iRegistrations.com $5.99 with a catch

domains · Jan 15, 2003

I got a marketing email from iRegistrations.com about their $5.99 registrations, so I decided to try it.

I tried two registrations on names that I wanted but didn't care about that much. They were grabbed up immediately for me, and showed up immediately in the the Enom whois. iRegistrations is an enom reseller, but the names are accessible only at their site, not at access.enom.com.

The next day, I received a receipt from WorldPay for $5.99, however it's been a week and they still haven't posted the charge to my credit card.

The catch:

1. There's no way to change the password on the account. You can sell the name, but your buyer has no protection.

2. There's no way to change the credit card data in your account, although it's encrypted, you wouldn't want to sell the name until this problem is addressed. (The reason for the credit card being there is they want to sell you hosting and search engine submit, but you can click that you don't want it.)

3. In the domain contact info, the owner name gets deleted and all the letters of your address get put together.

I emailed iregistrations about the password problem, and they said their developers are working on it. I will email them again about the credit card and owner name problem too.

So obviously, it's not ready for prime time. But, if you have a name that you want to keep, and don't care about not being able to sell it right away, it's a real registration for only $5.99.

ComDeals.com
domains on DNForum and Afternic

d'backs · Jan 15, 2003

I don't get it. Are they making their money from the people who pay the outragous price of $39/MONTH for hosting? I guess they have to, considering they're an enom reseller--enom has to buy the domain name from Verisign-GRS for $6. I don't see the business sense involved here, other then shady and temporary. But, if it allows you to register in YOUR name, who cares, right? Bet, their not in business for long...get your domain now.

iregistrations TOS=

2.6.2 During the promotional period each domain registered automatically attracts the provision of the following services by iregistrations: 50 Mb Space, 2 Gb/month website visitor traffic, 10x POP email accounts, SSH/Telnet, MySQL, CGI-Bin, Control Panel, Search engine submission.

2.6.3 iregistrations agrees to use reasonable endeavors to provide the above services to the account of each domain, but will not be held responsible for any delays in or interruptions to the provision of these services.

2.6.4 The initial 1 month provision of these services is free when a new domain is registered through iregistrations during this promotion. iregistrations normally charges a standard rate of US$39.98 per month for these services.

domains · Jan 15, 2003

Thanks for checking that out. Also, there something else weird in the Terms of Service about registrations being 2-year terms, so I breathed a sigh of relief when I was only charged for one year.

This reminds me of when NameCheap and Stargate were just starting out. Both were extremely shaky and not ready for prime time, but are now ok.

So in light of that, I think there's a chance they'll stick around as long as they don't raise their price. When 10dollarnames.com raised their price to 20 dollars, of course they were destined to go out of business.

Anyway, it was fun to grab a couple of names for peanuts, that I wanted but wouldn't normally buy. I guess 8 bucks is cheap enough, but 6 bucks is REALLY cheap!

www.ComDeals.com
domains on DNForum and the new Afternic