registrars ICANN terminates 450 drop-catch registrars

[Hypersot]

Full Article:
http://domainincite.com/22261-icann-terminates-450-drop-catch-registrars

 

[Business Brands]

Very good. Hopefully all these registrars, selling .nonsense domain names lose accreditation as well.

 

[wwwweb]

Full Article:
http://domainincite.com/22261-icann-terminates-450-drop-catch-registrars

Show attachment 72502

Seems to more so Pheenix, maybe gorillabob can comment considering he has increased prices many times over the year, and now he is losing registry connections?

 

[anantj]

I commented similarly on the Original Article - I'm also now worried about domains that are registered with these, now terminated, registrars via Pheenix's DC. What happens to them?

 

[wwwweb]

I commented similarly on the Original Article - I'm also now worried about domains that are registered with these, now terminated, registrars via Pheenix's DC. What happens to them?

Don't need worry about them, they will just transfer to existing Pheenix registers, icann has rules about this. They probably already have if you do a Whois.

 

[anantj]

Don't need worry about them, they will just transfer to existing Pheenix registers, icann has rules about this. They probably already have if you do a Whois.

I did check the whois for a few of them and those still had a few funky registrars. But that said, maybe it will happen over the next few days or these registrars haven't been terminated, yet! But glad that there is a mitigation process around this

 

[tonyk2000]

In a newsletter dated 08 Jul 2017, Pheenix announced the next (3rd or 4th?) price increase - "Beginning July 15, 2017, pricing for Gold backorders will increase to $59.99 for com/net" and also promised: "we'll have more good news coming very soon". Assuming that registrars termination is not a good news, I'm wondering what future news was this newsletter about?

 

[dnk]

It is extremely difficult to make any money online compared to 6 years ago, so it was a financial decision as domain investors cannot afford to purchase domains.

 

[Kate]

Maintaining so many registrars is expensive and cannot be justified if they are losing out too many domains to bigger competitors like DC.
There are not so many premium domains dropping nowadays vs 10 years ago.

This should affect Pheenix's catch rate dramatically. Possibly make them irrelevant. Since those shell registrars are barely one year old this must have been an unplanned move.
This is a worrying sign imo.

 

[tonyk2000]

Actually, the whole thing is caused by mismanagement I think. Originally, pheenix worked in a niche of low-level domains ($19.99 backorder fee if the memory serves me correctly). They were able to operate in this niche, most likely with profit, even adding more registrars, and being in that niche did not prevent them from periodically catching domains like for example pet sitters dot com (which they sold for some 5 figures). They knowingly elected to leave that niche by constantly increasing prices (so they did not pay enough attention to the fact how hard would it be to compete with snap/nj/dropcatch) and also went to open auctions model (and there were reports that some mystical nickname "kaizer" appeared, who by some reason was in many cases the only 2nd person who pre-ordered domains even with a limited interest shown by just one other domainer. This noticeably increased the %%% of open auctions). The new model simply did not work, which is why they had to drop 450 registrars going... where? Nowhere.

P.S. When Lee Iacocca, former CEO of Chrysler Corporation, accepted a $1 salary as part of a federal loan package for his company in the late 1970s, he seemed to embody the spirit of sacrifice that allowed Chrysler to survive and return to profitability in the 1980s.

 

[Arca]

This is a worrying sign imo.

Can you elaborate?

 

[Kate]

They paid a lot of money to set up all those registrars. That was almost one year ago and they are already terminating them. I really don't think that could have been the plan.
My guess is that they cannot afford to pay the (annual) accreditation fees, or cannot justify the cost - so they are terminating the registrars early to cut losses. So I suppose the whole operation is not so profitable.
But they will also lose a lot of firepower in the process. A dropcatcher losing 90% of its pool of registry connections overnight is going to have serious problems competing against bigger fish.
Clearly, something went very wrong here.

 

[Domain Lead Finder]

Dropcatch priced them out with their $8 backorders. I saw Pheenix recently adopt a "Huge Domains" model where they would acquire low quality domains and slap on a $3000 price and hope to sell some.

 

[frank-germany]

Full Article:
http://domainincite.com/22261-icann-terminates-450-drop-catch-registrars

Show attachment 72502

that s what I call Fake News

could be a "domain you know what " post

who is getting rid of whom??????

the title sounds like ICANN is getting rid of them
but when you read the text
its more like the registars are voluntarily cancelling

so who killed whom?

does it matter?
yes I do think so
-----


ICANN terminates 450 drop-catch registrars
Kevin Murphy, November 6, 2017, 20:09:53 (UTC), Domain Registrars
Almost 450 registrars have lost their ICANN accreditations in recent days, fulfilling predictions of a downturn in the domain name drop-catch market.

