Buyer Beware: Name.com

[h2o]

Yesterday August 12 I had a LLLL.net in my shopping cart at name.com. My credit card did not go through for some reason so the domain stayed in my cart. Today I check out whoIs info on the LLLL.net domain and what a coincidence! On August 12 someone else registered it and now it is parked. On top of that out of the many registrars available this domain was registered at no other than Name LLC...

The WhoIs info is private and reads this:

Expiration Date: 2009-08-12 13:27:20
Creation Date: 2008-08-12 13:27:20

Name Servers:
NS1.NAME.COM
NS2.NAME.COM
NS3.NAME.COM
NS4.NAME.COM

REGISTRANT CONTACT INFO
Protected Domain Services
125 Rampart Way
Suite 300
Denver
CO
80230
US
Email Address: [email protected]

 

[zero_haze_au]

I doubt name.com had anything to do with this.

I have used both name.com and dynadot.com for over 3 years to bulk search gtlds domains and often return 3 or 4 days later to purchase the name, and their always still available.

IMO name.com is one of the best registrars in the industry.

I have had problems with godaddy though with several coincendental registrations of the domains whilst i was going through the checkout process. 30 seconds earlier their available than just as i submit my order suddenly they appear as already registered :bah:

 

[estibot.com]

Unless it was cars.net instead of something like Qzkt.net, I would say someone else picked it up and your card was denied because of mis entry or something like that.

There's it is.

Look, there are a few things at work here:

1) There exist very few to none such available domain names that people - let alone registrars - would actually want so bad that that they would go to great lengths to acquire, even if it meant scamming, stealing...

2) Whois and registrar searches are being sniffed by tasters who grab the names for tasting, then usually drop them after the 4-day grace period. Happens all the time.

3) Thousands of people (and some bots) are looking for certain type of domain names at all times. It's probably not uncommon to have several people try to register a domain name almost simultaneously.

"Registrar stole my name" - most of the time this is just normal paranoia. Credit cards also get rejected for no reason (or for some reason). You might want to pre-fund your registrar account to avoid this.

It's like when you're walking under a streetlight and suddenly it goes out. It feels freaky, but it happens to thousands of people all over the world every night

It sucks, but your LLLL.net probably wasn't worth any great sum of money, so time to move on

 

[-REECE-]

1- Setup "1 click" order accounts at multiple registrars each using different credit cards

2- Purchase immediately upon discovery the domain is available

Problem solved (if you don't get your domain doing this, refer to Estibot's post as to why) :tu:

 

[Dean]

I now register all my domains at name .com and havent had any problems with them, except I dont think you can taste domains there. I would be surprised if name.com done something like this, sounds like more of a GD move after what they did with .me registrations. There not perfect but better then GD and others and much better then the worst registrar ever, Moniker.

 

[lzy]

...and much better then the worst registrar ever, Moniker.

Care to elaborate on this one? :o

 

[Dave_Z]

normal paranoia

I didn't realize paranoia can be normal. :D

Oh well, some people love being paranoid...

 

[fencer]

Guys there is a simple solution for this issue, just before registering a name buy some credit at the registrar , and then register the domain(s) using the credit you bought there instead of using credit cards or paypal, the other day I had the same problem and they solved it ASAP and they gave me this advice

 

[tricolorro]

Guys there is a simple solution for this issue, just before registering a name buy some credit at the registrar , and then register the domain(s) using the credit you bought there instead of using credit cards or paypal, the other day I had the same problem and they solved it ASAP and they gave me this advice

That's right fencer.

It will also speed up check out which is really important if
you are regging a recently expired domain.

Patrick

 

[Dean]

Care to elaborate on this one? :o

Well first off there availability check doesnt work, only a few weeks ago they kept showing top keywords .bz available and people were able to registrar them even though they werent available. Then it took about a week for them to get a refund after Moniker realised the mistake. Then there was a similar thing with a gTLD also, not sure if it was .info or .org, where it was showing taken domains as available.

Another bug is after I transferred a domain out of Moniker it still shows in there control panel even though it is at the other registrar. This is apparently a common bug according to some other NPer and I have to email moniker for them to delete it from my account.

Thirdly there fees are higher then many other registrars and for some reason they charge a processing fee on top of the cost of domains. Also they claim to accept verified paypal but it never worked the one time I actually tried to register domains there.

Then there are also some minor things, there availability check is to slow, there website design isnt very good, there control panel isnt as easy to use as other registrars and there support isnt fast neither.

 

[lzy]

That's a whole lot actually, thanks Dean for taking time to share.

Another bug is after I transferred a domain out of Moniker it still shows in there control panel even though it is at the other registrar. This is apparently a common bug according to some other NPer and I have to email moniker for them to delete it from my account.

Same thing happened to me at other registrars as well, recently at NameCheap.com. So I'm guessing it's a very common problem registrars face.

Also they claim to accept verified paypal but it never worked the one time I actually tried to register domains there.

Using Paypal via Moniker always works for me however I try to avoid choosing that form of payment due to the additional 4% fees that they passed on to their customers.

The bottomline is, no registrar is perfect. Just find the one that works best for you. :]

 

[Dean]

The bottomline is, no registrar is perfect. Just find the one that works best for you. :]

This is definitely true. I use both GD and name.com, GD when I want to taste a domain and name.com when I dont have the need for tasting the domain since its cheaper.

 

[Name Trader]

There are ways to do safe searches, yet many domainers continue to choose unsafe methods.

I don't believe there is any safe way to do an availability search when the registrar is selling lists of available searches. So, I'd be interested to learn what method you consider to be safe?

 

[kellie]

.h2o - If you'd like to contact me I'm happy to discuss this with you directly.

First, let me thank Reece and everyone else for the positive comments. As they have intimated - Name.com does not review, track, sell or otherwise monitor your searches or what is in your cart - as a matter of fact we don't even save cart contents from session to session so I'm not sure how you could have come back to your cart unless it was within a few minutes. Note: This may be changing in an upcoming release due to customer requests - but that's not the way we roll *right now*.

I've researched ALL of the transactions for that day. There are a total of four 4L.nets that were registered with us on that day and I believe based on the whois data available for all of those that I've located the domain you're speaking of.

I've taken the liberty of looking at other threads you've started here to see if I could find some of your domains with us. I didn't, but I did find domains registered with others via whois and looked you up in our system. I see that on the 11th you attempted to register a .us domain unsuccessfully, but I see no 4L.net attempts. Further, I don't see that you attempted any transactions with us on the 12th. If this is the case I'm doubly confused on how you could have had anything saved in your cart. Do you have multiple accounts with us? I'd be happy to do further research on this.

Based on that I've taken a look into our system to see if anyone had previously submitted an attempt to register this particular name and I see nothing. This isn't fool proof of course, this is just a record of attempts that reach us and fail for payment, etc. So if you did attempt this previously and it timed out or there was a connection interruption before hitting the system that wouldn't show up.

Again, if you want to discuss this, I'm happy to - but I assure you here publicly that Name.com is not in the habit of peering into our customers research activity. As others have stated, we cannot register a name until it's been paid for and 4L domains in .com and .net are very popular and I can see why you would have wanted this name in particular.

I'm very sorry you feel that we've wronged you in this matter.

Kellie

 

[ran_doank]

what? its true?, im just create an account with name.com 5 min ago.. they cheap i think.

 

[Aboutdomains]

what? its true?, im just create an account with name.com 5 min ago.. they cheap i think.

Yes, they are cheap but do someone explain how do they make money?

.com is $5.99

How much VeriSign charge them? It is over $6 and dot Com it about 70% of the domain registration.

 

[Dean]

Yes, they are cheap but do someone explain how do they make money?

.com is $5.99

How much VeriSign charge them? It is over $6 and dot Com it about 70% of the domain registration.

Its called business. They are trying to get a lot of customers and once they do prices will probably rise. The prices are also a bit high for some extensions and I guess they make some of the money like that. Thirdly there is no domain tasting which I guess might save them some money or allows them to taste domains if they want and make money like that.

 

[fencer]

.h2o - If you'd like to contact me I'm happy to discuss this with you directly.

I'm very sorry you feel that we've wronged you in this matter.

Kellie

there you go h2o, check first before making any movement