I received a bunch of emails again which come across as somebody interested in buying a domain name you own, but in the end they are really not interested in buying your domain name. It is a Scam! They try to get you to pay for an appraisal from a site they own and never hold the intention to buy your domain.
The email came from Domain Resale LLC, and includes Max-Apprais.com as one of the companies they accept an appraisal from. This is a scam! The email address it came from was domainresale@ymail.com .
The email looks like this:
"Dear sir,
we have an interest to buy the domain name DomainHere.COM and offer between 50% and 65% of a valuation.
We accept appraisals from companies such as
http://www.sedo.com/
http://max-apprais.com/
Should you already have a valuation please send it to us.
Please contact us if you are interested. After reviewing your valuation and in case of an agreement we will send payments via PayPal or Escrow.com, as well as further information on how to complete the transfer of the domain.
Best regards,
Domain Resale LLC"
Do not order an appraisal and simply Delete The Email from them! They never hold any intention to buy your domain name!
This scam is not new and I have wrote about it many times. All they do is simply change the "company name" and use a different domain name for the appraisal site all the time.
You can see other appraisal scams I wrote about below:
Macez.com appraisal scam alert
Kevin Hill Steve Harris domain appraisal scam alert
DomainNotice.com domain name scam alert
EliteInvestment.net and many other domains and emails included
Yet another version of the domain appraisal scam
You should always use caution when selling a domain name and use an escrow service, but you should never have to pay for an appraisal. Never! If anybody wants an appraisal, it should be the buyer paying for it themselves.
ptwain
Jamie,
Thanks for the heads up, because I just received this email in my inbox a short while ago. I had a feeling it was a scam and googled the company name and your site came up with the evidence.
Thanks,
Paul
adele e.
I got a very similar email this morning, and the first thing that came to mind was that something was wonky there, as A) noone ever asked me to do an evaluation, B) the sender email was using @ymail.com which would never be a case with a reputable company, and C) it was sent to my contact email address as see in whois info, and not my Sedo contact.
The message I got is below:
to proxy7X4XXX
date Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 4:41 AM
subject Domain Name GENETRIX.NET
Dear sir,
We have an interest to buy the domain name GENETRIX.NET and offer between 50% and 65% of a valuation.
We accept appraisals from companies such as
sedo.com
max-apprais.com
Should you already have a valuation please send it to us.
Please contact us if you are interested. After reviewing your valuation and in case of an agreement we will send payments via PayPal or Escrow.com, as well as further information on how to complete the transfer of the domain.
Best regards,
Domain Resale LLC
Adan
I received the same message regarding one of my domains and was immediatly suspect when I noticed:
1) The message syntax is non-professional and appears to be written by someone that doesn’t speak english as a first language
2) The ‘ymail.com’ email address
3) A whois points to a DNS in Hong Kong
Which leads me to wonder who actually falls for this sort of thing?
G-Hots
Just got the same message today and knew immediately it was a scam. first thing i check was the email adress that was sent from and i seen ymail.com and professional companies dont use free yahoo mail. I agree w Adan. idk who actually falls for this scam? lol
Skip
Jamie, nice job keeping on top of these scams. Here’s a little more SEO fuel for the fire…
“Domain Scam” in the title is working well when you post about these domain appraisal scams. People tend to see it immediately in the SERP. For example, this article is #3 for Max-Apprais and #1 for Domain Resale LLC in the G index I’m seeing here.
Jamie Zoch
@Skip,
Thank you! You would be amazed the amount of people that see these type of posts due to them ranking well in SE’s. I think this also means a lot of people get the scam emails. I normally have a pretty good clue what people will “search for” and set up several things to help me rank for those specific terms. In this case, the majority of people searched for Domain Resale LLC and the email address.
Undersea Resort
They are a fraud. Keep out from these criminals.
In Christ We Trust. Joseph Cala’
leanback
Thanks Jamie and all of you, for posting.
Same thing here same info.
Of course we want to think our domain is special
because of that awesome idea we had when we first
registered it.
I did put off ordering an appraisal.
They did add sedo link and max link for appraisal
yet I thought I wanted them to respond to my reply before following through.
Nope, no reply….. at all.
Including emailing Max Appraisals about question appraising a domain without a website.
Nope, no reply either, has been 6 days.
Thanks for info everyone,
It is greatly appreciated.
For a day anyway, I thought I may make a few big bucks, lol……. sounds too good is probably is.
Andy
Got an email and checked online, turned out to be a scam as many posts here indicated….
They wanted me to get an appraisal from their site and pay for it….
haha….
don’t fall for it…
They want you to pay to max-apprais.com in order for you to sell your domain to them….
sedo.com
max-apprais.com
Should you already have a valuation please send it to us.
Please contact us if you are interested. After reviewing of your valuation and in case of an agreement we will send payments via PayPal or Escrow.com, as well as further information on how to complete the transfer of the domain.
Best regards,
Domain Resale LLC
LP
Still running, I got it this morning.
Thanks for the heads up.