I attempted to obtain a .US domain from Internet Registrations Worldwide, and had a negative experience. First, the listed registrar was a Jason Namour, who was based in Melbourne, Australia, and .US is supposed to be for US citizens, legal residents, businesses and foreign businesses with a significant US presence. I e-mailed the then-listed contact
[email protected] -- no phone or fax were listed -- and got no response. Upon investigating a little further, I discovered these guys had registered hundreds, maybe thousands of domains in a particular format of three random characters for names (i.e., dgr.us, ghb.us) and were just sitting on them. I went to NeuStar and Enom, and finally got an alternate e-mail. A week or so later, I get a response. NeuStar's retail price for .US domain was, I believe, $29 with a two-year minimum. They wanted $1650! I was developing a website for a non-profit, and that was almost the entire budget, so I made an offer of $100, to which they did not respond. I asked NeuStar and Enom to intervene, based on the fact that the foreign registrant/reseller didn't meet the NeuStar, Nexus or Enom criteria to be a .US registrant. The extent of their effort was to get the registrar to change his listing, so his US-based billing contact, Brad Norrish, became the listed contact. They left the
[email protected] in 'whois', and did not provide phone or fax contacts. I corresponded extensively with the reseller and the compliance contact at Enom, to no avail. All in all, I give Internet Registrations Worldwide, NeuStar and Enom failing marks for cyber citizenship and business practices.