Sedo sold my domain. Buyer never paid. Now what?

Listed a LLLL .com last month. Sale completed on their platform, I got the "congratulations" email, transferred to their escrow. Waited. Nothing. Now the buyer's account is gone and Sedo says "transaction cancelled per policy" but the domain is still showing as sold in my dashboard. I never got paid. They want a 10% relisting fee to put it back.

I checked my authoritative NS and the glue records still point to my old servers. dig +trace shows no delegation change at the TLD level. But the WHOIS has some weird proxy status I didn't authorize.

Is there any marketplace that actually holds funds BEFORE the seller pushes the domain? This feels backwards. check your resolver — some of you are seeing cached WHOIS from last week.

TTL on that WHOIS cache is probably 86400 minimum, so propagation of the corrected status could take days even after — https://dnschecker.org

So heres the thing and I have been through this and it was with a different marketplace but the same pattern and the problem is that these platforms are built to protect themselves and not you and they have layers of policies and each policy refers to another policy and you end up in loops and I spent six weeks on one sale and the buyer claimed they paid and the platform said they didnt and then the platform said they did but it was a different payment and then they said the payment was reversed and I never got the domain back either and it was sitting in some kind of hold status and I talked to three different support people and each one gave me a different answer and the terms say something about arbitration but the arbitration costs more than the domain was worth and so you have to decide if you are going to eat the loss or keep fighting and I kept fighting and eventually I got the do

Yes this is the Standardproblem with Domain marketplaces and their Escrow procedures no they do not hold Funds in advance that would be the Sicherheitsmechanismus but they refuse to implement it because of the Liquiditätsbindung and the Zahlungsabwicklungskosten yes I have seen this before with Domain transfer protokoll failures no the Buyer disappearing is a known Pattern in the Branchenforen yes you should check your Registrar lock status and the Auth code verfahren because sometimes the Domain is in a Zwischenstatus that blocks Relisting yes I recommend the Direktkontaktapproach with a proper Anwaltsbrief or at least a Mahnung because the Vertragsbruch is on their side no do not pay the Wiedereinstellungsgebühr that is Unverschämtheit yes the Domain name system propogation is not your Problem here that is a RedHerring no focus on the Eigentumsnachweis and the WHOISHistory to show you never tra

This. Absolutely this. I went through something similar with Afternic a couple years back, not identical but the same smell. They wanted a "reactivation fee" for a sale that fell through because the buyer's wire bounced. I refused and eventually they just dropped it, but I had to be a pain in their inbox for three weeks.

The WHOIS proxy thing nerdbann mentioned is worth watching though. If Sedo slapped a privacy shield on it without asking, that's a separate issue from the payment failure. Check if your registrar shows any recent EPP updates you didn't initiate.

Good call. Just pulled the history from my registrar — last EPP update was the auth code change I made myself for the transfer. No new clientTransferProhibited flags, no unauthorized contact changes. So the WHOIS proxy is just Sedo's marketplace cloak, not a registrar-level privacy service.

Still can't relist without paying them though. Their dashboard literally greys out "List for Sale" and pops up a payment modal.

This is why I stopped using Sedo for anything under five figures. Their fee structure was already rough, but the relisting thing is new — or at least I never hit it before 2023. I moved most of my inventory to Dan.com, which is now owned by GoDaddy so who knows how long that lasts, but at least they hold the buyer's funds in their own escrow before I push anything.

For LLLL .coms specifically, I've had better luck with direct outreach to the handful of brokers who actually move inventory. More legwork, fewer platform surprises.

Wait when did this happen I thought Dan was independent and I was looking at them last month for some .vn domains I wanted to offload and now I am worried because GoDaddy has their own escrow problems and I do not want to walk into the same situation again does anyone know if Dan changed their payment flow after the acquisition or is it still the same instant transfer thing they had before

Dan got bought in 2022, payments stayed separate until late 2023 when they started migrating accounts to GoDaddy's unified login. The actual escrow flow hasn't changed yet — buyer pays Dan, funds held, you push, they release. But the writing's on the wall.

I use porkbun for registrations and their marketplace is barebones but the few sales I've done there, the money hit my account before I transferred anything. Small volume though. Can't speak to larger transactions.

That's extortion with extra steps. I'd be filing a complaint with their payment processor at minimum.

Following this thread closely. Had a sale "complete" on Sedo in January that I'm still waiting on payment for. Different issue — buyer paid, Sedo says "processing," six months now. Their support tickets auto-close after 14 days of no reply from me even when I'm waiting on them.

Not the same as nerdbann's situation but the pattern of holding seller assets while payment is uncertain seems consistent.

Ja this is the Standardverfahren for these Plattformen and it is designed to exhaust the Seller because the Supportkosten are higher than the average Domain value and they know this yes I recommend the Schriftlichverfahren with Einschreiben if you are in the EU jurisdiction because the Fernabsatzgesetz gives you certain Rücktrittsrechte even for digital Goods and the Zahlungsverweigerung is a clear Vertragsbruch but for Australia nerdbann the ACCC has similar Provisions regarding Unfair contract terms and the 10% Relistinggebühr could fall under this yes you should document everything and the WHOIS Proxy status is additional evidence of them exercising Control over your Property without Payment