new gtlds Domain Name News That Will Spook You!

[eenmakkie]

Imagine registering a new domain, at he moment you registered the new domain, it was not a premium top level domain. So you pay a fair price for it.
You think it is yours and every year you have to pay the same renewal price.

That is what I did by godaddy.com
I bought a new TLD domain when they came on the market.

started offering it for sale.

Now when the next renewal is coming close, I went to my godaddy.com account and suddenly they wanted 499.99$ to renew the domain for a year. A huge multiple increase compare to the price I paid to register the name.
I called help desk and they told that the domain has become top level domain name as they have seen the value of it.

what?!!!!!

So you buy a domain, spent a lot of money and work on the website, make a business around it, it becomes big on the market, you start to earn millions and suddenly the registrars can ask you what ever they want to renew your domain as they have seen the value of your domain now?

And if you do not pay the extravagant renewal price they ask, it becomes there's? So then they can sell your hard work?

Is this legal?

So what google.com or facebook.com they bought there domains for 1000 years upfront to avoid that the registrar can ask them a couple of billions to renew their domains?

 

[Joe Styler]

While it is true that GoDaddy took the side of SOPA briefly, it was not all of us and the main person who decided that is no longer with the company and has not been with us for many years. We did change course from internal and external feedback. We have since had three CEO's and none of them have supported anything like that. The company has had some big changes and the leadership has been changed ( I think completely) since that time. The new leadership is more in line with what the company and the customers think as a whole and has made changes that reflect that in our brand, attitude, and advertising. I appreciate the feedback but know that there are not any SOPA supporters currently in leadership at GoDaddy.

 

[Joe Styler]

I told you already as much as I can. We have notified people in the past of price increases and I do not see why that would change. No one knows the future so I can only comment on the past and what we will likely do. I know the account representatives for premier services are on top of things and proactively reach out to the customers in advance on things that impact them financially. Also the blogs and forums are on top of changes like this and typically break the news very quickly. Look at this thread for example

 

[eenmakkie]

I told you already as much as I can. We have notified people in the past of price increases and I do not see why that would change. No one knows the future so I can only comment on the past and what we will likely do. I know the account representatives for premier services are on top of things and proactively reach out to the customers in advance on things that impact them financially. Also the blogs and forums are on top of changes like this and typically break the news very quickly. Look at this thread for example

thanks Joe,

so as I understand the account representatives try what they can. But Godaddy as registrar has up till now, no automatic system set up where after they get an automatic notification from the registry about a renewal price hike for a PARTICULAR DOMAIN of one client (not the entire GTLD) that that information is automatic passed over to that registrant (client)?
with more than 50 million domains overseen by Godaddy, only automation will give that security and not human best intentions to help clients proactively .

forums are for general extension information and not for individual domains. As mentioned I have not created this thread for personal help, but for information to help me take good decisions for the future regarding newGTLDs

I know a lot more info then when I started this thread, thanks to all. Again thank you.
But I still have not been given the security and insurance (black on white) .

No registry at all has come forward here confirming they "CAN NOT" or " WILL NEVER" increase renewal rates on individual domain level. (not the entire GTLD ) when still owned/leased by a registrant.

No registrar has come forward giving the security to the registrants that if they receive a price hike notification from the registry of A domain, they have a system setup that always will inform the registrants 6 months in advance about it. (what registrants then do with that info is up to them)

maybe these questions have no good answer yet, for that the silence.

@Joe Styler , what Godaddy premier services you need to have, so support proactively informs registrants on things that will impact them financially in the near future.


@SiteMachine what has namecheap proactively set up for this?


"The past is history, the future stays a mystery"

 

[Asfas1000]

Simply put I am not sure how someone watching the domain market could not know about a price increase in advance.

Why do you assume your customers are watching the domain market...

 

[brindle123]

Millions of GTLDs are now registered X Hundreds of registrars = Hundreds of millions of potential emails to customers about increases.

It shouldn't be that hard to get a notice out to customers. Godaddy doesn't have millions of customers. You wouldn't need to send an email for every domain the customer owns. When a registrar gets notice of a price change, all they need to do is send out a mass email to there customers that own that extension. Easy.

I can send an email to everyone in my contacts list with a couple clicks, so that should be a pretty easy thing for a company to do.

Notice of a price change has to be given to the registrar and ICANN by the registry, so I don't think the registrant should be kept out of this loop. Really this should come down in policy from ICANN, but all businesses involved should give any and all notices to their customers in a timely manner.

 

[Joe Styler]

I really can't answer that question about Mike Berkens and Hexonet. I don't work for that company and am unsure how that can happen which is why at the beginning I pointed you to speak with someone else about that. You could also try contacting Minds and Machines who made the increase. It seems from Mike's article that they did do some kind of alert to Hexonet, what it was I am not sure. There can be any number of possibilities. I can only speak to what I know which is the names you brought up are not able to be raised one at a time. Both companies you have names with that you mentioned here are publicly traded and would likely also make those price raises known to investors before they happened. Both of those companies have not raised prices to my knowledge on any domains.

