After sorting through a huge pile of spam responses (my fault, domainer warriors, I gotta get one of those “If you’re on LSD please type in what you see” spam preventer code fields), I found a bunch of legit comments to many of my blog posts. I approved them all so go check and see if your comments are in there! My mistake for the delay. I can attempt to blame it on my wife’s relatives suddenly appearing at my house all this week, but that’s a copout. They’re cool, but that’s why I’m late in approving responses. I was partying too much. So shoot me. FYI, no comment has been abridged or censored, even if nobody talked about “Tommy Boy” the movie, and its intimate connection with the great guys at DNZoom. (Sorry Sahar – LOL)
The issue at hand here is ITSYOURDOMAIN.COM, a fairly large registrar (700,000 domains) which is a supplier of expiring domains to Snapnames auctions. I purchased a few domains for a client of mine last year, and this month they came up for renewal. How did I know these domain names were up for renewal? Because ITSYOURDOMAIN.COM (IYD) sent me an email telling me so. However, I couldn’t login to IYD even with the email address they contacted me with. My account didn’t “exist” under the actual email name they used to contact me.
I posted an earlier article on Successclick about IYD’s shenanigans under the heading “EVISCERATING A REGISTRAR”. I then posted a comment a few days ago on http://www.domainnamewire.com lambasting Elliot Noss of TUCOWS for berating NetSol on their frontrunning practices. I thought it hypocritical of Noss to comment on NetSol’s “frontrunning” after TUCOWS got their hands dirty when they purchased IYD in July of 2007 and apparently did nothing to fix IYD’s shell game. Over six months have gone by and TUCOWS has seemingly spent ZERO resources on repairing this piece of SH*T registrar, IYD. Why should they? IYD is set up to be a cash COW, or even TU cash COWS.
If you read my first article on IYD in my blog, you would know that I thought IYD was changing the whois info on your domains WEEKS before the domain expired. However, TUCOWS responded to Andrew Alleman of DomainNameWire.com, ever so illogically, that they have an excuse for IYD’s showing their whois info, and not the domain owners’. Noss’ excuse? Here it is according to Domainnamewire.com:
“According to Elliot Noss, CEO of Tucows, the bug affects about 600 domains. It affects existing ItsYourDomain customers who win expired domains through SnapNames. After winning the domain, the whois record remains as “Pending Renewal or Deletion” instead of being transferred to the customer’s name.”
Only 600 domains affected? Uh, not quite. If you check my screenshot below, which was taken about 2 minutes ago, you’ll see that Domaintools indicates that IYD’s special “Pending Renewal or Deletion” whois info is controlling exactly “171,640 other domains”. That doesn’t seem to match what Noss is stating that’s it’s a “bug” only affecting 600 domains. It looks suspiciously like almost 200,000 domains in the IYD portfolio are luscious prime expiring targets for resale for TUCOWS, doesn’t it? Or at the least, over 100,000 domains seemingly are under the ownership of IYD instead of YOU. I’ll gladly publish any response to this apparent domain grubbery by TUCOWS. I hate bullsh*tters, and Noss’ response to Andrew is a cattle roundup poopathon. But I’ll be waiting with a team of cowboys with big shovels. Check out this graphic from Domaintools.com
Look at the above graphic, domain warriors. It looks quite obvious to me that tens of thousands of domains are owned under the “special” IYD pending delete whois info lock.
The BIG conference for domain sales is coming up next week, January 21 – 23rd, and it’s going to be a domain auction hoedown at this event. The Domainfest Conference at the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood, California, figures to be the biggest domain sales event of the year. With Oversee’s capture of the most reliable expiring domain auction company (Snapnames) and the most profitable live domain auction system (Moniker), they stand to become the leader for domain name sales at any conference. Domainfest is owned and produced by Oversee.net.
Call out the instigators
Anyone who has bid and won a domain on the expiring domain auction sites knows what it is like to deal with half-assed, no morals, unethical registrars who are submitting their customers’ domains for auction. These registrars (many or most are resellers) are more interested in preventing the renewal of your domain unless it’s $30 a year or more, and who make it almost impossible to transfer your domain out. This blogpost is a followup on my earlier blog post on “REGISTRARS THAT NEED TO BE EATEN”.
Well my domainer warriors, it looks like 2008 is going to be the “Year of the Domain Auction.” In light of this realization, I have a great idea for all independent domainers; Let’s auction off all our domains!
