With too many auction winners failing to hand over the loot, the .ai registry has changed its auction terms to make being a deadbeat more expensive.
The registry has increased its deposit requirement from 2% to 5% for bidders considered “high risk”, which basically means new customers, or $100, whichever is higher. The deposit is forfeit if the buyer fails to pay.
The move comes because too many winners are currently failing to pay. On Twitter, registry manager Vince Cate wrote yesterday:
On http://auction.whois.ai we have had too many cases of people not paying for domains they bid for so we are increasing the deposit requirement to 5% and the non-payment fee to 5% effective immediately.
The registry conducts monthly auctions of expired inventory on its own platform using park.io software and is mirrored at Dynadot. The highest-interest names regularly attract five-figure bids, due to the increasing popularity of artificial intelligence.
Sometimes, the same names show up in consecutive auctions because the previous winner didn’t pay up. In January, for example, dog.ai and insure.ai, which had both attracted bids over $20,000, returned to auction.
The post .ai registry fights deadbeats with tweaked auction rules first appeared on Domain Incite.
