Bye bye Registerfly?
The reports on problems with the registrar Registerfly have been numerous over the past months. It appears that the escalation point came, when eNom decided to cut Registerfly off as an reseller – more and more people went public about their problems with Registerfly. So after many complaints (including yesterday’s letter to ICANN by the ICA, the RegisterFlies website and the article by Computer Business Review online) to ICANN has managed to finally to pick some of the complaints and put Registerfly on notice for a breach of their registrar accreditation agreement. Registerfly now has 15 days to correct the problems that ICANN listed in their letter.
The main basis for the notice appear to be several recent incidents where Registerfly failed to comply with a registrant’s request within five days. But apparently ICANN has been receiving complaints about Registerfly since late 2005.
A list of the breaches of agreement according to the ICANN letter:
- failure to provide authorization codes
- (documentation breach) invalid whois records
- non payment of ICANN invoices
- insufficient funding of registry accounts
Other items mentioned:
- failure to unlock names
- failure to renew domain names
- customer service failures
- customer billing errors
What are the lesson from this for registrars?
- Customer service is key.
- Try to keep personal issues out of the business.
- Provide customers with accurate information, let them know what is going on.
- It still takes ICANN a long time after serious complaints against your company to take action.
And what are the lessons for Domain Name Owners?
- Pricing alone should not drive where you register your domains.
- Don’t count on ICANN to protect and help you quickly when needed.
- Watch and choose your registrar carefully.
- If you hold enough domains (or domains of a high value), you should consider becoming an ICANN accredited registrar. I’ve been saying this for years.
It appears that RegisterFlies.com is down. This is very bad news since that has been the lifeline of all of us who have been abandoned and worse by RegisterFly.com. I hope it was only due to high demand and someone can stop and and help the site owner get it up again (he’s paid for it out of his own pocket).
I believe one domainer has done the item of becoming an ICANN-accredited registrar. But of course, not everyone can afford the price tag.
Lawrence,
I would imagine it’s due to the high demand – the has been coming and going over the last couple of days, so keep on trying.
And even if Registerfly complies with the ICANN requests, there’s still a problem with all the names that are now way past renewal, in redemption or even on their way to deletion. I am sure some of the names people tried to renew, have already been taken over by someone else (if the names were in their reseller account).
A sad situation.
/Frank
Dave,
several domainers are already accredited and others are on their way to becoming accredited. If I can find the time, I’ll blog a little more about what it takes.
Smaller domainers should seriously considering to partner in a group and create their own registrar.
/Frank
These appalling, but entirely predictable developments reveal serious systemic failures at ICANN. Even now, when countless livelihoods are simply disappearing, neither ICANN nor the registries have any ability or even authority to actually protect registrants. All ICANN can do is to threaten RegisterFly’s accreditation – and that despite allegations from as far back as May 2006 that CEO Kevin Medina was literally stealing customers’ domains.
It will appear that RegisterFly Transfer Help http://registerflies.com/ [ed. spam removed, proper URL inserted] could be of some help. Bob Parsons of GoDaddy speaks to what you can do to save you domains and work you way out of this. You can also get help from other registars soon it seems. The US issue will be a bit of a problem due to PayPal and the credit card issue. GoDaddy might just pick this company up and run it as a Wild West Domains reseller, I think that would be a good Idea and not to mix this with GoDaddy.com could just save the day
If you still are having issues with register fly, Call GoDaddy.com. They are moving my 7 domains from RegisterFly to them. They have been in contact with ICANN about the issue and are able to move the domains for you. Not sure if other registrars are doing this bit give GoDaddy a buzz, they can help! Took me awhile to find someone to help and they did.