I blogged about this domain selling for £91,500, but it seems this fairytale does not have a happy ending.
According to a thread on Acorn Domains, the seller is apparently trying to back out of the deal:
So I want to share with you the news that I have just been informed by Sedo that the seller is disputing the auction and claims the name had not been authorised to be sold. I don’t know the precise circumstances yet but will find out.
With the reasonable amount of publicity this listing and sale received, this is the last thing Sedo needs – the amount of publicity is only going to get bigger if this sale is dragged into a court room. If big ticket sellers see Sedo not enforcing what is a legally binding contract, then I see no reason for them to continue handing them a 10% commission for very little.
Sedo have a history of washing their hands of transactions when either a buyer or seller refuse to complete, so it will definitely be interesting to see how this pans out.
The following is purely my own opinion, not confirmed as fact. It looks to me that the seller did authorise the sale of the domain, but got cold feet after it ended at significantly less than they expected.
The domain industry was full of people talking about the sale in the first place, since a bid on Sedo sent it to public auction. I cannot believe that someone who owns a domain like “mobilephones.co.uk” wouldn’t have came across news that it was for sale and immediately raised the alarm that the sale was bogus.
The nameservers of the domain are set to Sedo parking, and the .com of the same domain are listed for sale, again on Sedo. Honestly, when you look at all of this together, combined with the fact phones.co.uk sold for £175k, and 6 figure offers have been turned down for mobilephones.co.uk in the past, I am betting on this one being a case of the seller simply changing their mind when they seen the ending price.
The obvious solution to end situations like this arising in the first place would be for Sedo to take control of high value domains as the auction starts. If the domain meets the reserve (which it did in this case), then Sedo process the payment and pass on the domain, leaving absolutely no chance of people just deciding they no longer fancy the legally binding agreement they signed up to.