By my reckoning, 448 registrars have been terminated in the last week, all of them apparently shells operated by Pheenix, one of the big three drop-catching firms.

Basically, Pheenix has dumped about 90% of its portfolio of accreditations, about 300 of which are less than a year old.

It also means ICANN has lost about 15% of its fee-paying registrars.

Pheenix has saved itself at least $1.2 million in ICANN’s fixed accreditation fees, not including the variable and transaction-based fees.

 

[Hypersot]

that s what I call Fake News

slightly misleading, perhaps... fake, I don't think so.

 

[wwwweb]

Pheenix transfer outs are failing, as some domains are assigned to some of these old register connections, they need to update auth codes, or what not.

It would be the train of thought that Pheenix terminated these connections due to the cost, it is very costly, and they were just getting beat, and not getting much quality stuff to sustain all these connections.

Sometimes it doesn't even pay to be 2nd, or 3rd best.

As stated above, it looks like they are going the route of HugeNames business model, and just building a BIN, and Payment plan of lower level domains at fixed price landing pages.

There is not much action over at Pheenix, they used to be a low cost dropcatcher, now they cost as much as the big guys who have better catch rates, so what is really the point of using them?

 

[Arca]

Pheenix transfer outs are failing, as some domains are assigned to some of these old register connections, they need to update auth codes, or what not.

They've also applied a fresh 60-day transfer lock to many of these.

 

[Name Trader]

I actually thought it was a very bold move when Pheenix added those 300 registrars last year. Very brave move. I thought it was a good thing to increase the competition. But didn't DropCatch then announce adding another 500 registrars after that announcement. Or is my brain just fuddled? If that is true. Then Pheenix would have made their assumptions based upon their share of drop-catching registrars, as it stood at that time, and not be competing with another 500 drop-catch registrars. I think it's game, set, and match to DropCatch. They must be smiling all the way to the bank, with capturing 75% of all drop-catches. Which can only go up with this announcement.

Strategy-wise, I think Pheenix are now done as a serious drop-catch partner. Why would you want to use them when you can place a bid at DropCatch for $59 and virtually prevent Pheenix and SN/NJ catching the domain, and preventing DropCatch, catching the domain for HugeDomains. You might even get lucky and win the domain outright. Auctions can go high with anybody able to bid on the drop-catch auctions, is always the downside if there are 2 drop-catch orders for the same domain.

I feel sorry for Pheenix with their bold investment gone array. But cash flow is king.

 

[anantj]

slightly misleading, perhaps... fake, I don't think so.

lol. "Slightly" is an understatement. The headline implies an exact opposite of what really happened. ICANN did not "terminate" (which usually implies a negative force action) but instead Pheenix (and others) voluntarily dropped these accreditations.

 

[wwwweb]

lol. "Slightly" is an understatement. The headline implies an exact opposite of what really happened. ICANN did not "terminate" (which usually implies a negative force action) but instead Pheenix (and others) voluntarily dropped these accreditations.

If I had to pay $1.2M I would drop them to, about $3,500 per day was needed to cover that cost, don't think Pheenix was catching that kind of quality anymore.

 

[anantj]

If I had to pay $1.2M I would drop them to, about $3,500 per day was needed to cover that cost, don't think Pheenix was catching that kind of quality anymore.

Fully agree. I'm not arguing against the rationale for dumping them (if that is the real reason). Pheenix had less than 20 domains caught in the past 3 days (at least those that went to auction) and almost all of them were crap. This is Dynadot level catching. Nowhere close to DC and SN+NJ combines

 

[anantj]

If I had to pay $1.2M I would drop them to, about $3,500 per day was needed to cover that cost, don't think Pheenix was catching that kind of quality anymore.

They should, instead spend that 1.2 mil to buy park.io and extend their tech to .com. (No guarantee and .com is a very different ball game compared to cctlds but just throwing out a radical idea)

 

[Name Trader]

They should, instead spend that 1.2 mil to buy park.io and extend their tech to .com. (No guarantee and .com is a very different ball game compared to cctlds but just throwing out a radical idea)

The unfortunate truth is that if they don't have the $1.2M for their dropcatch registrars (their core business) they almost certainly don't have $1.2M for any more speculative business.

I have every respect for Pheenix and what they tried to achieve. But I wouldn't be surprised to see them gobbled up by some other dropcatch player in the near future.

 

[frank-germany]

But didn't DropCatch then announce adding another 500 registrars after that announcement. Or is my brain just fuddled?

that is right
actually they own about 1000 registrars

 

[Name Trader]

that is right
actually they own about 1000 registrars

So my memory wasn't playing tricks with me. Thanks.