- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
Yikes!!!
This sucks! When buying a site I would think any debts owed by the owner would still be their obligation.If you purchased their affiliate accounts too then this would add a new twist to things, but you are indicating that this $5000 debt exists because of a double payment and NOT as a result of fraud.
The double payment was not made to you so I wouldnt feel obliged to pay it, but the problem is the affiliate program controls the purse strings of the affiliate accounts and they may choose to charge this $5000 debt against the account simply because they can! That may leave you holding the bag unless you can get previous owner to pay back the overage.
This is a real head scratcher. The only person I know of who has experience in this area is Tovey. He buys affiliate accounts and websites all the time and may have run into this before. Hopefully he will spot this thread and respond, though you may wish to PM him too.
Please let us know the outcome.
owldeath2 wrote:I have been buying sites like crazy recently but I have received an email to one of them stating that there was a double payment a few months ago and they are trying to retrieve the amount owed, about $5000. They have threatened legal action.Is this my problem?
I will be respecting the confidentiality contract I signed with the seller, although I didn’t understand why they wanted it at the time, I do now.
This is a really good question.
When you buy a company, you are buying the assets
and the liabilities, so it may apply in the case of a website
itself, unless you signed an agreement stating otherwise.
:huh:
I didn’t buy the affiliate accounts, and haven’t even got round to updating all the links yet!
The plot thickens…
As part of the deal I was promised that there was a $5000 media buy deal pending which brought the price of the site down to the level I was prepared to pay. It turns out that this debt is from that very company so in fact you could say I am $10,000 worse off.
I’m not sure if it counts when applied to website transfers as it does in business acquisition.
I have just received feedback from the company and they did seem more interested in getting in touch with the original owner than taking action against the site itself, i.e. me, but who knows..
I am just very annoyed that I was mislead about the media buy, that turned out to be the exact opposite of what was stated. A $5000 debt not a $5000 credit.:sarcasm:
owldeath2 wrote:I didn’t buy the affiliate accounts, and haven’t even got round to updating all the links yet!The plot thickens…
As part of the deal I was promised that there was a $5000 media buy deal pending which brought the price of the site down to the level I was prepared to pay. It turns out that this debt is from that very company so in fact you could say I am $10,000 worse off.
Oh boy … if the media buy was in the name of the
website it may spell trouble.
:crazy:
However, as the contract has seemingly been broken by the other party, I see no reason why I should stick to any of the other agreements such as keeping purchased links up for another five months. This will be grossly unfair to those who bought the links but I have to make up the debt somehow. I would feel pretty bad but there is only one person to blame here.
That is a mess.
I would engage in lots of talks with the company who lost the money.
It should be possible to work something out there.
And as the agreement was broken the confidentiality contract becomes meaningless, which indicates that I can provide the company with the personal details they requested.. I would still like to talk to the original owner first though for an explanation, however he is very difficult to get hold of for some reason…
Oy Vey!
This is a fine kettle of fish.
Whats troublesome too is why didnt the company and the seller work out that double payment immediately? Why was it left hanging in the air to come back and bite you the unsuspecting buyer.
I have seen the history of the email correspondence, it started out with the original owner very irate that he hadn’t been paid yet, with several demands, then finally payment is made and the company notice it was a double payment. Whereupon all correspondence from original site owner stops and there are increasingly frustrated emails to owner from company asking for the return of the money, roughly every month. It happened in June.
Finally legal threats are made.
Professor wrote:Oy Vey!This is a fine kettle of fish.
Whats troublesome too is why didnt the company and the seller work out that double payment immediately? Why was it left hanging in the air to come back and bite you the unsuspecting buyer.
Maybe he was hoping they would forget about it…
I confess I have been overpaid on occasions as I’m sure many here have and it seems to slip my mind to contact the company about it if they don’t notice.. If they do that is a different story of course.
Complex matter.
Assuming that you’re a “bona fide” buyer (in good faith) there’s some chance to keep the domain and the original owner paying all the damages to the prior buyer.
On the other hand in a sue IMO, the owner could be enforced to transfer the domain to the first buyer. And your price reimbursed.
Who is the registrant today?
The first owner?I’m the registrant now. I wouldn’t let it get as far as a sue, and I’m not sure it could really happen or if it would be worth it for that amount – the company is in scandinavia, I am in Europe, the site is hosted wherever ibuilt.net is, as a registrant I am under domains by proxy, the domain is wherever godaddy is and the original owner is in the US. I can’t see how a sue would be viable.
If you’re the registrant now, I think that it is a matter of the former owner and the other buyer.
For some reasons he didin’t made the transfer, but that is not your deal.In a worrying development the company have started to refer to the payment as being owed by the site rather than the original owners name during email correspondence.. whereas they started out just being interested in him and his whereabouts.
