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The warning signs of another RegisterFly
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April 10th, 2008 by 
Jay Westerdal
One of the questions I am asked is how can you predict another RegisterFly situation. A situation where a registrar goes bankrupt and stops servicing its customers. Lots of people were left in a lurch last year when RegisterFly tech support stopped answering tickets and RegistryFly didn’t pay for renewals to the Registry. The result was that the Registry started deleting domains of the RegistryFly customers.
The best way to predict the weakness of a registrar or a possible shortage of cash is when a customer buys or renews a domain name several years out and that renewal is not paid for at the Registry. A registrar can pocket the difference of the money and nothing bad will happen. The domain will continue to exist on the Internet and the customer may not notice the date field at the Registry.
When a registrar uses the money today that is allocated for renewals five year in the future it creates an imbalance in cash available in five years. It is best for the registrar to pay for the renewal today rather then wait. The prices of DotCom continue to go up yearly and it will only hurt the registrar if they don’t purchase the renewal years at today’s rates.
I heard a customer complaining yesterday that they renewed CCCP.com until 2017 and that we were reporting the wrong expiration date. It is sad when I have to report back to the customer that their registrar is cheating them and it is not some glitch with our website. It shows weakness at their registrar and this is a very bad sign for the health of the registrar. The customer jumped up and down claiming the Registrar whois shows 2017 and claimed the registrar whois was more accurate then the Registry. Sad fact is that statement is true the Registrar is the most accurate but the Registry controls the root. The domain expires in a week at the registry and it should be auto-renewed for one more year. If the customer leaves that registrar they will not receive those paid for years. Even if the customer gets the extra year put on at the end and they decide that now is the best time to cut and run, if they jump less then 45 days after the end of the Registration that year will get deducted thanks to a 45 day renewal bug. It is not the end of the world, however this indicates an implosion event in the future at that registrar. ICANN should be monitoring for situations like these. RegistryFly can happen again! Watch for the signs.
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Posted in ICANN, RegisterFly |
11 Comments »
April 10th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
It looks like the expiration has been updated now.
April 10th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
I can think of several:
Domainca.com
, Galcomm.com
, RegistrationTek.com
…why do people even use these registrars? Transfer your domains out…if you still can…nuclear launch codes are easier to obtain than auth codes at most of these registrars.
April 10th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
ICAAN has washed its hands of domain registrants interests when registerfly went mustang. Sure they revoked their accreditation; but the fate of 90,000 domains went hijacked. ICAAN has UDRP to “heavily pressure” trademark rulings and enforce transfers to the appropriate party. There is no reason that ICAAN cannot extend that influence on registrars for improper expiries or fraudulent internal transfers and blatant hijacking. ICAAN reacted like a husband that idly stands by while a passerby decides to rape his wife, with the exception that we PAY for their protection.
Is ICAAN going to become an international organization like the UN? God help us if so. The UN did such a fine job with the oil for food program.
Richard Perilli
April 10th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
ICANN needs a good spanking.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
ICANN is deaf,dumb and blind in all registrant pains
April 11th, 2008 at 6:01 am
I had made the report and cought this error from Parava.net
! I must admit I thought Whois.sc
was showing the wrong info and the reason I contacted them. My friend kept telling me he renewed the domain, but I kept checking whois via Whois.sc
and it was telling me differently. If I checked whois via Parava.net
, it showed the 2017 expire date. After doing much more research after contacting whois.sc
and contating Verisign, Verisign (.com registry) they confirmed that the renewal was not submitted to them.
The registrar has finally submitted the renewal to the registry. The facts are, the domain was renewed 12-26-2007 for the max amount of years and they didn’t submit the renewal to the registry until about 4-8-2008, just 10 days shy of the expire date.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:58 am
I lost several of my domains, including AstrologyForecast.com
, when I had an account with Registerfly.
was showing the renewed expiration date for those domains at that time —
, then Registerfly’s parent company.
The strange thing was, the Whois.sc
the Whois data base for those domains, however, was showing that of ENOM.com
As Registerfly.com
failed to submit my renewal fees in time to ENOM,
ENOM extended the registration/expiration years for those of my domains, misleading me to believe that my domains have been successfully renewed.
However, weeks later when I rechecked my domains’ WHOIS data at Whois.sc
did I find out that they have been re-assigned to other registrants —
ENOM had promptly sold or re-assigned my domains to other registrants (some of them could be ENOM’s affiliates).
When I complained to Registerfly, all they could do was refund some of my renewal fees . . .
I do think those of my domains had been raped and murdered by Registerfly;
and I’m not happy with ENOM, either.
April 13th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
ENOM needs to be spanked as well.
As long as you people put up with this BS from your own colleagues–never mind the Olympia Snowe Bill–then maybe you get what you deserve.
And you wonder why the small domainer does not wish to join ICA? What do you get for your $295 dues?
No vote, that’s for sure.
April 25th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
We were handling Register Fly accounts and helped many a people transfer OR renew their domain names to us. Many a times when people buy domain names, they buy it for a year or two, I hardly see people buy domain names for the full period that is 10 years and hence recognizing a bankrupt registrar is even more difficult.
What I suggest is people should always buy domain names from registrars known to be big OR those backed by Big Registrars. Now RegisterFly did fall into this category but they always had problems with their system and did not provide good support. Those are the first signs of a faltering registrar.
Support is undoubtedly the most important part of any web process. Any ways, may the force be with people and may they never be duped off their domains
ciao
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