About a week and a half ago, I created an ExpireFish.com account to monitor some domains I knew would soon be dropping from the evil clutches of Network Solutions. The ExpireFish.com site informed me that I needed to open a RegisterFly.com account and deposit funds from which ExpireFish (EF) would use to register any domains it caught.

One of the two domains I had EF monitoring dropped (at what time I can’t be positive) and was grabbed around 9 PM EST. I was very :) . A few days later, the second domain didn’t drop like I expected it to. 24 hours later I checked the WHOIS info only to find that it had been dropped and then registered through an OpenSRS registrar. I was a little bit :( .

With a 50%success rate, I figured it was worth it to have EF monitor a few more domains and see what happened. A few days ago, I became aware that another domain I have been watching was about to be freed from the evil clutches of Network Solutions. I checked my EF account to make sure everything was setup OK and waited.

It is now yesterday, and I’m making my around the Internet, checking this and browsing that, when I come to a new registrar and decide to try out their interface. I check on some of the names I am interested in and am quite surprised to see that the domain that I know is about to drop and that EF is monitoring, is available :eek2: . Surprise gave way to urgency and I immediately type the RegisterFly.com URL in to my browser so that I can register it there using some of the funds I deposited for my EF account. I wait and wait and wait as the progress indicator on my browser SLOWLY creeps from left to right. I hit stop, re-enter the URL again (double checking my spelling) and still another long wait. Now, At this point you should understand that this is a 4 letter .com that I can actually use – I have no plans to simply acquire and sell it off (and no, I’m not ready to announce what it is). I am amazed that it is available and I am completely paranoid that it is going to be registered at any second! Finally, minutes later, the RegisterFly (RF) page comes up. I enter my username, password and click the button to log in. Guess what? ANOTHER long wait. I hit stop, back up and log in again, but no dice. At this point, I am going nuts! I minimize that window, open a new browser window and proceed to another registrar where I already have an account and I know the registration process will be quick. I login there, search for the domain, register it, enter my CC info, check my e-mail, receive the confirmation e-mail and then bring up the RF windows only to find I STILL haven’t been logged in!

I should have been :kaioken: , but I was so elated from registering this domain, my feelings towards RF and EF subsided for a while. I tended to some other business and then decided to go back to RF and see what I could see. The login was still slow, but eventually went through. Not having registered with them before, I decided to go through the process just to see what it was like. I could go in to great detail here, but I won’t bore you any more than I have to. ;) I’ll just sum it up by saying the process was slow, generated a “page can not be displayed” error and eventually the domain registration did not go through on the first try (I have since learned that when I got that “page can not be displayed” error, the registration process was messed up and RF did not actually try to register any domains). I should also mention that RF was slow when I created my account a week and a half ago and has been slow on several occasions since then. My visit to RF today was not during what I understand to be the “busy drop time” for registering domains. It was even dreadfully slow when I used the remaining funds in my RF account about 4 hours ago (5 AM EST).

During the past couple weeks I have learned a great deal about domain registration thanks to this place (Web Hosting Talk) and many other web related forums (many thanks to Omni and thewitt :D ). Now, I am by no means an expert; on the contrary, I acknowledge that I am still new to this :dunce: and I have a lot left to learn, but had I known two weeks ago what I know now, there is no doubt in my mind that I could have beaten ExpireFish’s system and manually registered all three of the domains that I saw drop recently :bawling: . I have since sent EF and RF a friendly e-mail detailing my experience and I have also cancelled my EF account as I feel I am better off without them. Seeing as how RF does not offer refunds for money deposited in to a quick checkout account, I decided it would be a good idea to use up my remaining funds there to register some domains and get out while the getting’s good. I will be transferring those domains I registered away from RF as soon as the waiting period is up.

