Does ICANN police the Registrars that they accredit? It is getting to be like the wild wild west. It seems to be getting hard to find an honest Registrar or reseller. I just found out that the reseller of one of my domain names changed the administrative contact from my name to their company name and the registrar forces you to go through the reseller to change anything.

ICANN has no control over resellers at all, just ICANN accredited registrars.

As for policing them, yes they do, but only within the bounds that ICANN sets at being problematic. Business practices generally do not fall within those bounds.

It is going to get more crazy before the dust settles I'm afraid. There are something like 6000 eNom resellers out there now madly registering names for no profit. Wait till these guys all stop answering their email and see what happens to those domain holders when they try to get anywhere...

-t

Perhaps it is time for one or more independent sites to act
like a internet Better Business Bureau where a customer could
see if a registrar or reseller had any complaints lodged against
them. The business practices of a great many registrars and
resellers (mostly resellers) verge on being fraud especially in the
area of advertising.

If they don’t start policing themselves, it is only a matter of time
until the government get involved.

Originally posted by thewitt
There are something like 6000 eNom resellers out there now madly registering names for no profit.
Please provide the source for this statement.

And the source for any data that leads you to believe they will soon 'all stop answering their email'.

Originally posted by bobj09009
Perhaps it is time for one or more independent sites to act
like a internet Better Business Bureau where a customer could
see if a registrar or reseller had any complaints lodged against
them. The business practices of a great many registrars and
resellers (mostly resellers) verge on being fraud especially in the
area of advertising.

If they don’t start policing themselves, it is only a matter of time
until the government get involved.
That 'independant' site already exists... ICANN (and you can see how well they do). The government already became involved...

Regrading the business practices of registrars (and resellers)...
Business practices either are or are not fraud. Being on the 'verge' of fraud is like almost being pregnant. Problem is that this fraud is grey, meaning a 'renewal notice' which transfers your domain here, a denial of transfer there...

bobj09009,

You kind of have that in a "mini way" here at WHT. See which resellers get praise from their customers, have been around a long time etc.

Frank

It would appear that ICANN was not created to oversee the
business practices of registrars or resellers or if they were then
you are correct, they don’t do a good job of it. However, the
problem still remains and needs to be solved.

The internet has come a long way since I first logged in and
hopefully has a long way to go. The internet growth will be
because of newcomers and if those users are controlled
by businesses with crooked or unethical business practices
growth is likely to be stymied, and if you think the government
became involved when ICANN was established, hitch up your
belt, you haven’t seen anything yet!!

The number of eNom resellers is posted on their website. It was up around 8,000 today - though apparently only about 3600 are considered active by eNom.

As for these resellers "registering domains without any profit" that is of course simply my opinion watching the eNom resellers who post here with their rediculously low prices. Anyone who is marking up a domain by $0.50 is certainly not putting food on the table selling domain names - there just are not that many domains being registered each month...

Yes, this is just my opinion, and I've said so many times. I've already got a few lunch and beer bets over whether I'll be proven correct or not by this time next year ;).

-t

Originally posted by thewitt
As for these resellers "registering domains without any profit" that is of course simply my opinion watching the eNom resellers who post here with their rediculously low prices. Anyone who is marking up a domain by $0.50 is certainly not putting food on the table selling domain names - there just are not that many domains being registered each month...

Yes, this is just my opinion, and I've said so many times. I've already got a few lunch and beer bets over whether I'll be proven correct or not by this time next year ;).

-t

I have to agree totally (even though we are an eNom reseller).

Domain name sales are not our main line of business but just a complement to our other sites/lines.

I've stated numerous times in these threads about the financial risk of setting up resellers vs. the profit (in most cases almost nothing).

I too will be very interested in seeing what the eNom market looks like in 3 months, six months and a year. It's make such a radical shift in the past three months (from who is eNom to can I have a 6.95 reseller).

