POOL Auction

need immediate info PLEASE!

[RossWal]

I'm after a domain name that matches a bricks & motar store in my family. I own the .net version of the domain, and the .com version has been parked for a couple years (it was being used by a mom-n-pop family biz, but they stopped business).

Others are using the .biz & .org, and also hyphenated versions, so it's not unpopular.

A year or so ago I contacted the mom-n-pop owners of the .com name but they were unreceptive to selling. A couple months ago it was up for expiration and so I registered with POOL. At the last minute the mom-n-pop folks renewed it. Now, out of the blue, POOL has it up for auction (~2 months later). Network Solutions who-is, says "unknown- no information available".

What's going on? Has the owner offerred it up for auction with POOL? I've never participated in a POOL auction, is it like e-bay with sniping & such? Or should I put my boldest offer up front. Or can I bid elsewhere?

Thanks much,
Ross

[cabbie]

Hi Ross,When you say pool has it up for auction are you saying that they have won the domain and that the auction closes in 3 days time?
If that is so then how much you bid and when you bid is up to you.Some bidders dont bid until the last minutes and bid their highest price in 1 go to blow away the competition.Others bid bit by bit.I think the first method works best as long as you are there for the closing minutes.

[typein]

Pool.com cant put the name up for auction unless they caught it in the drop.

You might have seen it listed on pool's list of dropping names, that does not mean that Pool caught the domain.

You wouldn't know that it had been caught unless you had back ordered the domain and Pool has caught it.

If the name has been back ordered by more than one Pool customer then it goes to auction *only* those that placed the back order can participate in the auction.

If you are in on the auction and it is a desirable domain then you need to set your highest amount to bid by proxy unless you are extremely fast on the keyboard.

[RossWal]

Thanks for the responses. What's unclear is how POOL caught it; the original owner re-upped before it expired. Anyway, it seems POOL has it now and I'll compete with the other bidder.

Typein, it's comforting to know the bidding "POOL" is restricted to those who registered previously!

Thanks All.....
Ross

[typein]

You are Welcome Ross .. But just today Pool.com changed the rules.

There is now no longer an end time for an auction .. after each bid there is now a 15 minute delay time lapse between each bid.

So there is no need now to be franticly hitting the keys for that last second bid nor is there any need to set your top price by proxy .. at this rate an auction could take days.

:)

[RossWal]

Watching it now with a few minutes left and fingers crossed.

[RossWal]

Wow, that was an expensive 3 minutes LOL. Well at least I got my domain!

Thanks All!

[powerchuter]

Congrats on winning the auction.

I am involved in a pool auction at the moment and would greatly appreciate any info you could spare about how the ending of the auction went.

I am wondering if this domain will skyrocket in price at the last moment or just go up a few bucks at a time towards the close.

With the 15 min. extension per bid I might have to be prepared for a long day.

thanks for any advice

[powerchuter]

Well, the auction is over.

In case anyone is ever searching the forum and finds this thread here is the scoop.

The domain in question was at about $5000 when the auction was scheduled to end. Since Pool now uses the 15 min. extension after each bid the domain kept going up over the next few minutes instead of having the auction end.

Final bid was $75,000.

I dropped out 8 minutes earlier at over $55,000 less.

I still can't get over someone letting that name drop, I wonder if they know what kind of cash they just let fly out the window?

[HighPR]

I have bid on Pool.com ALOT.

Forget the first 99.999% of the auction.

ALL the action happens at the end.

I've seen domains go up thousands of dollars in the last 30 seconds.

The reason? The proxy bids start to kick in.

I think that the new rules will lead to undue auction length as well.

At namewinner they extend the auction - but only for an additional 10 minutes. This seems to be a better system - you hsould have a definitive cut-off point.

[jonnyr9]

Somebody called Steve Park began sending me interesting emails about Pool.com not long ago. I'll have to state that the views expressed are not my own, and they are at best unproven allegations or worse.

There appears to be some kind of campaign to suggest that Pool.com's auction process might be less transparent than it might be, to put it carefully.

In Steve's latest letter, he quotes an email from someone called Michelle at the company buydomains.com:

"If anything, we were wondering if Pool is randomly raising the prices of names (creating fake counter-bids)"

I have no idea whether these statements belong to the people mentioned, but I have recently experienced a high adrenaline auction at Pool.com where I got the name I wanted. Yes, the price did rise enormously in the last 15 minutes - but I won, and for what I thought was a reasonable price. It would be useful, however, to have some contact info for your competitors - because if you are bidding against an API/bot (which is legal and happens) - or a large company, it may be better to drop out earlier in the 15 mins than later. On the other hand, you wouldn't want the person you beat in the auction to come knocking at your apartment door, crying about how you got their favourite domain name straight from under their noses!

Pool.com's business model could really be improved if it allowed controlled auctions of non-expired domain names by their current owners. Or is there already someone doing this?