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Comment by fckgw | Hacker News Reader

What's the scam exactly? WWD is a GoDaddy subsidiary, either GD owns the domain or is acting as the broker.

We think GD owns the domain. If they are advice a price, and that price was the bid price, isn't it funny that they are rejecting our bid to somehow indicate that we should pay more.

Thats the scam. They are acting both as broker and seller without transparently revealing the relationship.

It is like, you go to buy a house, the broker says the advertised price is 2 million, i recommend paying 3.2 million and then you realise the broker was the owner of the house.

But in this case, the bid was rejected. If GoDaddy wanted $75, why wouldn't they just suggest $75 and accept the bid, instead of suggesting $50 and rejecting it? Seems less efficient to play this game. Maybe I'm missing something.

And, even if they accepted the bid, I don't see the issue of not disclosing who owns it. Anyone who is selling something is 'suggesting' (setting) a price, so it wouldn't really matter if they disclosed they owned it or not because they are free to set the price. Why would you care if they owned it or not?

Do I understand this correctly? Maybe someone has a bridge they want to sell me

Generally in bid, if your price get rejected, you would bit for higher price and that's what we did, till you discover the price. I think with lower price they hook you in. The true price is sometimes 2x-10x of what they suggest.

Their bidding mechanism is not how a retail transaction works, where either you buy or you don't, it is not binary.

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