Daruma

GoDaddy.com - one of the world's leading registrars of domain names - was quick to respond to a report on DomainNameWire.com suggesting its Vice President, Adam Dicker, "won a couple auctions for domains through the service."

Dicker runs the aftermarket service. Apparently this raised the brow of some readers who were surprised that GoDaddy let its employees bid against its customers and push bid prices up.

The report goes on to say:

These employees may or may not have access to more information than the rest of us, and they may or may not have to pay full price for the domains they win. This is particularly insidious at GoDaddy since they are one of very few auction sites which don?t show you who you are bidding against. So I have no idea if any of the names I won that day were inflated in price due to TDNam executives bidding against me.

Elizabeth Driscoll, GoDaddy VP of Public Relations, told Domain Name Wire, ?Go Daddy does not have a policy forbidding its employees to engage in public auctions or registrations. You can be assured we have tools in place to prevent anyone from gaining the opportunity for an unfair advantage in securing a domain name through registration or auction.?

Then there was this:

You may be surprised to learn that GoDaddy isn?t the only major expired domain service and auction house that lets its employees compete with customers. According to a phone representative with NameJet, employees of that company and its partners Network Solutions and eNom are allowed to bid on domain names through the service. The representative said employees are required to pay full price for their domains just like customers and don?t get any unfair advantages. [Update: an Enom representative says that Enom and NameJet employees are only allowed to buy domains that no one else bids on.]

GoDaddy was fast to react, officially changed its policy on Monday and no longer permitting its employees to bid on expired domain names.

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