Check out this message received today from AfterNIC. Didn't take very long at all after the official BulkRegister announcement came out.

News Flash: BulkRegister.com Terminates CEO and over50% of Staff

March 9-- BulkRegister.com this week slashed its staff by more than
one-half, firing CEO Tony Keyes and other members of its executive
management team. Co-founder Paul Judge told Internet.com that the cuts were
necessary to aid BulkRegister's efforts to become profitable. According to
the story, originally attributed to ICBTollFreeNews.com, Judge was concerned
with the company's "ferocious" burn rate, which limited even the severance
BulkRegister was able to offer departing employees.

In order to assist Afternic members that are concerned about these troubling
developments at Bulkregister, Afternic.com is offering an inexpensive
solution to all Afternic customers that are currently using BulkRegister and
wish to transfer at least 10 domains. Through our partner,
NameBargain.com, Afternic is providing all members with domains registered
through BulkRegister the ability to transfer their domains to
NameBargain.com for only $9.99. For this price, not only will your name be
transferred, but you will receive a one year extension on the term of your
domain name subscription.

To transfer your domain names today, please visit:
http://www.namebargain.com/transfer

Regards,

The Afternic Team

I wonder how many more there will be....

That's one of the things I like about the Open SRS system. While I use 000domains.com, as many others here do, I can log in Domain Manager through any other Open SRS RSP or even Open SRS itself. While no guarantee, the fact that Open SRS is owned by TUCOWS, which has been around a few years, seems to indicate a greater likelihood that it will be around.

This whole incident should serve as a reminder for people to use good judgment in selecting a registrar as well as a host. It is nearly as important.

Of course there's no reason to think that cuts in staff and a change in CEO means that BulkRegister -- or any other company that takes those kinds of steps -- is going out of business. The comments quoted here are from a competitor; they're understandably hinting that this means the end of the company in order to pick up business from jittery BulkRegister customers. Here's BulkRegister's own cut:

This week BulkRegister.com announced a reduction
n staff that impacted mainly the sales and
marketing team. The Board of Directors also
announced that Tony Keyes, the CEO will be
replaced by Tom Cunningham, the founder who will be acting CEO.

These moves were made to return BulkRegister.com
to profitability. The company is stronger than
ever with over 2.3 million domain names registered.
Please let us assure you that both the Board of
Directors, myself and BulkRegister.com employees
are dedicated to providing you with the highest
quality of service and support. Starting this
weekend we are enhancing our customer support
team. We remain committed to the wholesale
domain name registration business and our
members. These changes in no way affect your
ability to manage your domains, register new
domains, renewals or transfer domains from NSI or
the products and services we provide. Your
domain names will continue to be secure.

Reducing our staff was a very difficult decision
to make and not taken lightly. We value each of our employee’s contributions.
Next week we will be announcing the release of
several new products and services.

On the other hand, as an OpenSRS reseller (we're also a BulkRegister client), I completely echo Duster's comments. One of the advantages of OpenSRS is that the stability of any individual reseller is less of a concern.

Hi, that is great. Thanks for the tip. I went straight to opensrs.com and signed in and there were my domain names. I would easily pay a couple more buck for the secure feeling that gives me. Thanks again. You made my day.
Gary

Oh, not at all the way I felt when I went to registerfly and saw that they listed themself as the billing contact.
Gary

Well we use Bulk Register have had many problem with them in the past month now and getting kind of bad from what I can tell. There system keep giving 404 error when buying new domains some other error kind of a pain some times :)

But the point is I got a e-mail today from Open SRS not sure how they got my e-mail address but how cares.
But we are thinking about going with Open SRS. Can some one tell me what there price is to get started and per domain one of there reps said they would call me back today and never did so I was hoping some one here could kind of clue me in on how they work in what they charge to get started with them.


Thanks

Hi vortech,

It is not to bad getting started with opensrs. We were with bulk register, and still have hundreds of domains there.
After I found out that they were not emailing out the expiration notices at all.. not even on my own domains,, I have decided to get away from them completely. I have had 34 domains stolen before I ever had a customer contact us. Bulk register is in bed with some afternic type company and is taking the domains, and not telling people they are expiring. Notices are hardly ever being emailed.

Anyway,
to get started with opensrs, just go to their site and sign up. You will have to pass a simple test showing you can run their domain resellers control area. Not a big deal since it is simple after being at BR.

After you pass the test, you have to put up 250 or 500 dollars up front for domain sales. That is the difference with them and BR.. br charges you as each domain come in.. these guys charge in advance. Still.. no big deal.

Once you pass their test, you post their terms on your sites where people would be buying domains would see it, and send them that info.

You can either set up your own domain sales site with their software, or, use their on line area... best to set up a site. Then you just process the cards, and turn on the pending domain orders. you get an email when an order comes in.

They make it pretty simple. And Best of all... the domain owners get a domain control area to manage their own info... not like BR, where you have to go in and make every little change for them.

You will like opensrs. I have really bean glad we changed over to them.

Tim L

That was the is one good reseon why we want to change is they did not get a control panel to change there info theem self. I think i will go sign up with them today.

Do you use your own Credit Card account or does it work with them. I just want users to be able to buy a domain on our site and it register it right then and kind of hard to do that with bulk register..LOL Plus they get a control Panel then to.


Can you pull domain from BulkRegister to Open SRS like you can from NSI to BulkRegister?


Thanks or all your help and info.

Originally posted by Vortech

Do you use your own Credit Card account or does it work with them. I just want users to be able to buy a domain on our site and it register it right then and kind of hard to do that with bulk register..Actually that's very easy to do with BulkRegister; in some ways even easier than it is with OpenSRS. All you need to do is to email the information to BR, following the specifications they provide for registration by email. So your customers fill out a form, your script mails the results with your BR account info to BulkRegister.

As for your first question, once you've established an OpenSRS user account, you'll need to fund that account and keep a balance in it. You can do that by check, electronic transfer, credit card, whatever. To open the account you'll need to deposit either $250 (for the normal setup) or $500 (if you want to use the "Quick Start" configuration).

In other words, with OpenSRS you have to prepay them for the registrations you'll sell. With BulkRegister you can do it that way, or they'll just charge your card whenever you sell a registration.