Donuts just sent out a letter to all their customers that registered a new gTLD with the word Eco on the left of the dot, who had their domains taken back from the registry.

The memo line on the email reads “Your Recently Deleted Name”

As we stated earlier this week, we lost one such domain, eco.domains, so we got an email letter of our own and thought you would be interesting in seeing what Donuts is sending out

Here it is:

“”You recently registered the domain name <eco.domains> through your registrar.  Regretfully, that domain name was made available for registration due to a technical error.  The domain name industry’s regulator, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), unfortunately prohibits us from making that domain name available to the public at this time.  You can find the domain name you registered and a long list of similar names we are prohibited from registering here: http://www.icann.org/sites/default/files/packages/reserved-names/ReservedNames.xml.

Though we would very much like you to keep the domain name, due to these ICANN regulations we were forced to delete the name and place it on “Registry Reserved” status, along with other domain names that ICANN requires us to make unavailable for registration.

We are extremely sorry for the frustration and inconvenience this has caused you.  Though this was an isolated error, we are doing everything we can to make sure it stays that way.  We also apologize that it took us several days to communicate this to you.  We were exploring every avenue available to us within ICANN’s complex regulations to correct the error.

Now, the good news:
We have refunded the full domain name registration fee to your registrar and expect the registrar will provide this refund to you.
We are actively lobbying ICANN to make the domain name you registered available to you.  We hope to be successful and, though you are under no obligation to do so, we think it would be helpful if you voiced your opinion to ICANN about it directly.
To get this domain name to you as soon as possible, we are maintaining a record of your details in the event ICANN releases it for registration.  If and when ICANN does, we will contact you and have this name registered to you for free.
We hold ourselves at Donuts to very high standards and regret to have fallen short.  You have our sincere gratitude for your patience and understanding as we try to get this domain name back to you.

Richard Tindal
Donuts Inc. Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer””