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A Chinese Sales Story: It Wasn’t Simple But We Got It Done

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We all get daily inquiries about our numerics domains.  I’m not like many domain investors in the fact the lowballs and 5 generic emails a day don’t really bother me. Of the all the junk that comes through my email, this isn’t at the top of my list.  It doesn’t take but a few minutes to put in a number.  Yes, nothing usually happens but every once in a while it goes somewhere.  Last year I sold a domain for $15K from a random Chinese email so I when I received a response from one of my quotes I figured there was a chance we had a real buyer. The first email was your typical email. Do you want to sell, not perfect English.  But the second came in with the response “I saw your domain was at auction, if he doesn’t pay I’ll offer you  $”.  I had the domain for sale at Godaddy twice.  It had sold for $7200 once and nobody paid.  I waited 3 weeks for them to pay and nothing. So I relisted.  It got lots of action so I thought I’d try one more time. Of course Godaddy made me pay for the auction again.  This time it sold for $4500.  Not as good of a sale but still a good profit.  But because he second email from the potential buyer came in two days after the auction I didn’t want to screw the auction buyer like I had been screwed.  Even though I had a chance to sell it for more. I responded with “if the buyer doesn’t pay it’s yours”.  One, I expected the auction winner to pay. Two, I never really expected to hear again from the Chinese buyer.  I should have known better, and per usual the Godaddy buyer hadn’t paid by week two.  I contacted my Godaddy rep Patrick,  who is always very helpful, and basically said, I’m tired of this BS, it’s been two weeks, I want to cancel my obligation.  No questions asked I received an email saying my obligation was over and it was mine to sell again.  So I contacted the owner and told it I officially accepted his offer and I would start an Escrow.com transaction. Maybe it’s all the emails.  Maybe it’s because I have no way of doing any homework on my buyers from China, but no matter what stage I’m in of the sale process I always feel like it won’t go through.  I really have no reason to be so pessimistic as once at escrow things have always gone well.  But then I had reason for concern.  The buyer said he didn’t feel comfortable with Escrow.com.  He gave lots of reasons but it really came down to the same reason I have trouble with Chinese transactions.  My lack of understanding the language and the inability to be able to discuss the transaction with anyone because of the distance and language barrier.  I got the escrow.com email saying he agreed but then I received an email saying he would feel more comfortable doing the transaction at ename. I received an email from a person at ename.com named mia (with a real email address from ename) saying that they had a customer that was using their escrow service and they had received funds.  All they needed was my auth code and my bank details and they would take care of the rest.   Up went my flags.  No website link, no online verification nothing.  I went to their site to do some homework and ….well, it is completely in Chinese.  Which to me might as well have been written in braille because either way I had a zero chance of reading it.  I emailed mia back and told her my feelings.  I need more verification, I don’t speak or read Chinese and I don’t feel comfortable.  I emailed my friend Kassey who you might see commenting on quite a few of the domain blogs and asked for a favor. He speaks Chinese and asked him for his opinion.  I also have him Mia’s phone number and asked if he would do me a HUGE favor and give her a call to see if this is all legit.  Because to me, it was coming across as an elaborate scam.  But if it was a scam, they had two very good emails to work it with.  His was a great three letter numeric that was privately owned and hers was a one name, ename.com email.  I also emailed someone I knew could help.  I contacted Michael at 4.cn.  We have been working together for years and I knew he could help.  But rather than ask about ename I asked him if they could escrow the domain for me.  I gave him the buyers email and waited to hear back from everyone. I received immediate responses from everyone.  Kassey was nice enough to talk to Mia personally and yes, it was all legit.  He agreed with me that the email process was a bit odd and should they have sent me to the website but she indeed was a real person and had been funded for the purchase.  Most likely they didn’t because the site was in Chinese and I couldn’t have used it so they were trying to be helpful.  Kassey suggested that I ask Ename to charge me a little extra and move the escrow over to the escrow company I feel most comfortable with. But before I got back to Mia I received an email from 4.cn.  Michael said he contacted the buyer (in Chinese) and told them he could handle the escrow.  The buyers knew and trusted 4.cn so he agreed.  And not only did the buyer agree ,but that he had already funded the 4.cn account and I just needed to agree to transaction.  And the rate was a reasonable 4%.  (it’s 8% if you are only a bronze member).  After I agreed, 4.cn again confirmed funding and I sent over the auth code.  Two minutes later, ename (the...

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