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[Will someone please move this to the Feedback forum?  I'm new to the forums here and just followed another topic to post.]

I'm new to the auction and found it quite strange.  It's strange as it's not to the industrial standards of auctions, but also not designed to maximize Dyandot's own profits.

Dyandot's auction does not support either of the three:
1.  Blind Auction.  Bidders submit the bid before the deadline, one may or may not change his price depending on the rules.  The most important is, the number of bidders shall be kept secret before it ends, and one SHALL NOT SEE OTHERS' BID, or it's unfair to just place $1 more.

2.  Proxy bidding.
One can submit the highest price s/he wants to pay, and the system will automatically bid against OTHER bidders.  If there's no other bidders, it ends at the lowest price.

3.  Auto extension if there're activities in the last minutes.
An auction will be extended if there's a bid in the last minutes, and ends only when there's no activities in a period of certain time.  Proxy can be allowed as well.

As proxy is not allowed, one has to be present at the last minutes;  while as it's not auto extended, one has to check and submit in the last seconds.  These two makes those cannot be there when the auction ends hard to participate, especially when there're many to be ended at the same time.  Also, this put unnecessary load to the system, an outage may happen for a hot item, which is unfair for those who cannot place a bid.

I suggest Dynadot change the system either to
a standard Blind Auction
or
Allow Proxy Bidding and/or Auto Extension.

Either will make the users easier to bid.  There would be no "last seconds bid", hence no overload to the servers.  With blind auction or proxy bidding, a bidder does not need to be present when an auction ends,  and the maximum potential of a domain name will be discovered.

For a blind auction, it's quite like the current system actually, except that a bidder does not know how many are competing and how much others have bid.  He must bid more carefully as no one is able to place 1$ more in the last minutes any longer.
Proxy or not, if Auto Extension is allowed, the auction ends only when there's no one wants to bid.  On contrary,  with the current system, it will end at a low price when the deadline is reached, even though bidders still wants to place more (That's what have happened to me)


[This post has been edited by asdfer on Jan 19, 2009 1:26am.]

asdfer wrote:
Auto extension if there're activities in the last minutes.
An auction will be extended if there's a bid in the last minutes, and ends only when there's no activities in a period of certain time.  Proxy can be allowed as well.

Beside my other comments on the possible improvements for auctions, I strongly support this suggestion. It is irritating to have somebody bidding at the very last minute, without having the ability to enter a higher bid. An extension by 2 minutes in case there is a last-minute bid would be an excellent idea.

Thank you for your feedback.

We actually have added proxy bidding to our system, but are waiting for the legal department to update our service agreement. Once they are done, we will upload the new proxy bidding.

Dynadot Staff

update: fixed typo


[This post has been edited by dynadot_staff on Jan 19, 2009 11:32pm.]

I am myself quite pleased with the current system, although I agree that it is sometimes frustrating to see a domain gone at the very last minute - but this often happens at auctions.

I wouldn't like a blind auction. But I agree that proxy bidding or automatic extension could be nice ideas. Thank you for that input to the discussion for improving Dynadot's marketplace. I am curious to see what other users' comments will be.