I think at the moment they can compete maybe with godaddy backorders (and even here they lose sometimes) and desktop catchers.
I think they don't have enough registrars for better names.
Yenkos, ignitela and pheenix? are the ones i saw till today.
And i also feel like they were better at the beginning.
I have to agree with all the above points despite Yenkos catching some good domains including 6o9.com whilst they were used by intrust domains. I don't know how Pheenix came to acquire this registrar but it's clearly not able to catch as well as it once did (in my experience at least). Maybe it could be optimized better at Pheenix and/or maybe it's because drop catching now is completely different to how it was back then (a lot more registrars elsewhere being used for catching and the fact that Reberry has upped his game considerably).
Out of my four domains backordered at Pheenix for today:
Two went to BackorderZone - this is a very common outcome for me - most decent domains I backorder at Pheenix that aren't backordered at SnapNames or NameJet end up at BackorderZone. This is in stark contrast to stub's posted experiences.
Two went to SnapNames. Not exactly unexpected - they are the strongest catcher in my experience and to make matters worse, they are using their registrars to acquire domains for their own portfolio.
None went to Name.com (I backordered one of my selections there).
None went to Pheenix. Unfortunately this is a very common outcome for me, unless I'm tempted to backorder marginal stuff and even then GoDaddy and Reberry often outcatch them (more now than in the beginning in my experience, as GiftedDomains has also suggested in the above post). Maybe they are trying new methods in an attempt to optimize their system or they could be swamped with backorders due to increasing popularity and are thus forced to spread their connections too thinly (hope it's the former).
Support at Pheenix has been excellent though (and I don't use that term lightly). I'm really grateful for what they've done for me. And they have caught some nice domains for me in the past. Thanks guys!
Hopefully things will improve going forwards now that they have an auction model in place (since August 1st) and will presumably have more funds for purchasing more connections. Although I much prefer the first-come, first-served model, if the auction model will improve their catching power, I'm all for it as long as it's still $18.95 to backorder.