What happened to Pheenix ?

[hlkvrl]

The last time the results fail. Backorder did but I get the domain manually.

Is having problems?

 

[FPForum]

It's true that VeriSign has said things to registrars about drop catching this year. I can't say they are wanting to *abolish* it completely, but I can say for a fact that I know three different registrars whom have been "slapped on the wrist" over the past few months by VeriSign, for things related to drop catching. Keep in mind, it's only VeriSign who has done this, so I'm guessing it only effects the VeriSign extensions (COM/NET/CC/TV). Plenty of registrars are still allowing drop catching or doing it for themselves, so I wouldn't say VeriSign is pushing them to get rid of it completely, not right now anyways..

Guys like DropCatch, NameJet, SnapNames, Name.com have so many dozens of registrars setup, they can probably fly under the radar easier than some of the others. I don't think Pheenix has half the number of accredited registrars that the others do..That could be part of the reason their success has gone down. If they got contacted by VeriSign it could have a huge impact on their success rates.

 

[000]

Back up now

 

[tonyk2000]

I can say for a fact that I know three different registrars whom have been "slapped on the wrist" over the past few months by VeriSign, for things related to drop catching.

Very true indeed, I thought that nobody will mention this on a public forum... What really happens (happened) in dropcatching field and how/why is not that easy as one may think

 

[Jasonn]

Very true indeed, I though that nobody will mention this on a public forum... What really happens (happened) in dropcatching field and how/why is not that easy as one may think

How do you find out about this kind of info?

 

[Name Trader]

@main - Today, there is only 1 big drop-catcher, and 2 medium drop-catchers, and a host of wannabes.

@tonecas - The Reberry's have worked extremely hard and invested a large sum of money to become the biggest drop-catcher. It is free market capitalism at work.

@tonyk2000 - Andrew Reberry is only the latest reincarnation of a drop-catcher. He has doubled down and won. Who you should "thank" is ICANN for letting this market operate freely. But they won't do anything to regulate this "grey" market because there is too much profit being made by their biggest customers, who they don't want to upset. IMHO.

 

[Name Trader]

A slap on the wrist won't deter any registrar from trying to bend the rules to make money out of drop-catching. For the big registrars even a $1M fine is only a slap on the wrist. A $50M-$100M fine might get their attention. Threatening them with removal of the registration for .COM domains, might get their attention for a 2nd offence. Of course, I'm dreaming.

 

[Name Trader]

Where can we read about these 3 registrars slaps on the wrist. Link please.

 

[Kate]

The registries actually have measures in place to cap usage.
Verisign allows a bandwidth 256Kb (at least that was in the past). They also limit the number of simultaneous connections to their systems.

Other registries like Nominet limit the number of queries per 24 hour period.
If you exceed your quota, you get a penalty (you are cut off for a certain amount of time).

 

[Name Trader]

That's presumably limits by registrar. So the more registrars you have the more successful you will probably have, if you are bumping up against these limits. Also the more registrars you have knocking on the Registry doors, the more you can crowd out the competition?

 

[tonyk2000]

Andrew Reberry is only the latest reincarnation of a drop-catcher. He has doubled down and won.

Would be interesting to see his accounting (just a curiosity). Maybe he did not (yet?) win. He might well invest in future, hoping that all the competitors like snap/nj/etc will close their doors earlier or later as the result of his actions (at least in aspect of catching pendingdeletes).

 

[Jasonn]

Would be interesting to see his accounting (just a curiosity). Maybe he did not (yet?) win. He might well invest in future, hoping that all the competitors like snap/nj/etc will close their doors earlier or later as the result of his actions (at least in aspect of catching pendingdeletes).

I'm sure he has borrowed money to do some of this. in 2009/10 he was small time and catching leftovers with a single registrar and now he's huge. it doesn't really add up.

 

[Name Trader]

Would be interesting to see his accounting (just a curiosity). Maybe he did not (yet?) win. He might well invest in future, hoping that all the competitors like snap/nj/etc will close their doors earlier or later as the result of his actions (at least in aspect of catching pendingdeletes).

Perhaps I should have said winning rather than won DropCatch is a formidable competitor from the viewpoint of SnapNames/NameJet. Unless they double down (at least) with their number of registrars, then I would say yes, DropCatch has won. At least until another competitor comes along with a similar number of registrars. It's a number game. I don't think any of them can tweak their algorithms to gain a competitive advantage anymore.

 

[FPForum]

I would probably have agree with @stub that when it comes to drop catching COM/NET, DropCatch (Andrew Reberry) is the biggest player in the game. The two medium drop-catchers he is referring to I can only assume is probably NameJet and SnapNames - Would probably have to agree there as well. But keep in mind, drop catching isn't only limited to the COM/NET extension. There are some other major players out there, just not in those two extensions. Some ccTLD extensions get decent numbers of backorders as well. However, those three would have to be the biggest hands down because they have more accredited registrars and partnering registrars under their belt than anyone else..