In their current state, I can’t and won’t recommend ExpireFish.com or RegisterFly.com to anyone; I give them both a definite thumbs down. RF has a friendly user interface, but I can’t believe how frustratingly slow their system is. And I can see where EF would be good for people who don’t have the time or desire to manually monitor their domains, but then I don’t see those people having a very good success rate either. I know that there are people who have had good experiences with these companies, but I am not one of them. I told EF & RF in the e-mail I sent that I hoped they could use my experience to try and fix some issues to make the experience better for other customers. ExpireFish claims to have the “Ability to "grab" a name being monitored within milliseconds from the time it becomes available”. Judging from my experience, I find that statement is laughable at best. Maybe that’s their goal and if they ever reach it, I’ll be the first to sign back up.

Until that time, I typed out this long rant to let you know first hand that if you are interested in grabbing expiring domain names; it is possible to do it on your own. Maybe I was lucky, maybe it was fate or maybe it’s a "sucky" domain I grabbed – I don’t know. What I do know is that I have been on the loosing end for a long time and today I finally “beat the system” and there is no doubt in my mind that I can (and will) do it again. :pimp: :D


MEGEX

(Edited for spelling / grammar)

Thanks for sharing that story with us - it's depressing, but valuable information to have shared.

I wonder if the problems at EF are directly related to the problems at RF?

I'd be curious to know if EF responds to your email - and if they bother to give you any explanation for their performance.

I'm glad to hear you at least grabbed the domain you really wanted :).

-t

ugh, i had some horrible experiences with registerfly.com - let me just give everyone some advice: cheaper doesn't mean better - always research on the place you're buying from

Having been successful with expirefish on many occasions I am surprised by your e-mail. I was refered to them by another person who has grabbed a huge amount of names. Did yuou configure your account correctly? You can run a "test" to see whether or not the name can be grabbed.

thewitt: I also wonder if the problems between RF and EF are related. EF did in fact respond to my e-mail. I do not wish to reproduce the whole thing, as certain comments lead me to believe they either did not read my e-mail thoroughly or failed to comprehend the real issue at hand. :uhh:

Basically, the EF representative told me they had sent a copy of my e-mail to the team at RF (who I had already included in my original e-mail…) and that they have ”thousands of other users who use this service and no one has contacted us nor am I experiencing it”. By “it” I assume they mean “the issue in which our system does not register the domains you have it monitoring”. They go on to say that since I cancelled my account, there is no way to check and see if it was configured correctly and that 99% of the time when a domain is not grabbed, it “is attributed to the customer not configuring the account properly”. So it was configured to grab the first domain for me, but not the other two?

And then they go on to say, “We have grabbed 25,000++ names for our clients just in the last 4 months so the system works and very well”.

I replied to their e-mail to make sure they understood my issue. I am very sure EF has the ability to grab many, many domains, just not, “within milliseconds from the time it becomes available”.

alpha: Amen to that. I’m not impressed with them at all.

elleW: I can only assume my account was configured correctly, as it did grab a domain for me. I know exactly what you mean when you refer to testing the domains. I tested all the domains I had EF monitoring and the results were all successful except for the domains not currently being available. I do remember that the account ‘wizard’ setup didn’t work for me and I had to set certain things manually. Maybe that had something to do with the issue? I also asked that question when I replied to their e-mail this afternoon.

MEGEX

ExpireFish just replied to my 2nd e-mail. The rep wanted to know what the domain was so that they could look in to the issue a little more.

In my reply to their 1st e-mail I said, “I would also like to know if the account was configured properly. I figured as much when the service caught the first domain I had it watch and then all the tests I ran on my watched domains came back as successful (except for the domain being unavailable at the time)”.

They replied, “Then the name should of been grabbed if this is the case”.

The rep then continues, “We continue to upgrade and expand the service, the reality is we have grabbed more names than all of the other services combined". :eek: :eek2: :eek3: "If you had an experience less than positive we apologize”.

