Following on the heals of Tucows launch of YummyNames.com, to sell expired domains of its customers, Tucows elected to keep, today we notice that Enom has launched AcquireThisName.com.
Enom is not taking credit for this site, at least not directly.
If you click on the “about us” link you get this:
- Q: Do you own the domains you sell?
- A: No, we represent the domain owner and facilitate the sale of the domain.
- Q: Is AcquireThisName a domain registrar?
- A: No, AcquireThisName is a brokerage firm, representing domain owners. We are not a registrar and do not offer registration services.
In my opinion, this site can best be described with one word, which is actually listed as a “popular domain” on their site; shifty.com
In the FAQ section it becomes clear who your dealing with when dealing with AcquireThisName.com:
- Q: What are the payment options available to me?
- A: Our preferred method of payment is by wire to our affiliate, eNom. It is the easiest and most cost effective method.
Further on the site it says:
“”””Our reseller relationship with eNom helps make purchasing a domain from Acquire This Name a quick and easy process. After you and your ATN sales account manager agree on a purchase price, you will receive an email with wire instructions and a link to submit our online agreement. The online agreement confirms your interest in the domain and removes it from the open marketplace.”””
“””The next step is creating a free account at www.enomcentral.com. After payment is submitted by wire to eNom, the domain will immediately be pushed to your eNom account.””
Ok so its clear Enom owns this “brokerage site”, that “does not own any domains, and is not a registrar”.
Now as to who owns the domains themselves, well that appears to be Enom as well.
Doing a quick check on many of the domains listed on the first page of the site, they are all registered to:
Registrant Contact:
Whois Privacy Protection Service, Inc.
Whois Agent
PMB 368, 14150 NE 20th St – F1
Bellevue, WA 98007
And all the domains have Enom default servers:
dns1.name-services.com
dns2.name-services.com
dns3.name-services.com
dns4.name-services.com
So now, if its clear Enom own the brokerage service, which again is “not a registrar and doesn’t own any domains”, and if all the domains on the site are owned by Enom, (which is a domain registrar but not a brokerage site) then the only question is where did all these domains come from?
Are the domain being sold, domains Enom acquired by purchase from third parties, or hand registered or by being the highest bidder at drop auctions and other aftermarket auctions, or are these expired domain of their customers?
I’m sure one of the industrious readers of this blog will go to domainTools.com and figure that one out.
However, if these domains were acquired by Enom, fair and square and not from their own customers, then why all the deception, and not just offer these domains for sale through Enom?
Is this another example of registrar abuse?
Certainly, this maybe another reason for all domainers to take a long hard look at which companies they choose to do business with.
Certainly this maybe another reason for domainers to demand that change to the way that dropped domains are handled.
Having just went through six months of nothing but talk of change, maybe its time that domainers demand change in the domain industry.
Maybe its time domainers demand the end of game playing, role playing and word games, and demand transparency instead.
Maybe that’s the change we need.
Maybe that’s the change we can believe in.
This has been around for a while – I’ve seen this on many landing pages for names in auction at Namejet. I fact, we won a domain a few months back – the domain was never delivered (we were the only bidder) and the name was referred to this page from the first day it was listed.
No one should trust enom or NameJet. they are both crooks.
Alan
I have not seen or heard about this site from anyone, until a reader pointed it out to me tonight.
Why would you allow a domain you won at auction not to be delivered to you, without calling them out on it?
Domainers need to stand up. kick and scream when they get kicked in the grill by companies in the industry or the abuse only gets worse.
Alan’s response is TOP – Great post.
ICANN should take action – WAKE UP ICANN – are you people of Integrity or what?
Yes this site and service has been around for few months 2-3 months at least. Yes its enom’s site and service and yes all names are enom owned names.
All thats left is for directnic to open a site like this for names they picked up from their own expired list for the axis of “registrars” to be complete.
There are only 2 honest options left in the domain community. Fabulous.com or your own registrar.
eNom has an interesting way of doing things…
domains that have just expired, immediately get switched over to eNom’s parking setup… and on the bottom of the page have “This domain may be for sale. Backorder this Domain” which if you click on it redirects you to namejet.com and provides details on backordering the domain if it should make it to auction.
names that expire, enom doesnt drop em… instead they keep em parked, throw up the whois privacy protect, and on the bottom of the page the for sale text takes you to acquirethisname.com domain offer/inquiry page.
This is very worrying – I think we need to put the Question to Enom – Do they Own the domains or Not!
Did they get them from Drops or were they purchased?
I think this could be another registrar screwing us!
If this is the case we must boycott them like TuCows.
Regards,
Robbie
Founder
RegFeeNames.com
Dum dee dum… like I said…
What I like about Enom is how they rifle through my expiring domains and select the “best” to get the RPG “expiring premium” $160 cost way before the other domains, expiring before or at the same time, that aren’t as good, are still available for that $7.75 renewal fee. LOL
It’s the easiest way to check if your registrar is sizing up your expiring domains for purchase — just watch to see the domains expiring within a certain time period in your account, and then watch as they select the domains they feel are the “best” to attach that $160 renewal fee after 28 days, while domains OLDER in the expiry period, but not as sweet, are still cheap.
It’s a great way to also find out what these “pro appraisers” at the registrars think is a good domain!
@FX there are at least 3 honest options left, as I commented on the Tucows post Rebel.com deletes all expired domains managed through our registrar without exception same as Fabulous.
Mike,
You are absolutely right.
We should have called them out but in our case it was the personal name of a professional athelete I am friends with and we did call NameJet – they simply said the name had been renewed by the owner and was no longer available. We didn’t out them since there was a lot of confusion on the whois records.
