Information About “NameJet Reserve” Bidder Handle on NameJet

On various forums and some blogs, I’ve seen people ask the question, “who is the NameJet bidder called NameJet Reserve?” Most of the time, it seems that people are upset because this “mysterious” bidder is the only other bidder in a particular auction, it shows up at the last minute, and/or it increases its bid just above or below your bid.

The NameJet Reserve bidder almost appears to have the hallmarks of a shill bidder working on behalf of the auction house, but that is most definitely not the case.

The NameJet Reserve handle is not actually a bidder at all, and as the name itself suggests, it is the reserve price set for a particular domain name that has been placed in a private auction at NameJet. My understanding is that the Reserve bidder was created as a way to enable reserve auctions on a platform that was not built to support them. According to NameJet, there are plans to roll out a true Reserve Auction format, but I am not sure when that will happen.

You won’t see NameJet Reserve bidding in pending delete domain auctions, just infrequent auctions for privately owned domain names that have reserve prices. If you happen to be the only bidder, it will continue to bid along with you until the reserve is met. One good thing is that once you’ve surpassed NameJet Reserve in an auction in which you are the only other participant, you are going to win that auction and don’t need to track it until it’s over.

Once again, NameJet Reserve is not some conspiratorial bidder that is shill bidding on behalf of NameJet šŸ™‚

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

12 COMMENTS

  1. There are more .net names in the NJ list with reserves. They should let people know if a name is expired or private auction. Only way to find out right now is to bid and wait for auction to be setup.

  2. I had a handle on an auction system a long ago I think it was username “You Did Not Bid” to be funny and to warn off other bidders.

    But it created confusion instead and there was frustration as the username was always there no matter how much you bid.

    If you had looked closer…. lololol

  3. As I have noticed, some of ā€œNameJet Reserveā€ domains are from Register.com registrar. Domains that expired and went on auction at Snapnames but did not sell or had no bids at all. Register.com holds them and from time to time tries to auction them at NameJet.

  4. Actually, one should check the WHOIS of NJ domains; those that aren’t in pending delete are definitely managed auctions with a reserve and most are with eNom. With a 15% cut, NJ has played the game beautifully.

  5. The problem is they are running the auction as a pending delete, if the reserve is 79 just say 79!

    I have to dis agree Elliot it’s not “just infrequent auctions for privately owned domain names that have reserve prices. ” it is common practice.

    SMac

  6. “is the reserve price set for a particular domain name that has been placed in a private auction ”

    Not true.
    I am seeing it biding in pre-release auction which are not private owners.

  7. If you guys only knew. Name Jet should NOT be having the mysterious software come in at the last minute, jacking the prices up. If the auction only goes to 50.00, then 50.00 it should be.

    What a joke. If I thought consumers could be so stupid I would started my own name catch service.

    Wait? Maybe I let that name drop? What?

  8. When I first started noticing the “NameJet Reserve” bidder, I thought maybe it had something to do with the interplay between NameJet and SnapNames. I thought, for example, that if the max bid at namejet was $500 and you had someone on SnapNames who’s starting bid was $800, then the NameJet Reserve “bidder” would come into play. I still wonder about this.

  9. It sounds to me that this “Namejet Reserve” is their way of listing decent to half decent names without reserve to encourage bidding or create a fake frenzy (since there is no reserve), but at a certain point, the reserve is plugged in through bidding by this virtual bot user. So what this does, is give the illusion of a “No Reserve” auction listing but in fact, it is a “Reserve Auction” the only difference is that the reserve just suddenly shows up through a bidding account instead of being revealed at the start of the auction. When you think about it, they already have a reserve auction system in place, how hard is it to use it for all auctions. It’s a trick to encourage and create a HYPE where none would’ve been possible had the reserve been stated from the start.

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