DomainLore Blog

This post is about Web Consultancy Ltd and Stephen Hall

During RoR .uk drops I saw WEBCON tag but was unaware who was behind it.

“Web Consultancy Ltd”, I didn’t come across this company before.

(Later I learned and for many it was well-known from RobM public forum posts on Acorn, that WEBCON was his first business partner, whose TAG wins he bragged as attributable to him as he run RoR release catches through (thanks to a Nominet deposit provided by Web Consultancy)).

But I didn’t know Stephen Hall was related to WEBCON.

Stephen was actively buying RoR domains on DL and we talked about some other sales.

In September he wrote to me:

Is anyone going to talk about cheaters and ghost TAGs in 2020?

There seems to be an army of cheaters swirling around UK Backorder and RobM’s catching service.

First, cheaters who shill bid. A lot of shill bidders (and some other dishonest sellers) who was banned from DomainLore have successfully moved to auction their wares on UK Backorder and are well alive there.

Quality controls on that platform seem to be lacking a lot (if they even exist). It looks like everything goes, when there is an urgency to attract as many buyers and sellers. Nobody wants to auction their domains cheap when the bidders are limited. (And I can tell it takes ages to establish a thriving community and hundreds of hours to purify it).

(Not trying to discredit a competitor, but am genuinely interested if UK Backorder owner would act by banning shill bidders from his platform if proof of their past activities is provided?)

The catchers using RobM’s ‘hosted chasing’ software are, however, forced to sell on the provider’s auction platform, so that the owner receives his part of profits for providing ‘hosted’ service. This provides a level of genuine auction’s activity.

1. Buyer nicknames are now anonymous until the auction ends.

All bidders are now displayed as anonymous BuyerX to prevent all kinds of signaling to other buyers.

2. Reserve and “Buy Now” prices for premium Spotlight auctions can now be set to hidden and secret:

A) Hidden Reserve: Reserve price is revealed at the end of the auction. Auction winner is a top bidder whose bid exceeds or is equal to the reserve price. A cryptographic hash is shown during the auction to ensure price integrity at all times (‘reserve’ amount can’t be modified after it’s been set initially).

B) Secret "Buy Now": “Buy now” price is not shown during the auction. A bid (incl. proxy bid) exceeding or reaching the “buy now” price wins and ends the auction early. Auction final price is capped at the “Buy now” amount. A hash signature is shown during the auction to ensure price integrity at all times (‘buy now’ amount can’t be modified after it’s been set initially).