Hosts.com - How Name.com defrauded me out of a great backorder

[GoWebnames.com]

Ok, here is a recap of what happened in short in last 10 days:

1) I was checking expiring names at Name.com and saw Hosts.com available for backorder since the original owner didn't renew it for some reason best known to him. Couldn't believe someone would let it expire, it's registered since 1998

2) Since Name.com accepts only 1 backorder per available name, I placed a backorder immediately and double checked to make sure if backorder was not available to anyone else. Soon as I placed a backorder, Hosts.com said it was not available for any other backorders.

3) The backorder was SUCCESSFUL and CONFIRMED to me by Name.com on my email (see screenshot)

4) 4 days later, I saw my backorder change to not available in my name.com account and when I checked Hosts.com again, it showed to be available as a PREMIUM NAME with Name.com

5) When I enquired with Name.com, they gave a vague answer saying backorder is only possible when Name is available.

6) I enquired through their interface, they gave me a BIN price of $175,000 for Hosts.com

Can you believe it? Name.com just defrauded me out of a great backorder and kept the name for themselves.

I am trying to talk to them , let's see what comes up.

Is there any possibility of a law suit here in case they don't transfer the name?

Here are the screenshots:

 

[carob]

Ive learnt that you never search for your names using one of the big registrars, use a small one to find the names, then go to your usually registrar to grab the name

Yes there are a lot of reports of registrars using the search data to grab names.

There is no need to search WHOIS at a registrar, ever - I have not for at least 5 years. What you need is a simple WHOIS client on your pc to do it direct for you. It's normally inbuilt in Linux, and you can add it in Windows:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb897435.aspx
tutorial: http://www.devcurry.com/2010/03/whois-information-using-windows-command.html

or http://sourceforge.net/projects/whoiswin/

I hope that helps everyone that needs it.

 

[carob]

So what was stolen and from whom? Do you think that there is an argument that the name was stolen from the general public?

If the name had dropped, arguably the original owner could have tried to dropcatch it.

As for the order the OP paid $50 for, does its TOS contain getout clauses allowing them to not supply the name, such as "at our discretion"? And if so do they refund the $50 ?

 

[gilescoley]

They may even track your sales and have a special gilescoley tracker or something

I bloody hope not :D

 

[Sheogorath]

It seems the domain status is no longer in autoRenewPeriod which may indicate that the original owner renewed it(as expected).
The only remaining status code:
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited
You have my condolences, @GoWebnames.com

 

[Name Trader]

SUMMARY: Stop trying to defend Name.com's actions and say that it is "Industry Standard" when you know down right what they did was wrong, illegal, immoral, unethical and absolutely stupid, because they thought no one would notice.

We don't know that for sure yet, because we have not heard their side of this issue. That's the only difference we have, imho. I must be watching too much Fox News and listening to their term, Fair and Balanced. I don't want to convict Name.com until I've heard their side of this story. You want to convict them without even hearing their side of the story. I'm accepting it is not looking too good for them, only having heard one side of the story. But that always happens when you only hear one side.

On the other remarks about the Domain Industry being the Wild West, without any honor. I believe this to be true. Which means GoWebNames.com is unlikely to find any justice, whether it be deserved or not. That's the plain truth of the matter.

 

[chickenfillet]

It seems the domain status is no longer in autoRenewPeriod which may indicate that the original owner renewed it(as expected).

Please, if you haven't been following the thread from the beginning and haven't read every post, then do not reply.

I will bring you up to date. The owner had other domain names that expired on very similar dates such as myintellipath.com. This domain name was not renewed by the owner Dan Sheley. Now, this person has never used Whois Privacy on any of his domains.

It's not logical for him to do all these things the moment his domain hosts.com expired:

1. Add Whois Privacy
2. List it for sale

It's pretty obvious it wasn't the original owner Dan Sheley doing this.

We don't know that for sure yet, because we have not heard their side of this issue. That's the only difference we have, imho. I must be watching too much Fox News and listening to their term, Fair and Balanced. I don't want to convict Name.com until I've heard their side of this story. You want to convict them without even hearing their side of the story. I'm accepting it is not looking too good for them only having heard one side of the story. But that always happens when you only hear one side.

Do you want me to get Name.com also known as Domainsite.com to reply to this thread? I'll do it right now. I know they will have nothing to say about this. What other side of the story do you want to hear from Name.com?

But just to let you know, if this thread gets deleted per Name.com's request, don't try and defend Name.com anymore, it's foolishness.

 

[Name Trader]

This is ridiculous. Name.com have to reply to ICANN's request. Are you predicting they are going to ignore that request? I get the impression your feelings about Name.com are tainted with hatred. You cannot see/think clearly.

 

[chickenfillet]

This is ridiculous. Name.com have to reply to ICANN's request. Are you predicting they are going to ignore that request?

I wouldn't have a clue. Judging by Name.com's previous actions in acquiring hosts.com illegitimately, anything is possible. Maybe they will ignore the request completely, who knows.

 

[Name Trader]

There you go again accusing Name.com without listening to what they have to say about it.

 

[Keith]

There you go again accusing Name.com without listening to what they have to say about it.

Stub, it's not looking good for Name. They're mistake was grabbing a domain with public Whois and skipping their standard drop procedure.

As for their reply to icann...any excuse they give will suffice. It's a lost cause but at least it puts a bug in the room!

 

[matrigaldo]

There you go again accusing Name.com without listening to what they have to say about it.

Not only Name.com doesn't have the chance to explain the situation, but in this thread i read a lot of accusations without producing any certain proof.

Yes, it's "misterious" and confused. It's possible (i would also say probable) Name.com has been done something not completely legit and fair with Hosts.com.
But nobody can be sure about what happened, how the company related to Name.com acquired the domain, if with a unfair procedure or with a legit acquisition, nobody has certain proofs.

It's not very rare, within domain industry, seeing a registrar "playing dirty" and probably it's more common than we already know, but at the moment there are only non-conclusive evidences about Name.com bad behaviour.

Some users is acting like they've been defrauded by a sure acquisition while they can't really know what the h*ll is happened and what would have happened.

 

[chickenfillet]

What is stopping you from contacting Name.com and telling them to reply to this thread? If they've been wrongly accused, let them come here and tell us what's going on. Everyone here is just yapping "they don't have a chance to explain the situation" or "without listening to what they have to say about it". I'm listening, but what have they said? Nothing.

Is that too much to ask? Go ahead, contact Name.com yourselves and tell them to come over here and explain what is going on. Why haven't they done so already? Are they hiding something? If there's nothing to hide, why are they so secretive? They added Whois Privacy? Huh?

 

[DU]

Stub, it's not looking good for Name. They're mistake was grabbing a domain with public Whois and skipping their standard drop procedure.
As for their reply to icann...any excuse they give will suffice. It's a lost cause but at least it puts a bug in the room!

What exactly do you think they are guilty of? Last time I looked there were no specifications or policies prohibiting or restricting warehousing by registrars - maybe there has been a recent change I'm unaware of? If there were something, I presume it would be an end to pre-release sales at NameJet/SnapNames/GoDaddy etc. etc.

There was a thread somewhere on NP where no one thought twice about registering (or stealing in this thread's parlance) from the deceased beneficiaries. Seems things are only unfair when others benefit.

But it's Demand Media now - a sleazy company if ever there was one.

 

[carob]

Stub, it's not looking good for Name. They're mistake was grabbing a domain with public Whois and skipping their standard drop procedure.

As for their reply to icann...any excuse they give will suffice. It's a lost cause but at least it puts a bug in the room!

Well the question is, what are ICANN's formal procedures for handling a complaint and can the public see what the procedures are? Do ICANN publish info on actual complaints, either individual or generalised? How do ICANN handle complaints made by a third party?

Do Name.com have a formal complaints procedure and has OP used it?

What are the TOS of the service OP paid $50 for?

Is the domain now being publicly offered for sale, or was that just by email to the OP?

 

[DU]

Well the question is, what are ICANN's formal procedures for handling a complaint and can the public see what the procedures are? Do ICANN publish info on actual complaints, either individual or generalised? How do ICANN handle complaints made by a third party?

It is not ICANNs mission to resolve individual complaints - if they see a trend or repeat issue then they make do something. All they do is forward the complaint on to the registrar who can (and should) ignore you.

 

[carob]

It is not ICANNs mission to resolve individual complaints - if they see a trend or repeat issue then they make do something. All they do is forward the complaint on to the registrar who can (and should) ignore you.

OK it looks like the relationship is they offer the registrars an accreditation (RAA), which not all registrars have, so ICANN could - if they wanted - withdraw the accreditation which might have no effect at all.

According to ICANN's site Name.com are RAA accredited with them.

https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2007-03-06-en says this

If you have a complaint that concerns a matter addressed in the RAA, you should contact ICANN for assistance at http://www.internic.net. In summary, registrars are obligated to provide the following customer service related services pursuant to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement:

1. Registrars must adhere to consensus policies (http://www.icann.org/general/consensus-policies.htm) e.g, Inter Registrar Transfer Policy, Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, Whois Data Reminder Policy, Whois Marketing Restriction Policy, Restored Names Accuracy Policy and the Expired Domain Deletion policy.
2. Registrars must timely populate Whois data
3. Registrars must timely submit updated registration information to registries.
4. Registrars must provide public access to Whois data.
5. Registrars must require all Registered Name Holders to enter into a registration agreement that includes specific provisions.
6. Registrars must investigate reported inaccurate contact information.

ICANN’s mission does not include resolving consumer complaints that fall outside of the RAA. Complaints about a registrar’s performance that cannot be resolved with a registrar and fall outside of the terms of the RAA may be addressed by private sector agencies involved in addressing consumer complaints (i.e. The Better Business Bureau http://www.bbb.org/), by law enforcement agencies or by governmental consumer protection entities (i.e. The International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network http://www.icpen.org/). ICANN does not address consumer complaints pertaining to the following matters:

1. Spam complaints
2. Website content complaints
3. Failure to timely answer phones
4. Failure to timely respond to e-mail messages
5. Over billing/ Multiple billing
6. Computer viruses

Details

• 
  ICANN Announcements
• 06 Mar 2007

Note this

Complaints about a registrar’s performance that cannot be resolved with a registrar and fall outside of the terms of the RAA may be addressed by private sector agencies involved in addressing consumer complaints (i.e. The Better Business Bureau http://www.bbb.org/), by law enforcement agencies or by governmental consumer protection entities...

 

[Name Trader]

@chickenfillet - This is not my complaint. That's up to GoWebNames.com to ask, if he wants to. But there is so much BS in this thread, I have a feeling it might antagonize Name.com, so would not be in GoWebNames.com best interests, imho.

 

[Name Trader]

Stub, it's not looking good for Name. They're mistake was grabbing a domain with public Whois and skipping their standard drop procedure.

As for their reply to icann...any excuse they give will suffice. It's a lost cause but at least it puts a bug in the room!

I agree it's not looking good for Name.com sitting and looking from this side of the fence. I have never said anything other than that. But it might be that we don't know under what circumstances this came about, and who now owns the domain. They should have the right to explain their side of this story. *

As I've said before, I don't think GoWebNames.com has much of a chance with his complaint, because he essentially place a backorder which is predicated on the domain dropping, which didn't happen, for whatever reason (which some people in this thread are guessing what happened... which might or might not be a correct assumption). And in any case, should it have actually dropped, I think the chance of Name.com capturing it, is bordering on 0% chance.

* For example, could it be possible that a beneficiary of the old owner, realizing the value of the domain, asked Name.com to renew the domain and paid the renewal and redemption fees, and then asked them to put the domain under privacy, and to offer it for sale to interested parties. This explanation also fits these facts at least as well as all the accusations flying around here.

 

[carob]

As I've said before, I don't think GoWebNames.com has much of a chance with his complaint, because he essentially place a backorder which is predicated on the domain dropping, which didn't happen, for whatever reason

The service he paid for is like godaddy expiring domains - to get the name before it ever drops. So the thread title is misleading when it refers to "backorder" and there has been a lot of confusion in the thread because of this.

 

[domainventure]

The registrar's primary responsibility is that towards the registrant. The original registrant has been able to renew his domain for 15 some years without any issues and I'm sure that the registrar had also provided the required domain expiration notices to the registrant till the point the domain expired. There is no fraud here. Fraud happens when the registrar is complicit in the domain being removed out of the registrant's account without the registrant's knowledge or allows for someone else access the account and remove the domain etc, which has clearly not been the case here...

In a pre-release kind of scenario, OP tried to buy the domain by placing a non exclusive 'option to buy' where the sale was NOT guaranteed.

I do not believe the OP has a shot at this, it's like missing the mega millions by one number, the crucial number.

Just my opinion, and please it's just my opinion.

 

[VirtualT]

There is no fraud here.

I tend to agree, as I said before you have to expect a business will operate within its regulatory framework to maximise profit, they would be silly not to if everyone else is doing it. The real question is whether its ethical or not, which is complete other argument.

 

[Name Trader]

The service he paid for is like godaddy expiring domains - to get the name before it ever drops. So the thread title is misleading when it refers to "backorder" and there has been a lot of confusion in the thread because of this.

You are wrong. You can only place a Nabber Backorder on domains which are actually going to drop in the next few days, according to the description on Name.com website.

 

[Name Trader]

* Another scenario. Maybe the original owner had some domainer friends? Realizing what was going on with his portfolio, maybe one of them did a deal with the beneficiaries. A slight twist on the above scenario.

 

[DU]

The real question is whether its ethical or not, which is complete other argument.

The real world's economy is fueled by ethics... businesses burn ethics and morals and reap the byproducts of ill-gotten gains.

I'm not sure the point of this discussion.

 

[DU]

* Another scenario. Maybe the original owner had some domainer friends? Realizing what was going on with his portfolio, maybe one of them did a deal with the beneficiaries. A slight twist on the above scenario.

No one cares about the original registrant, it's all about the domaining implications.

What's the point of speculation? Research and find out or move on imho.