Frank

netsol/verisin is acredited by ICANN - the web's worst registrar and biggest theif - who need's ICANN?

Originally posted by thewitt
As for these resellers "registering domains without any profit" that is of course simply my opinion watching the eNom resellers who post here with their rediculously low prices. Anyone who is marking up a domain by $0.50 is certainly not putting food on the table selling domain names - there just are not that many domains being registered each month...

Yes, this is just my opinion, and I've said so many times. I've already got a few lunch and beer bets over whether I'll be proven correct or not by this time next year ;).


Like Frank, I agree with you 100%. AQHost has been offering reseller accounts for 3 months now, and in that time the landscape has changed dramatically. Signups have slowed right down as people chase the latest $6.95 account for $<insert small number here> offer regardless of the business logic behind it. Naturally my point of view is tainted by the fact that I'm offering accounts myself, but still....

A reseller who offers a $6.99 account is making 4 cents per domain year. To make $100 (whoopee) he has to sell 2,500 domain years. To make $500 per month (still hardly an income) his group would have to be responsible for 12,500 domain years *every month*. At a rough estimate that's 8-10% of what eNom sells on a monthly basis with all their thousands of resellers plus their retail arm. Some chance!

A reseller offering a $6.95 account makes nothing on an ongoing basis. Not one cent. So where's the impetus to provide decent support? Is it to be found in the massive <$10 signup fees that such accounts seem to be attracting?

And before anyone cries "why would a reseller need support?" I can tell you from first hand experience that they do. I've had API questions, nameserver questions, requests for proper invoices, test server questions, and a myriad of other how to questions which I'm more than happy to answer with the same level of speed and detail that I'd give my hosting customers. Would I be so quick to help if I didn't have a vested interest in my resellers succeeding? If I'd pocketed their signup fee and would never make anything further from the deal? Probably not. So my resellers would be left to go directly to eNom, with the attendant waits and frustrations.

A reseller, as I've mentioned here before, retains liability for any fraud that happens in his sub-accounts if eNom are unable to collect from the sub-reseller. Currently chargeback fees are $35 + cost of domain + transaction fees which totals up to well over $40 *per chargeback*. Even if eNom's card processing is not used, the parent reseller still remains liable for the cost of the domain itself. Not to be alarmist, but I've heard of several cases where sub-resellers have registered dozens of domains using stolen credit cards and then disappeared into the night. There are, I believe, at least two "faces" who are well known to eNom and who operate in this manner. I know because one of them very briefly had an account with me. He was shut down before he could cause any problems, but still. The point is what happens to the business model of virtually giving accounts away and making nothing on the registrations if you get hit with a dodgy sub-reseller? Those <$10 setup fees won't go very far when the reseller gets landed with (e.g.) a $400+ bill for 10 chargebacks...

Then there's the trust side of the equation. As a parent reseller I can see every domain that is registered by one of my sub-resellers. I can also see every domain that is registered by one of my sub-reseller's retail customers. If I was a little less than honest, a few minutes with WHOIS would give me a nice little database of people to market to wouldn't it? I would *never* do that myself, but it's worth bearing in mind that the whole reseller/sub-reseller relationship is very heavily based on trust.

Talking of trust, there's also nothing to stop a parent reseller from raising his sub-resellers' prices at any time without warning. I hope it never happens, but I'm just waiting for the day when one of the people offering $6.99 accounts gets fed up with the lack of money he's making and hikes his resellers' prices.

Then there are the other questions about stability and integrity. What if the parent reseller goes out of business? What if the parent reseller has his account taken away by eNom for some reason? What if the parent reseller decides he doesn't like you and has your account converted to a standard eNom $29.95 retail account (which he can do)?

I'm done anyway :D Just putting into words a few things that I've been seeing and that worry me tremendously because if (when) we see one reseller go bang it's going to reflect badly on the rest of us too.

Best wishes,
Simon.

Simon, good point as usual. :)