Sedo.com, one of the many tools in the belt of today’s common-man-class domain hoarder, offers a service where, for $69, they will act as a broker on your behalf in a domain acquisition negotiation.  They, of course, make no promises that they’ll be able to get the domain, but they say they’ll try.  You pay $69 either way plus an additional commission if you end up getting the domain.  If they get you the domain, you must of course use Sedo for the escrow (and pay those fees as well).

I paid the fee and commissioned them a couple of months ago to acquire a domain name for me.  It took them 2 weeks to even start the process after I’d paid the fee with my credit card.  After that the communications between myself and my Sedo representative had a minimum several-day (often up to several week) delay.   The particular squatter that owned the domain I wanted lived in France.  Before I paid the $69 I asked a Sedo representative if they’d be able to negotiate in French for me in the event the squatter did not speak English.  I was assured this wouldn’t be a problem.  Finally, a few weeks later, I got a response from my “broker”.  They, naturally, couldn’t get a hold of the squatter.

Trying to get my money’s worth from Sedo, I inquired about another domain I wanted.  Without even contacting the owner, my “broker” replied with “The company that owns that domain doesn’t entertain offers under $500,000 USD.”  To this I replied, “Would you mind going ahead and sending over my offer for $50,000.00 jus to see what they say?”  That was about two weeks ago - still no response from Sedo.

I get the feeling they are sending an email to whoever is on the WHOIS record of the domain and forgetting about it - not something one needs to pay $69 for.  I won’t be dealing with Sedo in the future.