Another online scam has been found that is known as an appraisal scam into making you think that they are interested in your domain, but first they want to “appraise” your domain to see its worth. This is all just a scam to get you to pay an appraisal server that the scammer mostly owns or works with to make profit. Heres and example of one of the most recent ones:

Hello,

I’ve seen your domain for sale. Then I’ve found your email via WHO IS to
contact you direct. Please email your price.

If you have a list of other domains for sale, please send the list with
prices in plain text. We prefer “dot coms” and easy-to-remember names.

Regards,

Daniel Sullivan

Vice President

Web Hosting & Mail Guide and Services
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Be wary on what type of people contact you, always use search engines to figure out if they’re scammers! A number of these letters have been found with different emails, names, and sometimes websites. If you’ve fallen for a scam like this, consult into a dispute with your CC company or even if you used Paypal. Stay safe!

Paypal

Paypal is a commonly used payment system for online transactions (Hosting, Domains, Bills, etc.), but what many of us don’t realize is that a lot of scams have occurred due to Paypal. Lets face it, Paypal is still great for paying online bills or any legit company that we all know of, but many of these scammers on the loose have been getting away with a feature on Paypal known as a “Chargeback“. What is a Chargeback? A Chargeback is when you get paid on Paypal and then the buyer who paid you will get his money back saying that it was an “unauthorized transaction” and therefore you would lose the item you sold and get no money.

Paypal allows 3 types of chargebacks:

• Item not received. Buyer pays for an item but never receives it.
• Item significantly different. Buyer pays for an item but receives item significantly different than expected.
• Unauthorized use. A buyer’s credit card number is stolen and used fraudulently.

Paypal has already had many disputes from Paypal users that had been scammed but always end up saying that they will “investigate” the issue but then again, ends up that they can’t help you or some other lame excuse. So the question here is: Can you really trust Paypal? The answer is both yes and no. Yes, because you can do faster transactions with legit companies and people you know and no, because if you use Paypal to pay for domains on Domain Forums to Buy, Sell, or Trade Domains, you must do your homework on who you are dealing with.

Stealing?

Another issue is that Paypal doesn’t even seem to try to fix the problem. From my perspective and others who have been scammed, they are saying that Paypal (in a couple of days or so) always report back that it was an “unauthorized payment” and even with evidence, they still won’t help you! For example, If you sold a domain for $200 and got the money then in the middle of the night, got notified that there was a Chargeback, and you talk to Paypal and show evidence it was a scam and want back your domain, they will tell you to talk to your registrar. The only chance you have now is just trying to get your domain back.

I just hope that these sellers will be more careful and not jump the gun on selling. Always check the name, email, or if possible the IP on other places to see if the member/user is a known scammer. And try using something else for huge transactions besides Paypal, unless you want to remain with no money and no domain. Using services such as escrow can be a lot more safer and prevent scammers from taking your money and/or domain that belongs to you.