 

[alcy]

which gtld?

I guess allmore reason stick to com

this does not really apply to gtld domains I own.. with excepton of maybe .one which I regged regular fee at begining when it came out.. and it is possible owners may have made some of my keywords premium.

however, this issue was discussed before.. and the general rule is that they cannot up price without giving you at least one extension chance at your old price. which in turn could mean that if you get that chance, you could probably extend it by 100 years at same price. if you really wanted to secure the domain for yourself.

that's something I heard before.

 

[MisterSoft.com]

I say let the gtlds do this scamming behaviour.. the sooner they self destruct in this way and are off the market completely, the better for domainers.

Agree

 

[wwwweb]

Imagine registering a new domain, at he moment you registered the new domain, it was not a premium top level domain. So you pay a fair price for it.
You think it is yours and every year you have to pay the same renewal price.

That is what I did by godaddy.com
I bought a new TLD domain when they came on the market.

started offering it for sale.

Now when the next renewal is coming close, I went to my godaddy.com account and suddenly they wanted 499.99$ to renew the domain for a year. A huge multiple increase compare to the price I paid to register the name.
I called help desk and they told that the domain has become top level domain name as they have seen the value of it.

what?!!!!!

So you buy a domain, spent a lot of money and work on the website, make a business around it, it becomes big on the market, you start to earn millions and suddenly the registrars can ask you what ever they want to renew your domain as they have seen the value of your domain now?

And if you do not pay the extravagant renewal price they ask, it becomes there's? So then they can sell your hard work?

Is this legal?

So what google.com or facebook.com they bought there domains for 1000 years upfront to avoid that the registrar can ask them a couple of billions to renew their domains?

Isn't there a clause that they have to give you 6 months to renew it at the current price, and you can do so for upto 10 years. You should report it to ICANN, Who is the company, what is the domain, you need to provide all details to get any traction.

 

[dommmain]

@brindle123, I like your spirit, good that you did that

Domaining should be about being the first, that thinks of a name and then registers it. That is the game. That's what it's all about. And of course if it is premium at the moment of registering one knows what to expect.

But a registrar suddenly selectively deciding they want a piece of your pie or even your entire domain name, by making it premium ??? WTF ?!
This should not be allowed all of a sudden after one has registered and holds the name.
A registrar should guarantee this in the market of domaining, this is crucial and should be stated crystal clear.
This is in fact domain theft/fraud from the one company (registrar) that is suppose to serve their customers and protect you against domain fraud and such.

Madness. Turn it around and imagine a gtld becoming very populair and some higher authority decides to take it over.

 

[domainnamesdaily]

Can't you just transfer it to a different registrar?

 

[brindle123]

Can't you just transfer it to a different registrar?

As far as I know the registry is the one that makes the domain a "Premium" not the registrar. So even if he transferred the domain, it would still be deemed premium.

Isn't there a clause that they have to give you 6 months to renew it at the current price, and you can do so for upto 10 years. You should report it to ICANN, Who is the company, what is the domain, you need to provide all details to get any traction.

The terms of service or user agreement says prices can change "without" notice. They don't say anything about the domain being reclassified into a "Premium" domain though.

I'm not sure how it got out there that you can renew at the current or old price for 10yrs or even the next year. That is only the case if you get prior notice via email or find out on here that there is an upcoming price change. Once the price change has gone into effect, you have to pay the new price change. Even if it's not time to renew.

Some of my gtld domain renewal prices have gone up since I bought them two months ago and I have not received a single email stating that renewal prices have changed.

I highly doubt that any action will be taken from ICANN on this issue. I don't even expect a response from them. That's the amount of faith I have in the support from ICANN. I wish they would chime in on this forum to clear things up. I also wish there was a REP from every registry on here that we could hash these things out in the open.

If someone from Donuts is on this forum, please point them out so I can drag them into this. I never hear Reps get involved in these types of threads, because they don't want the truth to come out.

 

[deez007]

So now the real question is....if they are doing this crap with new TLD's then what's stopping them from starting to do the same with .com's /.org's /.net's and just about any TLD they feel like?

 

[brindle123]

So now the real question is....if they are doing this crap with new TLD's then what's stopping them from starting to do the same with .com's /.org's /.net's and just about any TLD they feel like?

I'm not sure if there are price caps in place for other tlds. I think there is some back room deals going on between the new registries and ICANN. It seems like the new registries can do just about anything they want.

Plus there are just too many companies that have spent billions on development if .com sites. If the f'd them, then the whole internet would fall apart, ICANN would be at the center of massive class action lawsuits. ICANN would be disbanded and another agency would take over.

The new gtld aren't being bought up in large enough numbers by the general public, so we the average domainers can be taken advantage of.

Send your complaints to ICANN and hold them accountable for the mess the allow to continue.

 

[dojo]

Ouch, I just bought a .design name from namecheap for a good price. I really hope it won't get to such 'amazing' renewal prices, since it will be a pretty tough pill to swallow. On the other hand, I switched from GoDaddy almost 10 years ago when I was asked to pay a 'redemption' fee of $80 for a domain name that expired. Instead of having a month to renew, I got the fee after 14 days. Fortunately I was able to make the transfer to namecheap and never worked with GD again (nor did I recommended anyone to work with them).

 

[wwwweb]

So now the real question is....if they are doing this crap with new TLD's then what's stopping them from starting to do the same with .com's /.org's /.net's and just about any TLD they feel like?

This would never fly with the .com/.net contracts as they are all priced as one tier, not like the GTLD contacts which provide for premium pricing on certain terms.

This is why many people were against GTLD's, I don't know the fully story, but you have to inform the registrant of an impending price increase so they can be prepared to pay it, something seems broken along the way, hopefully more information comes out.

 

[brindle123]

I just finished reading the Michael Berkens blog about his gtld pricing going up to premium.

He added at the end that there were 5 more domains the the pricing structure changed on. So the total was 25 domains that ended up being much higher priced then what was stated when he purchased the domains.

To me this seems like a reverse domain hijacking case by the registry. Hopefully Michael will get on here and let us know if anything has changed or how he is currently feeling about the gtld market and registries.

I also hope that some of the registries will respond to my "Call out" thread. I'm not going to hold my breath though.

I will also let you all know if I hear back from ICANN regarding the complaint I filed. Hope it doesn't get put into the round file if you know what I mean.

 

[bytedo]

I was wondering what light the TOS would shed on the matter. We now know that it says something about the registrar having the right to increase renewal fees as it wishes. That settles it for me. Legally they can do what they have just done. Dont get me wrong I dont think its right to hike the fee that high and without prior notice but the devil is always in the small prints. If anything, what this shows or confirms is that a host of these ngtlds are being marketed by shady concerns.

 

[pchip]

So ngtld's with premium pricing aren't friendly to either end users or domainers, which raises the question: Who are they for?

For Domain investors looking for the next .com Gold Rush that they missed out on. Unfortunately, not many people have the funds to partake in applying for one of these new gtld's, as that would have been the smarter investment play IMO.

 

[brindle123]

new gtlds came out as an alternative to .com because .com were all reg'd or the owners wanted high prices for them. The same thing can be said for ngtlds. The good ones are held back by the registry and they are asking extremely high prices for them.

ICANN let's them do this type of thing because we do not have lobbyists that smooze with ICANN and can put more than $0.18 in there pockets at a time.

Again we need to band together to fight against this type of theft. Together we own a huge percent of the domain names being reg'd.

 

[brindle123]

One observation I just made...I attempted to renew one of my GTLD's but namecheap would not let me add more than one year to the renewal. Very disturbing. I smell class action litigation.

You need to call them and ask what's up with that. You are supposed to be able to renew for up to ten years. Supposedly!
Not let people renew for more than on eyear so they can change the renewal fee each year. Very disturbing indeed.

Class action coming. I'll be the one to file it if it comes to it! Get screen shots and emails of all this type of stuff. It will help the case!

Try to get emails from tech support also to document everything.

 

[Squekee]

You need to call them and ask what's up with that. You are supposed to be able to renew for up to ten years. Supposedly!
Not let people renew for more than on eyear so they can change the renewal fee each year. Very disturbing indeed.

Class action coming. I'll be the one to file it if it comes to it! Get screen shots and emails of all this type of stuff. It will help the case!

Try to get emails from tech support also to document everything.

Did you see the domain I just registered? We need a collaborative web development team on this one guys.

 

[Squekee]

i like that! Did you edit your post or are my eyes failing me.

I think that domain will come in handy very soon ICANN doesn't get their sh*t together.

Edited lol

 

[Squekee]

Edited lol

Yes I think this domain could be a winner lol

 

[BrandingModel.com]

I was still waiting to hear from @Colin Campbell about the pricing of renewals for LLL.Club as it looks like from the 15th June pricing will be increasing $300+ for LLL.Club domains just unsure about renewal costs with current domains?...

I'm a long term investor so I renewed my VR LLL.Club domains today until 2025...

After that & then what will the renewals be and will it be still attractive to an end user???

I've planned ahead an not planning be stung with outrageous renewal fees from the registrar in the coming months just in-case things do change....

IMO .Club is one of the few nGTLDs that I think will survive and do well in the future...