Tuesday, February 05, 2008
What Grace period?
Well, it appears that Enom hasn't yet learned that "Domain Cherry Picking" doesn't earn them any points with their best customers. In fact some are so angry about this activity on the part of Enom, that they believe the best answer is a move to another registrar such as Moniker or Fabulous. "It's a slap in the face" says a long time enom reseller.
The process of "Domain Cherry Picking" is described as when a Registrar picks more valuable domain names from a client's renewal list ahead of earlier expired names, when moving names to eRGP. They then charge a renewal fee of $160 or sometimes higher. This of course makes it more likely the name will NOT be redeemed by the current owner and instead submitted to the Registrar's auction for even bigger profits.
It's been documented that Enom has gone so far as to pull some names over 7 days ahead of names with earlier expiration dates. Of course a Registrar can determine what names might be best Cherry Picked by placing it's own advertisements on them upon expiration and monitoring revenue. The Registrars have amended their terms of service (TOS) over the years to not only allow them the right to this practice, but to also keep the clients whois details on the name while they serve up ads that might put the client at risk.
Both of these actions are clear conflicts of interest between the Registrar and it's clients.
Originally the "Registration Grace Period" (RGP) was put in place to give the Registrar customer a buffer against the risk of losing a name after expiration. That Grace period has been under attack by the Registrars who see a better way to higher profits thru name auctions or keeping the names themselves called "Warehousing". More and more Registrars are continuing to shorten the Grace Period on one hand telling customers they have 30 days, but at a later time pointing to their (TOS) that offers NO assured Grace Period at all. None!
This practice by Enom and other Registrars becomes confusing to Domainers with large portfolios using 3rd party management software, and it appears that may be the Registrar's intent. The objective of course is to shift value from the domainer (the Registrar's client) to the Registrar itself.
Several of my domainer fans (both of them) have been badgering me to write more often. I don't think it has much to do with their appreciation of my chosen topics, but rather more so they can sit back and watch when the flame wars heat up and the .commie clique from Ricks descends down upon me once more.
Hey, I can take it. I'm old and take naps and forget who called me what very soon after having read it anway. Heck, I've been in this game for much longer than most of them, so what do they know huh? How long you ask? Long enough to have coined terms like .commie, alt extensions, domain front running, domain cherry picking, and long enough to have decided to NOT reg Stocks.com and Bonds.com etc etc at $0 cost. The first time I think I heard the term Domainer was in a Wallstreet room where the first dessemination of stock market news was being regularly fed over the Internet. We did it. There was talk of the undesirables laying claim to some URLs and planning actual commercial uses for them. God no! Were we concerned? Not much, because that would mean graphics, and that would just "slow down the Net". Couldn't work, and "they" wouldn't let just one person control those generic names for long anyway.
I'm still wondering when "they" are gonna jump in and take back all those names. Maybe it's not gonna really happen? Maybe Google and Microsoft/Yahoo are just gonna squeeze them so hard with the coming recession, that they'll just have to start thinking about developing and adding real content. Sounds to me like it'll be back to the future with US small business finally looking to get a significant website and buying brandables rather than type-in names. We'll see.
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