I myself would have to give Andrew Reberry major props for how he has managed to build up his empire. I see him as someone who worked his way up from ordinary drop catching, to building and developing the HugeDomains marketplace, to taking things one step further and offering his massive arsenal of registrars to work for the public with DropCatch.com. People may complain about the minimum bid amounts, or auction that go up into the hundreds or thousands of dollars.. But, take a minute and imagine what it must have cost to hit up ICANN and setup 50+ accredited registrars. Not to mention the yearly renewal fees on all of those. It's the same with NameJet and SnapNames, which is why the higher minimum bids at those places makes sense. It is all a numbers game and the person who has the most accredited registrars (which aren't open to the public) will likely have the most success. I also believe the bigger outlets will dedicated more of their "resources" to catching names which have more backorder requests. If ABCD.com has 2 backorder request, and ABC.com has 15 - They are going to be focusing more of the requests for ABC.com since that one will likely pull more money in auction.

When I heard about the slap on the wrist stuff I hadn't read it on any blogs. That came from email communication with the registrars, and all three were contacted within about the same week of each other.. This was sometime back in mid-February. No idea if there were any fines handed out or anything of that nature, but it's true a small fine probably wouldn't deter the big operations. The ones that I heard this from weren't any of the big backorder outlets, so no idea if any of them were actually contacted or not. But, if a smaller outlet like Pheenix were to have been contacted, I could see that as maybe being a reason for the drop in recent success.

 

[gr8trfoo]

Be VERY careful when dealing with these characters. I def got hosed.

Maybe its all my fault - i was late in paying for some drop catches, its true. But when I did log in and saw the invoices I just did the right thing and paid them. I thought that was the thing to do but now they wont give me the names (at first they claimed to not even know what I was talking about). Not only that but they took almost all of my other names, ones that I'd paid for on time months ago.

So now that you know what theyre about if you use them and get ripped off dont say you werent fully warned on what to expect.

 

[Name Trader]

@gr8trfoo - I'm even more confused about which company you are refering to.

 

[gr8trfoo]

pheenix

 

[gorilla_bob]

Gr8trfoo,

I had a chance to review this ticket in depth. I think there is a disconnect that can be resolved. However, here are the facts and concerns we have towards the case.

1. Your invoices were over 2 months late. We had tried to contact you numerous times to pay the invoices and never heard back. These were invoices totaling hundreds to thousands of dollars.

2. At some point, we had to assume that this account was fraudulent and that we had to liquidate the domain names that were unpaid for as well as the domains left in the account.

3. After several months, you paid for the invoices. Upon opening a ticket asking where were the domain names that you paid for we had not first noticed that this was a banned/fraudulent account.

It was upon reviewing your account further did we see that this could potentially be a fraud account.
It was at this time that we asked to perform a routine security check to make sure that the account belonged to a legitimate member.

4. Here are the concerns we have and why the check was necessary:

a. Some of the domain names have already been liquidated for previous non-payment.
b. Some domain names are kept in our escrow account and can be moved to your account. However, there is a risk that the card used was stolen or a chargeback can happen. As the domain names are older than 60 days now, if we release these domain names to your account, there is no stopping you from transferring them out and then doing a chargeback. This is a big concern due to the non-payments of the large invoices in the past.

For the above reasons, we had initiated the security check.

I'm hoping that you see our side as well and that we just got caught up in the middle of this due to the invoices not being paid and now it has come to a very weird situation where noone is winning.

We are more than happy to figure out a way to resolve this, but how are we compensated for loss on our side for the domain names that we ordered for you but since they left unpaid, we had to foot the bill for the registrations?

I'm willing to work to move forward on this, but we need to come to an equitable solution.

Thanks.

Tan Tran

 

[gr8trfoo]

the issue has been settled satisfactorily. many thanks to gorrila_bob for swiftly making it right.

 

[Georgi Ivanov]

I am still experiencing the issue with Pheenix. Some guys are able to HAND-REGISTER domains I have put as backorder on Pheenix. And while providing crappy service they are introducing the public auctions... I think it is time to get out of there.

 

[Arca]

I am still experiencing the issue with Pheenix. Some guys are able to HAND-REGISTER domains I have put as backorder on Pheenix. And while providing crappy service they are introducing the public auctions... I think it is time to get out of there.

I also keep experiencing this issue. I had one backorder with Pheenix today for a design related brandable domain, and just checked the whois status, and to my surprise it was shown as "available". So I rushed to handreg it instead.

According to expireddomains.net, the domain dropped 1 hour and 45 minutest ago... Even 1 hour and 45 minutes after it dropped, not a single registration request had been sent by Pheenix.

 

[Soofi]

They are busy building something, which we wont see!

 

[Georgi Ivanov]

That's fine, but the point is at this point they are unreliable and we shouldn't use them for domains we want.