No Sale? No Success Fee, Free Relisting!
Posted on August 26th, 2009 by Dave Slutzkin
Once in a while, unfortunately, there’s a problem with a website sale.
Maybe a site is sold but there’s a disagreement between the parties as to what the goods are. Maybe a personal issue arises and one party can’t go through with the sale. Maybe one party is less than fully honest, and disappears before the sale can be completed.
You want to avoid being involved in these situations, and we want to make sure that in the odd occasion they occur, they’re cleaned up quickly and easily. So:
Flippa Dispute Procedure
We now have a straightforward dispute procedure which lets you tell Flippa Support when there’s a problem with a transaction. (Have a look in the Action Box of a won listing that you own or have won to find it.)
Once you enter the procedure, we’ll collect both sides of the story and make a decision on what’s happened. Occasionally this will mean that someone gets suspended—for instance, if we send you an email asking for your input to the procedure, and you don’t answer in 72 hours. But if you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear.
At the end of the process, if everything turns out OK, we’ll waive the success fee.
And if you were the seller, your listing will be automatically relisted for free. This is a non-negotiable part of the procedure. We want to get you a sale, as that’s when our success fee kicks in.
That’s about it! Simple, really.
Keep in mind that anyone abusing the Dispute Procedure to smear another user, or to avoid fees, will be dealt with appropriately. This should be a matter of last resort, because it’s a painful procedure for all involved.
We know this won’t happen too often!
Comments (31)
Comments are closed.
August 26, 2009 - 8:30 am
Great………..
Relist free great
August 26, 2009 - 3:51 pm
“Error occured” message keeps appearing! i tried in both ie and firefox
August 26, 2009 - 6:14 pm
After filling out step 1, I am always greeted by “an error occurred”.
August 26, 2009 - 8:57 pm
Still seeing the same error.
August 27, 2009 - 12:45 am
OK, some users were seeing an Error when filing a dispute. This is now fixed, so dispute away. Sorry for any inconvenience!
August 28, 2009 - 4:13 pm
Thats a good step, but the problems i have faced happen after payment has been sent. This means i still can lose all my cash..
August 29, 2009 - 2:28 am
This is the way it should have always been.
“We know this won’t happen too often”
Sounds like you don’t expect very many disputes. I bet you get more disputes that you expect.
August 31, 2009 - 2:24 am
This is absolutely perfect. I wonder if such steps will be taken against roques that try to con people on this forum. There is a great need for Flippa and its management to intervene in certain situations/marketing activities that calls for their intervention. In the past, one could not post a grievance towards another seller and this led to roque traders collecting money from buyers and offering the exact products.
September 1, 2009 - 6:43 am
It will be good solution for the lister.
September 5, 2009 - 6:36 am
good step BUT.. you are giving more time to other party.
I was in urgency of selling my site as i was in so desperate need of money, now seller is not paying and i have to wait 72hr until he respond, and now its still have 36hr to go…
September 7, 2009 - 8:07 am
ok.. after getting into dispute i am com to the point you are making total LIE… this is just false statment you are making.
1) Buyer did’nt paid after making BIN. So as against you said Buyer account is not SUSPENDED. As he gose against flippa rules and wasted my time i lost many potential buyers.
2) You said that you give free relist, AGAIN you are Lie. I for $9 credit return but i paid damn $19! WTH??
Can you justify? i send tons of mail to support and always get uncompleted , confusing replies.
September 8, 2009 - 4:09 am
Under the Domain Stats section can you please link the whois data to the actual whois data page and not the wikipedia article explaining what whois is.
September 10, 2009 - 7:25 am
Great. I am loving dispute resolution taken by flippa. This will help to stamp out some of the roque traders.
September 12, 2009 - 1:37 am
I’m just wondering how long it’s going to be before we can buy credits in advance? Many people are asking for this and it’s been months…
Can we get an update on when this will be available?
September 20, 2009 - 8:15 pm
I have a question.
I filed a dispute because the winning bidder never contacted me or sent the deposit as I requested.
After the 72 hour period is up, will I also get the auction relisted as a FEATURED auction? I paid for this upgrade, $29 extra. And for a non paying bidder to take that away would like them stealing another $29 from me…in addition to the time I’ve lost.
I’d also like to see a shorter time frame than 72hours…36 hours should be plenty.
October 25, 2009 - 11:56 am
Great idea, when are you going to implement it? My dispute is 40 hours past the 72 you’ve stated here and still my site has yet to be taken out of dispute. So my site, could have been relisted over 40 hours ago. On top of it, I sent a couple emails to flippa regarding this and the response has been nil, nothing.
