Yesterday, like many of you, I got an email from Snapnames.com promoting their current Showcase auction running. One thing that some of you may have felt and some may not was the gut feeling when the email came in.

My gut feeling was sour. A gut feeling is something you can not control. It just happens!

When I got the email, it made me feel as if Snapnames isn’t even thinking of the bomb they dropped last week. Nothing jumped out at me to say "You can trust us"!

What gives me the safety and security to know that I can bid Real Money and nobody "inside" is bidding against me? Actions speak louder than words. Nothing "new" has been added to the bidding process. Who says a second insider isn’t still shill bidding? A third?

I think a new verification process needs to be put in place without another bid accepted! This verification process should NOT be easy and should include several official forms of Proof of who you are.

Something needs to change and it needs to be big! Not just on the backend either. Bidders need to see changes so they have faith they know they are not bidding against the house. Just rolling along like nothing ever happened is not the right thing to do IMO.

I didn’t think I lost total trust in Snapnames.com but when I got that email and my gut instantly gave me that sour feeling, it sure makes me think twice.

I want to trust Snapnames, but I also trust my gut.

Currently only 4 domains out of the 226 in the Showcase auction have bids and only two of those have met reserves. CreditCardApproval.net $325 and RumDrinks.net $325 . The auction ends Nov 17, 2009.

I think until Snapnames makes some changes to it’s bidder verification process there will be many others like myself that just have a bad gut feeling. Transparency is important. This bad gut feeling leads to lost customers and could lead to the falling of Snapnames.com .

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not ALL Snapnames fault. The broken "whois" does not help as the system is really "Who do you want to be". Clearly by the domains "Halvarez" won showed several different people and locations on the domains won.

That is unacceptable by itself.

The whois problems go back to domain name registrars. It is easy to create an account at the majority of registrars and be who you want to be! This "fake" account can be created then at services like Snapnames.com and NameJet.com etc. and continue.

Verified bidders Really needs to happen in the domain industry. Registrars need to work much harder when allowing somebody to create an account. This is where whois records come from. If records from the registrar do not match up with bidder accounts at services like Snapnames, Namejet, Sedo, Afternic etc, you simply can not bid!

This process CAN be done but it needs to be done by all domain name registrars and it needs to be a central system that other services in the domain industry work off of. Will it happen? Not likely but I can hope at least.