Beware of exabytes.com !!! Canceled my domains with no notice

[imadoer]

I registered 9 domains with this company last march. I decided to log in today to transfer some away since renewals were coming up in a month. Only to find out they canceled my account and deleted all my names and gave me no notice of it. So I lost all my domain names that I had registered there.

 

[Kate]

GD has done the same thing too. New user accounts usually undergo enhanced verification.
What can happen is that if you don't verify payment within 5 days, the names are cancelled within grace delete period (limited loss for the registrar).
Also, as per Icann rules they are normally required to verify your E-mail address. If you don't click on that link, then... yes I think the worst can happen. Welcome to the 21st century, the era of compliance and obedience.

Most likely, their mails were trapped as spam, so you didn't get them. End of the story. A good percentage of legitimate mail ends up as spam and never makes it to the intended destination. So whose fault is it ? Not always easy to tell.

It's one reason why I have always run my own mail servers:

1. privacy
2. security
3. flexibility: in particular control over whitelisting

Many legitimate providers still send mail that doesn't pass standard validation routines, for example lack of PTR records, or worse a misconfigured SPF record or an invalid DKIM signature. I even had to whitelist escrow.com in the past.

However I don't think it is right to charge you without providing service. I would like to hear their justification on that and the timeline of events.
PS: they don't seem to be an Icann-accredited registrar, so they must be a reseller. It means your only recourse is the upstream registrar. Had they been accredited Icann could have forced them to investigate the case, and produce logs and forensic evidence.
PS2: avoid resellers, only use accredited registrars. If you have a problem with a reseller (often a one-man show) it is not certain that the registrar will even be willing to help and Icann is normally unlikely to be able to do anything.

 

[imadoer]

Omfg dude .. leave me alone before i lose my shit

 

[exa-Edward]

Hi all,

We’ve reached out to him (imadoer) personally by PM but was unable to obtain any further information.

According to our investigation, our system detected fraud taking place in the transaction, and we've not registered the domain.

Next, client (imadoer) asked to have "his domain or money back" via ticket on 28 March 2017.
*Refer to case ID #1891742

We already made a full refund via PayPal on 31 March 2017, since we didn't register the domain.

We hope this clarifies your concerns.

 

[MapleDots]

@imadoer - take my advice on this

Unwatch the topic and move on or it will be re-hatched for months. Say your peace and let it go, we heard your beef, some of us even understand it but trying to change other peoples minds is never going to happen.

I learned that the hard way after having a bunch of my posts deleted by the mods. In my life what happens on this forum makes a minuscule difference. Let it go and participate in a different topic. In the end you'll be happier for it.

 

[tldboss]

That is really bad.

@exa-Edward

 

[imadoer]

After contacting chat support they said that my billing info was never verified and told me to contact support by email. I never got an email or anything asking for verification after I registered the domains. They took the payments for all the domains. the domains were registered and were in my account. they never refunded me. never sent me anything at all to give me any notice that I needed to do an additional verification. This is definitely a screw up on their end and even if they give me a refund it doesn't replace the value I seen in the domain names.

 

[kunkka]

That's bad and very rude. What is the point of taking your payments and additionally asking for verification. That should be done before letting you use their services.

Maybe @exa-Edward can do something and help you.
And also @exa-Edward i am interested is there a need to do some additional verification to my account. I do not want to lose my domains.

 

[xynames]

Are you saying that you never paid and so they were removed? or that you did pay for a year but they were removed before the renewal expired?

Did you verify that your payments went through and remained as charges, or were they authorizations that did not finalize?

Or that they were paid for a year but removed after the year when your renewal payment failed?

Each of these is a different situation.

 

[VaibhavA]

I am surprised and also sorry for your loss.

I was using them for hand regs so far, but, seems like they are going to loose business if they dont come forward and resolve this amicably.

 

[xynames]

The point is - making a post like that and not following up with exact details of what happened doesn't even tell me that the registrar was at fault. Or if it was at fault, why.

Absent more details it's just a general "stay away from this registrar" thread....

For example here:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/what-to-do-now-pls-need-urgent-help.1041646/
the OP followed up and admitted that it was his mistake, not Afternic's.

 

[imadoer]

The point is - making a post like that and not following up with exact details of what happened doesn't even tell me that the registrar was at fault. Or if it was at fault, why.

Absent more details it's just a general "stay away from this registrar" thread....

