Bug affects 600 domain names according to company.
ItsYourDomain, a registrar purchased by Tucows (AMEX:TCX, TSX:TC) last year, is working to fix a bug that keeps whois records as “Pending Renewal or Deletion” when domains are won at SnapNames.
According to Elliot Noss, CEO of Tucows, the bug affects about 600 domains. It affects existing ItsYourDomain customers who win expired domains through SnapNames. After winning the domain, the whois record remains as “Pending Renewal or Deletion” instead of being transferred to the customer’s name.
One example is the domain Oganesyan.com. The domain is owned by an ItsYourDomain customer and doesn’t expire until January 28 but the whois reads:
Registrant
Pending Renewal or Deletion
SecureWhois, Inc.
pending-renewal@onlineaccess.net
96 Mowat
Toronto, ON M6K 3M1 CA
+1.4165315293
+1.4163520113 (FAX)
Ross Rader, Director of Retail Services at Tucows, says a fix is in progress. “We’re in the process of developing and implementing a patch that should address this problem and ensure that proper contact details are shown for the affected [names],” Rader wrote in an e-mail to Domain Name Wire.
Noss said that about 22,500 domains go through the deletion cycle at ItsYourDomain at any given time. This is in line with DomainTools’ record of the number of domains using the e-mail address pending-renewal@onlineaccess.net, which currently shows 19,135 domains.
The problem was identified by Stephen Douglas on his SuccessClick blog. Although Douglas identified it as a problem with domains being transferred to pending delete status prior to the expiration date, a check of the whois history for Oganesyan.com shows that the whois was never put into the customer’s name.
Tucows paid $10.35M for ItsYourDomain with incentives if the company hits certain targets. At the time of the acquisition, Tucows anticipated the registrar would add $7M in yearly revenue and between $1M-$2M income in the first 12 months.
Patrick McDermott says
Hi,
It seems to be two different issues.
Stephen Douglas said ItsYourDomain is changing the name servers about 6 weeks before a domain is due to expire.
He said it happened to his domains.
Therefore if someone wanted to contact you about one of your domains that had less than six weeks until expiration, they won’t be able to.
Anyone think that activity is a glitch?
Not changing name servers for Snapname wins
is a different issue, I suspect.
Patrick
Andrew says
Patrick,
That’s what Stephen said, but when I went to the whois history for the domains he mentioned it shows that they were **never** changed from Pending/delete. For example, idealdate.net appears to have never been in his name.
If they were switching 6 weeks before the due date then yes, that would be a very suspect activity. But that simply isn’t the case.
Patrick McDermott says
That is interesting.
If I understand this correctly, when Stephen originally won those domains the Who Is never reflected his ownership from day one.
Then when he checked the domain a few weeks before expiration and saw the Who Is wasn’t him, he assumed ItsYourDomain had recently made the changes.
Have you let him know this?
I know he posted that ItsYourDomain is changing Who Is on NamePros and probably elsewhere.
Patrick
Andrew says
Patrick, good point. I just left another comment on his blog, but my one from several days ago is still in moderation.
Patrick McDermott says
“I just left another comment on his blog, but my one from several days ago is still in moderation.”
Ha! That’s funny because he recently said on his blog that some of the big domainers like having their own blog so they can control any negative comments.
He also said that he would not do such censorship.
From his blog:
“Many of the biggest domainers have their own blogs and rarely suffer negative comments from people reading their posts. That could be because the blog owner has the ability to delete unflattering comments. So you really never know how many readers are disagreeing with the blog owner. I can’t name names of popular blogsters who delete derogatory comments, but I can tell you that I don’t do that. Bring it. I will jump into the sh*t with my boots on.”
Stephen Douglas says
Hi Andrew and Patrick,
Thanks for the conversation on this. I’ve done some additional research and analysis of IYD and Andrew’s posting of IYD’s support team response, but it still smells like camel mud because IYD is admitting they NEVER changed the whois, as REQUIRED by Snapnames, to the Snapnames buyer’s info.
IYD’s response to this is a quick quip to try to fix a bloody lip. If IYD never changed the whois upon my purchase a year ago, then how did they know where to send out RENEWAL emails to the “registrant”, ME?
More information about my answer regarding IYD is on my blog: http://www.successclick.com
Thanks Andrew.
P.S. My response was slow because of sloshing through the 100 spam responses. I have to get a spam code login set up on my blog. Sorry for the delay.
Andrew says
Stephen,
I think never changing the whois, although bad, doesn’t show intentional malice like changing the whois before deletion.
It certainly sounds like IYD has some customer service problems, and it’s definitely not good that they didn’t change the whois details.
Stephen Douglas says
Hi Andrew,
I agree that my original allegation could be determined “obviously fraudulent”, but I still think that not automatically updating the whois registration to match the new Snapnames buyer of a domain from IYD is extremely suspicious, and even more damaging because it prevents potential buyers from contacting the rightful owner of almost a year, unless the domain buyer is manually following up on the registrar to make sure their whois is updated. All of us who purchased domains on auction at Snapnames knows how much of a time-killer that would be, and we put our trust in Snapnames and their feeders (registrars) to follow the standard rules.
Great article and followup, Andrew. Thx.
Andrew says
Stephen, we’re in agreement there.
I’ve had a history of difficulty with SnapNames wins at various registrars. Thankfully, it looks like many of these domains will automatically be transferred to Moniker in the future.