Get this, it showed the domain now expired in 2009 – renewed – now it is back on pending delete – how that happened I will never know. Furthermore, we submitted an offer through acquiremyname.com and they responded with a $500 minimum offer – we accepted the $500 offer and 2 days later acquiremyname.com sends us an email stating the owner – who is eNom we assume – is aware there may be a trademark conflict with the domain so they can not sell the name.
Now, we get an email a week or so ago its becoming available again on NameJet.
Ironically we only bid on this name the first time because the pro athelete called me after he went through the same series of events with acquiremyname.com and even faxed in some information to prove he is who he is but never ever got a reply from the clowns
We saw this first with coachairfares.com back in April which later sold on Namejet.
Name was for sale but at the same time of auction on Namejet if you visited the domain the text link for “buy this domain” went to acquirethisname
Ignore my emails – catching coffee in Moscow so I was able to get the submit button working.
We are now seeing the long term strategy of registrars come to fruition. Their plan was and is, very similar to ranchers of the wild west. First put up barb wire fences on as much land as they possibly could and then wait for someone to claim their slice of the pie. Knowing full well that many forms of attrition would eventually make the land theirs.
The good news is we have been lucky enough to settle some of our own land in this online land rush. The bad news is that gunslingers are being hired to seize our properties. Sound familiar? The beat goes on!
Let me play devil’s advocate here…
Perhaps they are rolling out a system that they will offer an in house brokerage service so when people try to register a domain that is taken, enom can act as broker and make an offer on behalf of the potential buyer.
That’s one part.
Second part is maybe they want to give their resellers and current registrants an in house outlet for domain sales?
Maybe they are starting with their own domains to test out the system?
Just some thoughts.
As long as it is …”Not Illegal” , more and more registrars will Increasingly engage in these kinds of practices.
Raising awareness is great.
But, it’s gonna take lawyers.
The courts will have to decide what’s legal, what’s not.
Will ICANN act on it’s own IF they don’t see that it benefit$ them directly?
Domainers may eventually suffer the same fate as individual miners during the gold rush. Larger organizations saw those individuals as an obstacle.
So, the individual miner (domainer?) was finally eliminated, bought out, priced out or legislated out. It doesn’t have to be that way. But, history does tend to repeat itself.
Didn’t Demand Media buy some portfolios when it started up? These could be from that portfolio.
@stephen douglas THAT is scarry.
eNom has heavily tasted for the past 3 days, I’ll be watching them for drops — not sure if AcquireThisName has anything to do with it, but I guess that site has been up for a while?
It is interesting to see all these quick and low-effort attempts to generate CASH..
1. tucows layoffs
2. tucows selling house names
3. enom sets up a paid link farm (business directory, whatever)
4. enom selling house names
Now that I think about it, I recall that the CADNA-sponsored report on domain tasting showed that eNom was one of the biggest culprits.
eNom auctions off most of their expired names……. and SOMETIMES.. the better ones, with a certain amount of traffic… they definitely do keep and never drop or move to auctions.
There are conflicting reports of what is done, but clearly you can put all the pieces together and figure out the end result. The crap= you can have.. The goodies they keep… But do not admit to it. Doh.
Best,
Mike
http://www.wannadevelop.com
The suspicions and views here further confirm my own experience and views (with the company) as far back as 2002. Personally, I’m glad to see members of the domqain community getting ticked off at the never-ending abuses. Many of these registrars should have been called out long ago, but ICANN never gave a whit. There really is a collection of business guidelines and ethics that much of the business world abide by. However, the domain industry is rife with corruption – quite unfortunate. But that’s what happens over and over, and on and on, when the one regulatory body (responsible for awarding accreditation) has no vested interest in adopting or upholding appropriate registrar guidelines in the face of repeated abuses.
It is the wild west folks and always has been. The reason registrars try every trick under the sun is because there are numerous loophole exploitations available to them that don’t lead to criminal penalty. And ICANN derive fees from the big players … so their incentive to objectively evaluate registrar behavior and take corrective action is close ot zero. ICANN seem to be faithful to ICANN while operating under a public pretense of fulfilling a mandate for the greater good. All the while looking the other way … for years … while all varieties of registrar abuses go on unchallenged … over and over and over.
On a final note, happened to check a domain today I was interested in: BuffaloJobs.us. The official registrant is a guy named “Liason Enom”. How poetic? With an address in CANADA!! Ever heard of nexus requirements, Mr. Liason ENOM?
Lie. Cheat. Steal.
No problem as long as its profitable, right eNom & Tucows?
eNom has been shady for a long time. After they bought BulkRegister, they overcharged me for ICANN fees. Instead of returning the money, they showed it in the interface, but I could never access it. They refused to refund it to my credit card. They made it impossible to use it for reg fees. I think you could only use it to buy their overpriced software. When I called them, a supervisor named Russ said he would try to refund it to my credit card, but the money never arrived. So, for a few bucks, they lost a customer. I moved my 4000 domains to Moniker, and have never regretted it. Moniker rocks!!
eNom, can you prove us all wrong here??
notify eNom about this thread and let them explain about this situation..
Oh…I was out for a few month and came back just one day late after “pendingDelete” of my web site aliancedating.com, miracle but acquirethisname.com took my web site almost next second after pendingDelete was finished, that’s how they now took over my web site…..I read all these posts and totally agree with you we need to stand out somehow. It should be illegal for registars to take over expired web sites. I even wrote them a bid to get buy back my web site but they did not even respond. Where is ICANN??? Where is law? It’s obvious that registar (eNom) will be the first one to know WHEN EXACTLY DOMAIN WILL BE DELETED! But i will fight till the end. Cause this domain is a registered trademark.
There was an expired domain I found on domaintools whois. I kept checking it as I wanted to buy it. Now there is no whois record and it is for sale on Sedo for $10,000
Squatters. They suck and steal.