For example here:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/what-to-do-now-pls-need-urgent-help.1041646/
the OP followed up and admitted that it was his mistake, not Afternic's.

I guess u cant read. Support said They deleted them becuase they said my billing details werent verified..

 

[imadoer]

If i didnt pay for the domains why would i be saying something. According to suppoet they where removed because my billing info wasnt verfied. I dont know what you dont get

 

[xynames]

Seems then that OP was aware of the issue 11 months ago, asking for his money back or the domain, 3/28/17. Which the Registrar obliged and refunded a few days later 3/31/17. So why the surprise reaction from OP 11 months later?

I'm not taking sides, just you can't jump to conclusions in these types of threads until all the facts are in.

 

[MapleDots]

Seems then that OP was aware of the issue 11 months ago, asking for his money back or the domain, 3/28/17. Which the Registrar obliged and refunded a few days later 3/31/17. So why the surprise reaction from OP 11 months later?

I'm not taking sides, just you can't jump to conclusions in these types of threads until all the facts are in.

I understand your points but I also see where OP would be upset because there is nothing he can do to get his domains back. Refunds and anything else aside I think he is most concerned about his lost domains.

So when all is said and done one has to conclude the company needs to communicate better with it's clients because this loss should not have occurred. It sounds to me like the OP truly wanted to keep his domains and that trumps everything else. Communication from this company to the end user needs to be improved because it took months (I think) for the OP to discover he no longer owned the domains.

 

[exa-Edward]

Hi all,

I'll give an update once the issue is resolved.

Thank you.

 

[exa-Edward]

We respect our valuable client and will not mention his name in this post.

However, there are a few things that we wish to clarify (especially no. 1 & 5 that make us unable to carry out the necessary investigation):

1) We failed to obtain the domain name, email & other info from him, which are of utmost importance in carrying out an investigation into the case.
2) We found out and assume that the active domain he screenshot above is registered in another account.
3) The other account that is registered under the same name, same company, same domain name has been cancelled in his previous account, and has only one active product.
4) Both the domain name and billing account are still active.
5) There's No conversation in our ticketing system that mentions he has no access to the domain name.
(We've offered to investigate the issue a few times if we can obtain the information from him, such as email, domain name/ ticket ID/live chat timing/agent who informed him that his account is closed. However, until this point, the information has not been provided)

Last but not least, we're always ready to work with him to resolve this issue.

Thank you.

 

[Tunababa8v]

Exabytes has poor interface anyway. They need to upgrade. I guess most people only register with them because of the $3.99 offer.

 

[Jv1999]

ik ima. he wouldn't start this thread unless something was up.

but then again, after exa-ed replied... and xynames did his annoying thing... it seems like the domains were cancelled a few days after reg, but support mis-informed him about it.

I have domains with exabytes, unfortunately, lol. So now I'm going to keep a close watch over them. Hopefully transfer them out before anything weird happens.

 

[DNWon]

Why do you think that happened?

What have they told you about why this happened?

 

[Asfas1000]

What happened to the domains ? Expired / deleted / owned by someone else ?!?

 

[imadoer]

they got deleted and they are owned by others.

 

[JamesCrew]

Sorry to know about it buddy. I noticed that @exa-Edward hasn't responded yet but I hope he responds asap. Nobody wants to lose their domains like this.

 

[imadoer]

He pmed me but what's the point my domains got deleted I lost them there's no way they can make it better I don't care to discuss it at this point

What are they going to do give me $9 back lol

The domains have way more value to me than that

 

[xynames]

Are you saying that you never paid and so they were removed? or that you did pay for a year but they were removed before the renewal expired?

Did you verify that your payments went through and remained as charges, or were they authorizations that did not finalize?

Or that they were paid for a year but removed after the year when your renewal payment failed?

Each of these is a different situation.

As a merchant, if someone makes a payment with me and his billing address does not match AVS (address verification service) or there is some other mismatch issue, I will not accept the payment. This is standard practice. But in such cases I will not allow the charge to capture and it will drop off as an authorization only within a week or so.

I actually have my system set to reject all payments that AVS mismatch, but still an authorization will go through at payer's end. A mere authorization is not a payment.

In extreme cases I might refund the payment even after capture if I have an issue with AVS or something else, but again, my system is set to reject the payment if AVS mismatches although still it will show as an authorization to the payer.