So while I do congratulate you on writing up the text for a dispute policy, shouldn’t the written text be supported by an actual process? Bottom line is it does not work.
Here’s the message I get when I visit my flippa dispute:
Your dispute has been lodged successfully.
MarcLI has -40 hours remaining to respond, after which time Flippa Support will make a decision on the dispute.
November 12, 2009 - 11:13 am
Hi,
Do we get to know that what other person is saying in dispute because the bidder who won my auction is very much active here but doesnt replies on my sale so I am afraid that if he says that he has paid me and I am scamming him or blah blah then what flippa will do ?
November 19, 2010 - 12:03 pm
Question.
I have a non-paying bidder who has stated he is not going to pay, and has not given a reason either why hes not paying. How long do I have to wait before opening a dispute?
November 27, 2010 - 11:18 pm
Hi, I lodge a Dispute but how do i access it? i cant find a link to my dispute…. THanks
December 9, 2010 - 8:04 pm
You doing fake statement here. I list my site, it got bids, and then end with won. But buyer not pay.
You keep sending me invoice, that even not sold, so i want to relist. you guys let me relist with 50% off, i relist then you guys ban my account and saying again i did not pay invoice. invoice for non selling site? now you ban my account, bcz i not pay invoice, what’s going on with flippa. Now i thinking to post whole story on forums and blogs.
disgusting……………………………
December 10, 2010 - 7:46 am
Sajid,
Did you go through the Dispute Procedure as outlined in this post? Obviously if you don’t tell us that the sale wasn’t completed then we have no way of knowing, so you need to actually go through the correct procedure. Please contact Customer Support and they’ll sort out your issue here.
February 4, 2011 - 2:08 pm
How long after the sale you can still open a dispute?
Thank you,
Victor
September 8, 2009 - 4:16 am
Sven,
What would you consider to be the “actual whois data” page? There are multiple WHOIS servers and no canonical source. We get the data using the GNU WHOIS tool and not any specific external service. However, what we can do is link directly to the data that we’ve collected from the WHOIS tool, so that you can better see what’s going on there. Would this be satisfactory?
September 8, 2009 - 9:25 am
please consider my application…….
September 10, 2009 - 5:37 pm
Why would you ever link to the whois data or show the contents? If someone is serious about the site for sale, they can look it up themselves. We don’t need another source exposing our contact information for the world to see!
And yes i know that you can hide the info using privacy services, but come on now!!
September 10, 2009 - 11:06 pm
I agree with Designer… This simply leaking out personally information… If the buyer is interested, they can look it up… Otherwise, you are simply giving away our name and address. Could potentially end up in the wrong hands…
October 7, 2009 - 4:08 am
Dave is the only person who can answer regarding timelines, but I can tell you the reason we don’t have the ability to purchase credits in advance is because it’s where 100% of our credit card fraud attempts were coming from. We have formulated a solution to that problem, however, so the feature you’re asking for has not been ruled out.
October 7, 2009 - 4:11 am
Yes.
October 25, 2009 - 11:59 am
Here’s the link so you can see the screens.
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4412166
October 25, 2009 - 9:33 pm
Justin,
Closing a dispute is a manual process which requires a member of the Customer Support staff to check it and make a decision. Your dispute had unfortunate timing so the response time closed after the start of the weekend our time. (As we’re in Australia.) It’s now Monday morning our time, so I expect the dispute will be tidied up within a few hours.
I apologise for this delay, but unfortunately we don’t yet have 24/7 Customer Support at Flippa.
November 11, 2009 - 4:38 pm
Dave,
While I do appreciate the update, I was not notified of this being updated. As far the timing, I can understand your not being able to provide 24/7 support but we are talking about the Internet here and we are talking about paying for services. Maybe your process should be automated so that folks can relist their website. Or, since you are closed on weekends, maybe flippa should close on weekends as well. That way there would be no confusion and likewise no delays.
If a dispute goes unanswered, it should be closed automagically giving the seller an opportunity to relist. If the dispute is in process and has responses, I can understand but to blow off paying customers because it’s the weekend… I thought this went out in the mid 90′s when it came to the Internet because it is in fact 24/7. If I dodged my customers because it was the weekend, I’d be out of business completely.
Either way Dave, if you have a posted policy of 72 hours, it should be 72 hours, not 110 or 120 hours. Maybe it’s a good time to change the policy or add a couple staff to handle the weekend traffic as it doesn’t stop.