The other day we got the below email forwarded to us from an excited client wanting to know what their next step should be:

Dear sir,

we are interested to buy your domain name [REMOVED] and offer to buy it from you for 70% of the appraised market value.

As of now we accept appraisals from either one of the following leading appraisal companies:

sedo.com
pozde.com
moniker.com
accuratedomains.com

If you already have an appraisal please forward it to us.

As soon as we have received your appraisal we will send you our payment (we use Paypal for amounts less than $2,000 and escrow.com for amounts above $2,000) as well as further instructions on how to complete the transfer of the domain name.

We appreciate your business,

Thanks,

Peter Jackson

I knew it was a scam from the moment I saw the name. Could Peter Jackson, the director of Lord of The Rings/King Kong want a domain? Okay we know its not him. But really, even if it’s another Peter Jackson, this is a total scam. A quick Google search finds that Peter Jackson’s name is associated to the latest flavour of this scam which has included: “Richard Smith”, “Mark Brown”, and “Jeff Lewis” . There is some speculation this is an email marketing campaign by Pozde.com to gain market share in the domain appraisal business. Some say bad publicity is better than no publicity. In our view, if this is an email campaign to drum up business, they get a big F for failure.  Using email in this way will cause more harm than any good that will result. The cost of fixing this ill advised marketing campaign will require hours (possibly days) of  goodwill marketing. Actually, this is a good lesson. If you plan on mass (and possible shady) marketing tactics, be prepared for internet backlash. It is better to be honest and use “white hat techniques” than try to fix a tarnished name in the quest for a quick buck. In the end, we told our client it was a scam and we suggested they delete the email. We encourage you to do the same.