Should domain brokers disclose renewal fees to buyers?

In case you missed it, last week two well-known folks from the domain industry, Andrew Rosner (Media Options) and Ryan Colby (Outcome Brokerage) had a disagreement, that went public on NamePros last week. The thread seems to have been taken down, but here’s a quick recap of what happened:

Andrew bought a domain name for $5,000 from Ryan, and it turned out that the domain name has a $1,000/year renewal fee. So as you might imagine, Andrew wasn’t very happy about the surprise renewal fee and asked Ryan for his money back. Ryan responded and told Andrew that he was not responsible for telling Andrew about the renewal fee and that as the buyer it was his responsibility. The two had a bit of an exchange and since the post was taken down from NamePros I’ll leave it with this high-level summary.

I personally do think that domain brokers owe it to buyers to disclose critical details like this, period. A premium renewal fee of $1,000+ is quite rare and this is definitely information that as an investor, you would need to know to make a decision. But that’s me, now I want to hear from you.

Do you think domain brokers should disclose things like premium renewal fees to buyers? Comment and let your voice be heard!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton