at Godaddy this morning. The other main reason for the transfer fee is that it takes some time to transfer the name, and to me, that time is worth well more than $15, but as a courtesy, I only charge $15 (sic). Additionally, sometimes I have to initiate the transfer more than once for a variety of reasons, and this takes more of my time. I am sorry if the $15 fee at the end makes my auctions out of your price range, but I would hope you might reconsider when you see that I have 193 positive feedbacks from my auctions and no negatives. I wish you all the best!”
For the record, it’s against eBay’s policies to tack on outrageous shipping or other fees. They consider this “fee circumvention”. It’s like someone selling a Porsche with a starting price of $.01 and a shipping fee of $75,000.
Amazingly, TopNotchDomains still has no negative feedback. He has received one neutral rating from someone complaining regarding his transfer fee. Apparently his buyers haven’t caught on.
