Don’t Want for Christmas — Things I
There are a few domain gifts that I’d rather not get for the holidays.
Last month I wrote regarding great gifts for domainers. With Christmas just a week away, I thought I’d point out a few gifts not to get your fravorite domain name friend.
1. A $100 gift certificate to RegisterFly. By the way, have your been to their web site lately? They seem to be in denial. They have a required notice on their home page regarding losing ICANN accreditation, and then a disclaimer as to why they’re really no longer accredited:
RegisterFly.com was for 6 years a reseller of domain names for multiple different domain registrars. In those 6 years we registered in excess of 2 million names, in fact in 2006 alone we added almost 1 million names. We used the backend and systems of our registrar partners to register and manage domain names through those six years. In January of 2006 we become operational as a registrar and registered names directly under our own accreditation. In February of 2007 we ended our relationship with one of the vendors due to the relationship becoming more of a competitor vs a vendor. In May of 2007, we reached an agreement with another registrar to assume the management of some names in our portfolio that were under our own accreditation.
There was an order granted to ICANN that requires we show this statement on our homepage, is misleading to consumers for a number of reasons
>We did a bulk transfer of names that were under our accreditation to another registrar, hence we do not function as an ICANN accredited registrar. Following the conclusion of the bulk transfer there was no need for us to remain an accredited registrar since the benefits did not merit the cost and effort required
Umm, yeah. You did the bulk transfer to GoDaddy since you were forced to. There was no need to remain an accredited registrar? ICANN yanked your accreditation, so you can’t be one.
2. A “Bob Parsons 16 Rules” poster. OK Bob, we get it. You’re a successful businessman. But you’re not notable enough to sell a poster regarding your philosophy on business. If this were Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, then maybe your poster would sell a few copies. But I don’t need to shell out money for trite rules such as “Never give up” and “Take things a day at a time.”
My guess is Bob didn’t come up with the idea to sell this product by himself; some employee thought it would be a great way to suck up. I ran into a GoDaddy employee at a conference this year. The subject of Parsons and his poster came up. I asked how many the firm had sold, and the GoDaddy employee joked “maybe enough for one per employee”.
3. A membership to SiteVestors’ Domain Investor Club. On the surface, this looks like a great offer. Plop down $499 and get a year membership to the club, which gives you updated listed of domains with traffic listed at Afternic, Domain Cargo, and other sites. I paid for the membership earlier this year. Once I logged in I saw only a handful of domains listed for a couple of the domain sites. A month passed and nothing happened. I requested a chargeback through PayPal and suddenly got support from SiteVestors, which finally updated the site. Then it died and nothing fresh ever happened. I contacted SiteVestors a few weeks ago and they stated “oh, the club has been inactive for months. You ought to have by now received a refund.” [paraphrase] I finally got them to issue the refund, but that was a waste of my time.
And for some reason the sales page for the club is still up, and you can still pay your $499 to join. Don’t do it.
4. Regarding 99% of the domains listed at DNForum. Seriously, what happened to the days of quality domains being listed for sale at domain forums? The forum post headlines all read “Great domains CHEAP!” and “Liquidation sale – top domains for $25!”, and then you click through to see names like mydog8urhomework.com and hillaryclinton4prez2008.com. It’s not worth sifting through the lists anymore. There ought to be a rule that you can’t list a domain you registered this morning.
