enom reseller trying to steal my domains

[PokerPie]

I paid an enom reseller for two domains and also contracted him to make a website for me. He delayed making the website for a year and when he finally completed it I refused to pay him because I had already found somebody else six months prior (he had no communication with me this entire time).

Now that I wont pay him he has removed the domains from my account and I have no control over them. He hasn't pointed the domains anywhere else yet and my sites are still live, but I have no control over the name servers and cannot transfer the domain like I would like to do.

Can he do this? Can I go complain to enom and get my domains? How would I go about doing that without having to get a lawyer?

I have proof that I paid him for the domains.

Thanks!

[Johnn]

What do you mean by you paid him for 2 domains? If you purchased the domains then they should be in your account. The web design is a separate task and has nothing to do with the ownership of the names.

Is he a member here? Please clarify your situation.

[PokerPie]

The domains were in my reseller account with him. Now he has removed them because I did not pay him for the development services (though I did pay for the domains and have proof of that). I do not and have not worked with enom for these domains, I work with him.

I do not know if he is a member here but I did not meet him through this forum.

[jdk]

It sounds to me if you purchased the domains and they were in your enom account, then you can contact Enom and explain what the reseller is doing and they should be able to have them moved back into your account.

[tzsxc]

alot of registrars started as resellers for other registrars. Namecheap and registerfly are 2 good known ones for ENOM. So my impression is that resellers have a lot of freedom at ENOM. Your best bet is to get a lawyer or if the domains are worth much more than what you owe him, just pay him. Lesson learned, having domains in a sub-account of a reseller account is not good.

[jdk]

If the guy did this who is to say he won't keep the domains after he pays.

[tzsxc]

have the guy push to a different ENOM account. Not back to the sub-account

[Johnn]

I still don't get the part "you paid him"?
If you purchase the names from him then he pushed the names from his account to your account.
If you registered the names yourself then you pay Enom, not him.

In any event he has no right to take the names away from your account.

[PokerPie]

Can somebody clarify how much power the resellers have here? Does anybody have experience with this? If he wants to just keep the domains can he or will enom force him to give them back to me if I paid him for them?

John,

I never worked with enom, I only worked with him. I did not have an enom account I had an account with his hosting company.

[tzsxc]

enom has resellers. Resellers are allowed to have subaccounts for their customers. This is how namecheap and regfly operated. So resellers are a gray area. They aren't a full blown registrar or a personal account. Thus it is unclear what ENOM would do to mediate disputes between resellers and customers of resellers.

[PokerPie]

enom has resellers. Resellers are allowed to have subaccounts for their customers

Yes, this is correct. John, this is what I had/have setup.

Thus it is unclear what ENOM would do to mediate disputes between resellers and customers of resellers.

I disagree fully with this statement. It should be very clear what they will do. They will either intervene or they wont. They will have a policy of 'nothing we can do, its up to them' similar to how ICANN treats registrars (save for a UDRP, a court order or an extreme case)...or they will say 'yes, we will intervene if they do something outside the rules'

Anybody know which it is?

[tzsxc]

when i said unclear, i meant i did not know. Anyways, it looks like enom does not get involved in these disputes. Read part 2D in this link.

http://www.enom.com/terms/agreement_reseller.asp

[sdsinc]

1. Check the whois for the domain and verify that it is registered in your name
2. Contact the upstream registrar (Enom) and request that the name be put into an Enom account - create one if needed.

This is why you should never trust your domains to resellers, webdesigners etc.
For the same reason avoid using the same company for domain registrations and hosting. In case of a billing dispute your names could be held hostage.

[PokerPie]

Thanks for the link. 'Backend service provider' is Enom. It says that the reseller has to pay to enom all costs related to complaints. Clearly they do investigate complaints and presumably sometimes they take action on those complaints?