I have to give ExpireFish credit for their fast replies and for actually looking in to the issue as opposed to just assuming I’m another customer who is “forever lost” (even though I made it sound like that in my original e-mail). :)

MEGEX

elleW: Would you mind posting, or private messaging me with some info as to the success rate you have enjoyed with ExpireFish? You don’t have to go in to detail as to how many domains you have, I’m just looking for the percentage of domains EF has grabbed for you as opposed to the number they miss out on. Also, is there an average time of day that EF seems to grab the domains and notify you at? I would be very interested to get more info on that aspect of their process.

Thanks!

MEGEX

I have had three different occasions where the name I was monitoring was grabbed by someone else.

1 - 1 of the names was grabbed by ultimate search(??)
2 - On 1 of the names I let my quickcheck balance get too low and the name was not grabbed(my fault since I fogot to put money in there )
3 - Not a clue??


Overall it seems to work very well. I actually look forward to the e-mails that are sent when a name is grabbed for you. I just noticed they put a new feature that allows you to search and add unavailable names. Since this does variations this is pretty cool.

As for time of day, to be honest I never noticed. Perhaps I will pay attention better.

Thanks

thanks for sharing that story.

On QUALITY domains that I have monitored, I havent seen expirefish get any good ones. If they ever manage to get a domain name for me, I shall make sure to post the details and give them due credit.

They may "have grabbed more names than all of the other services combined", but those names could not have been the most sought after ones.

Originally posted by elleW
I have had three different occasions where the name I was monitoring was grabbed by someone else.

1 - 1 of the names was grabbed by ultimate search(??)



Yeah, these guys got a 3 letter domain I was after, too. They're pretty fast.

3 months ago I opened a ticket at RF and asked them to remove my nameservers from 2 IP addresses and as I was not in a hurry (just wanted to free previous ISP's IP addresses for another person) I did not visted their support panel.

2 weeks ago when I visited there I saw that ticket is closed by nameservers are remaining on IP addresses (checked at nsiregistry).

Finally I wrote to Enom's technical manager and he removed them for me. (forgot to say I had same experience on creating nameservers and finally went to Enom's technical manager which did it in a few minutes.)

They are the worst domain registrar I can imagine.

Mac

I have been using them for about three months.
My experience is - they suck big time.
I have been watching about 30 names constantly, no netsol ones, all expired for 20-40 days at the time I added them to my watch list, no hi-profile typeins, some reasonable names with pretty high link popularity. Within this period about 20 names dropped & all of them were registered by different people. I did not catch a single one through them.
I was a bit suspicious because I got much better results either just by using whois or using different (more expensive) services. My account is still active, my CC was NOT rebilled for this month, all test went through.
Several days ago I got mail about "improving" their system, and finally found out this thread.
Now, I can see it is not just me.
I think, they grew too fast, and their system is unable to handle it.
Since my account is active, they did not charge my cc, I guess it does not work at all.
I have to test them on some dropped & unregistered domain if it is even able to notice that domain is free.

I would have to disagree with your jaded view. I have grabbed quite a few names, in fact another friend of mine who also uses them mentioned last night he was impressed with the number of names grabbed and HOW BAD snapnames was. Just to show tere is some truth about what they say about opinions.

:angry:

Nah,, I did not name anyone, and I would not call myself domain God neither Goddess.
I have checked my short list of reasonable names, and out of 25 listed, recently :
2 renewed
9 dropped & registered ( 4 by ultsearch - nice, more BS sites coming soon, rest by diff. individuals)
rest of them unchanged
=============
:bawling:

Just an update to my little domain name saga...

I eventually received another e-mail from the ExpireFish.com support team. The information in this e-mail, along with the questions I was asked, again lead me to believe that they were either not reading my e-mails completely or just had no comprehension of what my issue with their service really was. :angry: I politely answered their e-mail with the information they requested and haven’t heard back from them since :confused:

Good riddance, I say. :D Since I canceled my ExpireFish account, I have seen 3 domains that I have been watching drop and I was (thankfully) able to register all of them, including a pretty cool 3 letter .net. :cool:

MEGEX