.ca Canadians Living Outside of Canada

[woolwit]

If you're a Canadian looking to reg a .ca from outside Canada, I hope this post will help save you some time and aggravation.
I'm 1 of 600,000 Canadians living in the Los Angeles area and today I reg'd my first .ca name. I first tried NamesPro.ca but, although I was able to make it all the way to the Submit (payment) button the sale did not go through. I later received an email from support telling me...

It is our security policy to request a copy of the credit card (front and back) and a photo ID to be sent to us. Please provide these documents either via email at "[email protected]" or via fax at 1 (604) xxx-8059.

Does that not seem a little extreme? In my many years of purchasing online I've never been asked to provide that kind of information.
Then I had to discover whether or not the domain I was trying to reg was in limbo (it wasn't, someone else could have reg'd it in the meantime.) Point is, with emails back and forth to CS I ended up spending a bunch of time trying to complete what should have been a simple transaction.
At the 10dollar.ca site I got as far as entering my address into the registration- there were only Canadian provinces and the US was not an available country.
I was finally able to register the domain without much trouble at all and just as one would expect, at sibername.com. It appeared during registration that a qualified .ca purchaser would be able to do so from anywhere in the world.

 

[whitebark]

Sorry to hear you had problems on your first registration! Normally both 10dollar.ca and namespro.ca are top-notch registrars.

Did you register a dot ca for the California connection - CA?

 

[woolwit]

I had read good things about both NamesPro.ca and 10dollar.ca on canadiandots.ca. I'm sure they're both good companies- the NamesPro CS person was certainly professional in his correspondence- but scanning both sides of my credit card and a photo id and faxing it to them?!! I don't think their online form even asked for my cvs.
Perhaps a non-Canadian address triggers something in the transaction. Anyway, it's their business. I took mine to siberrname.com and everything went smoothly and for less money.

But actually no, it wasn't for the California connection. Interesting. Are domainners doing that? It may be
why CIRA is so on top of things (for those who aren't familiar with the .ca registration process, you actually -part of the reg process- open an account with the Canadian Internet Registration Authority when you resgister a .ca. I don't know that much about it, but your registration is according to CIRA.ca terms and conditions, one of which is the Canadian Presence Requirements (ranging from Canadian citizenship to (being) Her Majesty The Queen)
But it's interesting to think about... PalmSprings.ca is much more likely to be clicked on than PalmSpringsOffThe10Freeway.com but I think that's the kind of thing CIRA is there to prevent.
If you have any examples of creative .ca domaining going on I'm curious to hear about it.

 

[whitebark]

I watch traffic to my .ca websites/parked domains closely and I see daily visitors from the US searching with a string containing 'CA' finding their way to my domains. But if you look just about anything and everything connected with California is already long gone in .ca. When .ca domains expire containing California connections they are almost always scooped up. Your example of palmsprings.ca - it's been consistently registered since 2000.

With as many people in California as there is in all of Canada it's a potential traffic source that shouldn't be overlooked. Anyone who meets the residency requirements can register a dot ca and target the California angle. The registrar is not responsible to check if the buyer meets the requirements or not as far as I know. It's up to CIRA to police and police it they do. Sounds as though namespro just has an overly aggressive fraud prevention method in place for non-Canadians.

 

[woolwit]

Very Interesting.
I hadn't planned on working the California .ca 'angle'. But it doesn't surprise me that it's been mined by leagues of domainers before me–pretty much any 'clever idea' I've had so far turns out to have been picked clean. Congrats on nabbing some that are generating cash flow. It was probably a very risky proposition in the beginning.

 

[woolwit]

Very Interesting.
I hadn't planned on working the California .ca 'angle'. But it doesn't surprise me that it's been mined by leagues of domainers before me–pretty much any 'clever idea' I've had so far turns out to have been picked clean. Congrats on nabbing some that are generating cash flow. It was probably a very risky proposition in the beginning.

 

[zhalefarin]

Huh, very interesting. Also, I didn't realize 600,000 Canadians lived in Los Angeles. I would have thought that it would have been available anywhere considering that a site geared toward Canadians could be own by anyone anywhere.

 

[Christopher Hunt]

I am Canadian but own malibubeach,ca, pacificgrove,ca and hermosabeach,ca for the california angle. they indeed get traffic and clicks.

 

[htmlindex]

It is our security policy to request a copy of the credit card (front and back) and a photo ID to be sent to us. Please provide these documents either via email at "[email protected]" or via fax at 1 (604) xxx-8059.

Yes, it does sound extreme. I had the similar crap when I tried to register a .com from Netfirms. In the email they said it's because a lot of fraud was happening. Just didn't bother ever using them again because of that.

 

[DropWizard.com]

I am Canadian but own malibubeach,ca, pacificgrove,ca and hermosabeach,ca for the california angle. they indeed get traffic and clicks.

Well if you ever want to add Malibu.ca to that list for big $$$$ I know where I can get hold of the owner :sold:

The california connection has been solid since the first days of the registry. CA is the abbreviation for california and a lot of people simply carry that into the web for typing in. We have several domains like malibu and all get traffic and earnings.