I am in the USA trying to buy a domain name from someone in Korea. It is registered with ibi.net . Is there a safe way to pay him and transfer it to me? I'm trying to get him to use escrow.com. He now says there is some "certificate of a registered seal" that he needs to transfer ownership for his governement which costs $100. Sounds like a lie to me. Any suggestions?

Rhett

Total BS.

If you must have the domain be aware that he might try to pull off a scam. Stick to using Escrow.com - if he doesn't want to then don't do it.

I have actually translated ibi.net, and it appears that they do require some kind of certificate and other information.

Unless it's a Korean domain (.kr) no certificate is needed by an ICANN accredited registrar in order to change ownership of a domain. Your other option would be transferring it out to your own registrar, as part of the Escrow.com process.

Or, to possibly avoid the $100 fee, have him transfer it to a friendlier registrar in the states and put the domain in it's own little account. Then he can transfer over the account name and password to you. You can change the password on the account and change the whois info.

Either way, I agree with Radistar, escrow.com is worth the money when dealing across oceans.

Good Luck! ;)

just ask him to transfer the domain to another registrar that doesn't charge for this $100 and then sell to you via escrow.com or Sedo.com's escrow service or afternic.com's escrow service