A Biker's Domain

eNom HQ


I talked to GoDaddy and Enom recently and they use the term "Mock redemption" pretty frequently now with their move toward exclusive drops.We domainers are familiar with the term "Redemption", but here's a new twist.At Enom, when some names expire, we expect that they go to the "expired list" where we can select them for renewal. It now appears that some names once expired don't ever make it to that list. Even worse, some of those names when selected to renew are returned with a "This name cannot be renewed" message, and will NOT go to your cart. Worse still, they will pick and choose some names (say that expired 4-3-05) to forward to "mock redemption" leaving names with earlier expiration dates (say 4-1-05) still in the expired list. What a surprise when it's found that the names they chose to move to "mock redemption" are some of the more valuable .coms.The problem is compounded when they pay the fee to renew and all whois services show the expiration dates as 4-3-06 including the whois link at the bottom of the redemption list page on Enom itself. Enom does NOT send the owner (their customer) an email telling them they have done this.I'm also wondering how Enom etc. can list those names as in "redemption" when they are really in "mock redemption"? Further, how can several customer support people at Enom state varying expiration grace periods and the powers that be, may decide to end the grace period on certain cherry picked names at their discretion and in difference to the rest of the expired names?The warnings about the possibility of registrars confusing the order and pushing certain names to redemption instead of other names of the same expiry date to charge the higher redmption fee ($160) or get control of the names (for their move to exclusive drop services) has been warned about before. In the case of Enom, it certainly looks to be happening. Otherwise, how did they decide which names to put through "mock redemption" earlier than the other expired names?What angers me is that I have been a huge customer for Enom, and have had to use domain portfolio software from independent providers to manage thousands of names. When Enom does NOT place some names in the expired list for my renewal and instead picks certain names themselves to renew through this "mock redemption" all my services indicate that these names are still under my email address and renewed. So far all they say is that "yes it doesn't seem right, but that's the policy they have now". Policy? Thank God they haven't gone so far as to set a "policy" that they can just steal the names BEFORE they expire. Maybe that's next.