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.