TUCOWS BILL SWEETMAN RESPONDS, GETS “STRONG” SUPPORT
February 27th, 2008 Posted in General Domain News
[TUCOWS GUEST RESPONSE TO DOMAIN ACQUISITION BLOG ARTICLE w/ ADAM STRONG'S COMMENT AND LINK TO BACKUP TUCOWS RESPONSE]
“Hi Stephen,
As the General Manager of the Tucows Domain Portfolio, I’d like to address some of the points you made in your blog post.
We have built up our large portfolio of domains in a number of ways. We have purchased entire portfolios of names owned by other companies (or acquired those companies for the names they own), we have bought individual names from domainers, we have purchased names on the aftermarket (through live and silent auctions), we have registered new names, and we have renewed and acquired names that our resellers’ customers have chosen not to renew.
As an ICANN accredited registrar, I can assure you that we are NOT violating any ICANN rules related to acquiring domain names (or any other rules for that matter). In fact, some of the policies we have put in place are even more fair and registrant-friendly than ICANN’s rules. For instance, we have one of the longest expired domain Grace Periods in the industry: 40 days. We also have a clearly defined set of Expired Domain Redemption guidelines regarding how and when the original registrant of a domain name can get a name reinstated.
We also would never deliberately take or “play” with a customer’s domain, although we will investigate any claim regarding this and do everything possible to resolve the situation.
Regards,
Bill Sweetman
General Manager
Tucows Domain Portfolio”
++++++
FROM ADAM STRONG:
“From what I’ve been told Tucows has acquired domains via keeping expiring domains. A practice that other registrars are notorious for as well. Specifically 2 registrars in the Northwest. However, the vast majority of the “good ones” in this list came from the netidentity purchase in 2006. The purchase made sense since Tucows provides an email service and that’s what these domains were being used for. . . more on the service here:
http://www.domainnamenews.com/registrars/tucows-introduces-personal-names-service/1442
“In 2006, Tucows purchased NetIdentity, a business offering email and web addresses for many of the more popular American and European names. Tucows announced today that it has over 150,000 domain names in its private portfolio including 39,000 different surnames, which covers 65 percent of the North American phone book.”
+++++++STEPHEN DOUGLAS SEZ++++++
I thank these two fine gentlemen for setting the record as straight as possible to get me bent back into shape.
THESE AND MORE COMMENTS CAN ALSO BE READ UNDER THE ORIGINAL BLOG ARTICLE
http://www.successclick.com/tucows-reveals-they-have-domains-holy-double-cow-crap_2008_02_27/
2 Responses to “TUCOWS BILL SWEETMAN RESPONDS, GETS “STRONG” SUPPORT”
By Hannah on Mar 26, 2008
Is there any way one can call tucows to task for hijacking a domain? I registered for three years with netnameone, a Tucows’ reseller. They allowed my domain to expire despite payment and numerous attempts to contact them. Tucows does not seem to care even though the Tucows logo is on the Netname one website and they want me to pay the redemption fee plus a new one, even though I already paid for three years. Do a google search and immediately a series of complaints about netnameone pops up.
++++STEPHEN DOUGLAS SEZ+++++
Hannah, you can try to reach Bill Sweetman, whose contact info should be in one of my blog posts. He’s someone who can probably straighten it out for you. Good luck!
By Keith on May 1, 2008
I used a link from Tucows site for reporting a non-responsive reseller to file a complaint about Deborah Anderson and Anderson Creations (dba NetNameOne). I followed up with a phone call to Tucows. I forget his name, but an extremely helpful and sympathetic guy got my domain unlocked within 24 hours of me providing proof of ownership. He then personally kept an eye on it every day while I went through transferring it away from Anderson Creations. It’s rare to experience such ‘hands on’ customer service as I received from Tucows - and I won’t likely EVER forget how helpful they were.
Deborah Anderson really left a lot of people in a lurch. Thankfully, someone else cared enough to make it good. Thanks Tucows!!!
- Keith
++++STEPHEN DOUGLAS SEZ+++++
Well your comment is a welcome update on Tucows service. Thanks for writing and kudos to Tucows.