I had a client once, He a owned a premium domain, one that would fetch 50K easy if it dropped, it was expiring at Network Solutions and 2 weeks into expiration, so he caught it in time before the auction date, But after logging into his account he found he was not able to renew it, so he called NS and they gave him a hard time stating he had to pay a penalty and Fax ownership information, after arguing for over an hour on the phone and escalating the matter, he was able to renew it.....During the call he asked; how many days did I have before I would of lost my domain? Answer: 60 days.......Liars
With the amount of money NS is earning on drops, examples like this are only going to get worse, doing everything they can to encourage domains to expire...I agree that Godaddy is guilty of this too. ICANN has had their head in the sand for WAY too long.
Here's the message Netsol sent to me about their new service:
" Network Solutions
<
[email protected]> to me
More options Oct 10 (17 hours ago)
Network Solutions(R) is excited to introduce our new expired domain name auction partner, NameJet(TM). At this time, you can continue to get available, expired domain name(s) through the enhanced backorder service from NameJet.
Any backorder requests for domains that expired on or after September 21, 2007 and are scheduled to go to auction October 27, 2007 or later will be handled by NameJet, our new auction provider. If you have already placed a backorder request with our previous auction provider, SnapNames(R) for domains coming up for auction after October 27, 2007, you must place a new request with NameJet in order to participate in the auction.
Backorder requests expiring prior to October 27, 2007 will still be handled by SnapNames. If you have a SnapNames account, it will remain active, however SnapNames will no longer carry Network Solutions expired domain name inventory. All backorder requests for Network Solutions inventory will need to go through NameJet.
If you have an existing ClubDrop account, you can use your existing ClubDrop log-in information with our new provider, NameJet. ClubDrop has been re-launched with many new features and enhancements under the brand name NameJet.
For more information on our enhanced Backorder Service from NameJet, please visit
http://www.namejetinfo.com.
You can easily set up a new account and place your requests with NameJet, by visiting
http://www.namejetsignup.com.
Sincerely,
Network Solutions(R) Customer Support
Please do not reply to this message. For any inquiries, contact Customer Service. (
[email protected])"""""
For those of you who aren't aware, ALL expiring and dropping domains come from Registrars, so whether they use pool, or snap, or godaddy or clubdrop, all of it originates from the registrar who gets a piece of the action.
It is in the registrars BEST INTEREST FOR PROFIT MARGIN to get that domain to drop, and I know that some registrars (i won't name them here, i need to keep my consulting jobs LOL) will actually have people MANUALLY review the domains in your expiration log, and pull those domains out to the ERGP position of the "save it by paying $160" way before any other domains that are of lesser value and that are expiring as much as 10 days prior to the ERGP status. In other words, registrars are actively pursuing YOUR domains if you let them slip past their expiration date while trying to decide to renew them or not. They are looking actively for domains that they think they can resell in auction to gain a significant profit from your loss. Their second "profit margin" if you decide to renew, is the $160 ERGP payment, even though the domain hasn't gone more than 32 days.
I had the unfortunate experience while producing the Domain Roundtable Conference of having about 10 valuable domains expire, and my experience with my registrar was that they usually gave me about 5 to 6 weeks to renew... so all I did was follow the last domain in the expiration list by date to make sure I knew which domains I had reviewed and was "thinking" about. Unknown to me, the registrar had pulled the premium domains immediately at the 28 day mark and ran them into ERGP, which put all the domains at the bottom of the list if the list was ordered alphabetically. Since I figured I had already reviewed the domains BEFORE they went into RGP, i never looked at them again because I saw domains with expiration dates a week prior to those domains still available for $7.
Then one day, I tried to renew a domain that had expired, with at least 15 other domains that had expired a week earlier but still were available for $7, but this domain somehow got pushed to the $160 pricing. How could that be? After some back and forth communication with the registrar, they admitted they pulled certain domains after 28 days and left other domains to sit at $7 for six weeks -- and the premium domains were pulled after only four weeks, and priced at $160.
It's all about profits, people. I don't trust any registrar, although I'd like to get to know more about Rebel.com, which professes not to have any interest in you other than you registering your domains.
All the other major registrars are making huge profits from you forgetting to renew, or somehow letting domains slip through, and then sending them off to their own auction houses or contracted auction houses such as Snap or Pool. There's nothing illegal or immoral or unethical about this system. It's just the law of the Domain Industry Wild West land rush. This may change in the future, but in the meantime, keep an eye out for your premium domains, set them to autorenew if you have the time to search them out.
Domain management is a serious job for domainers who own more than 2000 domains. heck, its serious for anyone with over 100 domains.
As far as Snapnames is concerned about losing NI as a source of expired domains, I wouldn't worry about them. They've seen it coming and have lots of tricks up their sleeve to stay alive and well in this industry. Jay's post on his blog about them being "dead man walking" is just Jay's attempt at drama. Snap, backed by Oversee, will still remain the top online auction website for domains. Everybody who knows Snap and Oversee agrees with this... no worries for them. Namejet will be just another weak website stumbling along like TDNAM.
Enom will probably understand this soon enough and move back to Snap quickly. What true domainer wants to do business with NetSol?
Raise your hand, let's do a quick count! :lol:
