ICANN, no more tasting?

[richterbg]

I have a tasting account at dotcomgenie.com.

It was pretty much abandoned. Today I logged in and noticed the following message:

ICANN Regulation on Tasting:As per the new ICANN rules, refunds will not be provided on deleting any domain after March 31 2009.Due to this our service will become useless after that date.

Is there some official news about this? Please point me a link.

Thank you.

 

[Kate]

It is still possible to taste, but the $0.20 icann fee is not refundable.

 

[ripley]

Basically, registrars will have to limit tasted domains to 10% of their total registrations. So how registrars will deal with that going forward in terms of customer usage policies remains to be seen and will probably be an individual decision.

ripley.

 

[DomainNameWire]

Excuse the link to my site, but this should answer your question fully:

http://domainnamewire.com/2008/12/22/33109-death-of-domain-tasting-or-is-it/

 

[labrocca]

1. A registrar with a large consumer base and low return ratio could run its own tasting operation, limited to 10% of domains it registers on behalf of consumers each month.

I think that's the most likely scenario. Registrars will choose to charge more to allow customer drops but will use a heavy percentage to taste on their own.

 

[richterbg]

Thanks for all the replies. The information provided was very useful.

 

[Sam]

Any clue which tlds are being affected?

.Com and .net only for verisign or are they adding in .org to mix along with .tv.

thanks
sam

 

[HuntingMoon]

it should be across the board, affecting all tld's Sam.

 

[NathanJacob]

I haven't seen any official information/ news later regarding ICANN's new rule pertaining to deletion ~ but then of course there are few registrars out there who charge a deletion fee to curb Domain tasting ......

 

[DomainNameWire]

Here are the official rules from ICANN

http://icann.org/en/tlds/agp-policy-17dec08-en.htm

 

[Expron]

Just got this email from Dynadot regarding the matter:

Dear Expron Solutions,

Starting on April 1, 2009, our Grace Deletion Policy will change due to ICANN's Add Grace Period Limits Policy announcement back in December 17, 2008. You can read ICANN's announcement here:

Advisory: Add Grace Period Limits Policy
http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-17dec08-en.htm

<same link as DomainNameWire's above>

Only generic TLDs are affected by this policy:

- COM, NET, ORG, INFO, and NAME will start enforcing ICANN's AGP Limits Policy on April 1.
- ASIA and MOBI have delayed their adoption of ICANN's AGP Limits Policy until May 1, 2009.
- BIZ will not be changing their current grace deletion policy since they have already implemented ICANN's AGP Limits Policy last year.
- TEL will be enforcing ICANN's AGP Limits Policy on March 24, 2009 (General Availability).

Each TLD affected by this policy will be restricted to the following:

- The deletion rate will be limited to 10% of all new domain registrations for that TLD. (The 10% limit applies to our whole system.) Therefore, we cannot always guarantee a grace deletion.

- The deletion fee will be increased from $0.20 to $1.00.

Please note that we may opt to increase the deletion fee further depending on demand. A list of the current deletion fees will be shown on our Grace Deletions page:

Grace Deletions
http://www.dynadot.com/domain/grace_deletion.html

If you want to be able to grace delete your domains under the old Grace Deletion Policy, please submit your grace deletions before March 30, 2009 5pm Pacific Daylight Time. We cannot guarantee that your domains will be deleted with the old Grace Deletion Policy after this date.

If you have any questions about these changes, please let us know.

Best Regards,
Dynadot Staff
(account expron4)

 

[MicroGuy]

Only generic TLDs are affected by this policy:

It will interesting to see if tasters shift to ccTLDs.

 

[wangjinhk]

I also got the same email from Dynadot.

 

[Brujah]

Enom
Effective April 1, 2009, ICANN will be implementing the new Add/Delete Grace Period policy. In preparation of this new policy, eNom is removing access to the Delete Command within its API. Enom will remove access on March 31st, 2009.

 

[Dave_Z]

It will interesting to see if tasters shift to ccTLDs.

Depends which one/s will give more potential bang (or bust) for its buck.

 

[squatter]

I would say that ccTLD appear more attractive domain names... No idea but possibly that is new and that's why that is attractive. No idea.

 

[Ja$on]

I really love this change. :D

 

[aliweb]

I think even though it is only 10% of new registration for a particular TLD, in reality it will be always more than that. For e.g. if 100 domains are registered on April 1 then say after 5 days only 10 domains can be deleted. But then by that time number of registration would have also increased for e.g. to 500 which means now after 5 days instead of 10, 50 domains (10% of 500) can be deleted. New registrations will always be greater than deletions. May be somebody in mathematics/statistics can show a better picture using sales analysis, probability e.t.c.

 

[FreshAvails.com]

I believe it will be based on monthly perfomance by registrar. (This number includes new registrations only so renewals will not allow registars to boost their tasting. How will this affect tasting? Lets have look at some numbers.

Looking at .com...

GoDaddy does about 200K adds per month (Educated guess) That represents a 20K a month allotment of drops, Less than 700 a day, not many and they would likely keep the abillity to refund their "end-user/consumer" customers so tasting for them is just about out.

Enom which is the next biggest registrars drops to around 70K new regs a month (Again, an educated guess) or 7K name available for tasting. Through it's resellers and various registires, they were tasting and dropping hundreds of thousands of names a month, if not millions. This would give them 233 a day to taste. Not a whole lot of wiggle room if there is a spike or extenuating circumstance.

The next biggest registrar is doing a fraction what Enom is in terms of new regs a month so tasting after that is going to be microscopic!

Tasting will be reserved for a very few of the top customers for any registrar, if it continues at all.

 

[daj]

I'm excited about this!