enom gives away free .info automatically?

[Theo]

This is just horrible!

 

[aww]

Very detailed coverage on NetCraft today

Domain owners are protesting a move by eNom to register the .info equivalents of nearly a million .com domains owned by its customers. Domain name statistics show that eNom registered 950,000 domain names between Sept. 27 and Oct. 4. The domains were registered through Sipence, which has the same address as eNom in an office suite in Bellevue, Wash.

 

[Theo]

The unethical part of this case is that if they offer it for sale, even at a discount, and their offer is turned down they'd better remove the WHOIS info.

 

[actnow]

I thought for sure more names would be registered then they have.

If you take out the 1 million names from Sipence.

Then, the growth is not as drastic.

If those registrations do not end up in the hands of the whois owner.
Sipence will delete them or drop them.

Look at the numbers and mentally subtract 1 million.

http://www.webhosting.info/registries/reports/domains/INFO

 

[aww]

Big news:
All the .info domains for your account have suddenly appeared under the redemption tab, login and look here:
http://www.enom.com/domains/DomainManager.asp?tab=RGP
They have a price of ZERO right now so might want to try to grab them all.

Unfortunately when I try to checkout with them in the cart I get:

There are not enough funds in this account for this transaction.
To add money to your account, please go to the Refill Account page.

Even though my charge is 0.00 Others have reported success?

 

[actnow]

Big news:
All the .info domains for your account have suddenly appeared under the redemption tab,....
Unfortunately when I try to checkout with them in the cart I get:
Even though my charge is 0.00 Others have reported success?

When, I try to renew them I get

"Error: Command not allowed for this operation"

Enom has screwed this up from the beginning.

They should have offered (or given) them to us.

Now, they have taken the names out of circulation. So, I could not register
them for free with another registrar.

The names will now have to go thru the RGP cycle.

If I was Afflias, I would be angry with Enom for screwing up .info's marketing
program.

Incidently, I think one of the reasons Afflias did this marketing strategy so
they can show a success story. Since, the .net registry is coming up
for renewal with Verisign. And, they are in the running for it.

Now, all of these deletions will take them out of the race for .net.

 

[Anthony Ng]

The unethical part of this case is that if they offer it for sale, even at a discount, and their offer is turned down they'd better remove the WHOIS info.

My take is that they shouldn't have used other people's contact info in the first place.

 

[Honan]

Big news:
All the .info domains for your account have suddenly appeared under the redemption tab, login and look here:
http://www.enom.com/domains/DomainManager.asp?tab=RGP
They have a price of ZERO right now so might want to try to grab them all.

Unfortunately when I try to checkout with them in the cart I get:
Even though my charge is 0.00 Others have reported success?

Thanks for the heads up
Check out worked fine for me and the order confirmation email contained pleasing news like Status Succesful, Amount $0, and THIS ORDER WAS NOT BILLED.

 

[Duke]

Worked for me as well, however you can't change the nameservers. I've seen that glitch before and it is usually fixed within a few hours. The thing that struck me about the list was that there aren't any on it that I would have registered myself. That means they will all be dropped next year (when I registered the .coms if the .info fit I went ahead and took it at the time). In the end I'm sure they decided there was no way they could charge for the domains since others offer them free and they made a huge goof by using contact data without permission. Free domains or no - that was a big mistake IMO and one that should never be repeated.

 

[actnow]

Thanks, I got it to work.

Maybe, the system was dragging because everyone else was renewing them.

I went into my different accounts renewed all of the free .infos.

And, I also went into my customer's accts and renewed the ones for the
customers I knew would want the free .info's. And, the customers I was not
sure would want them. I sent them an email letting them know about it.

I don't recall if this was mentioned.

But, imagine how much traffic 900,000 names would produce for two weeks.
Even if they are .infos. With very little type-in.

I would assume it would produce enough to pay someone's salary for a week.

 

[URLCollection]

This whole process smells a bit "fishey", as they say -

"Inquirers to Sipence and eNom say they are being told that the .info domains were registered "on their behalf" and will soon appear in their eNom accounts. Several report being told via email that the .info domains would "be available to you for a small fee if you choose to use them." Other customers say they've been told there will be no charge for the domains."

 

[Mr Webname]

At first I thought that I had "missed out" on this offer but just took a look at my expiring/expired names and then looked under the "Redemption" tag - low and behold a whole list of .info's matching my domains.
An Enom whois check said that they had all expired and that I was the previous registrant! :-O

The list all showed the "redemption" charge as $0 so I went ahead and registered about 15 that I thought might be useful and they were all registered without charge.

(Haven't read the whole thread so sorry if I've duplicated anything.)

 

[URLCollection]

At first I thought that I had "missed out" on this offer but just took a look at my expiring/expired names and then looked under the "Redemption" tag - low and behold a whole list of .info's matching my domains.
An Enom whois check said that they had all expired and that I was the previous registrant! :-O

The list all showed the "redemption" charge as $0 so I went ahead and registered about 15 that I thought might be useful and they were all registered without charge.

(Haven't read the whole thread so sorry if I've duplicated anything.)

Yes we did also Roger, but can not seem to change the DNS info? Steve

 

[Mr Webname]

Yes we did also Roger, but can not seem to change the DNS info? Steve

Yes Steve, just noticed that

"Errors modifying name servers: Failed to get registrar lock"

However url redirect works okay so semi-useable.

 

[seeker]

you need to email support.

its a problem with the dns management configuration from Enom's account panel to sipense.
its easily fixable.

 

[aww]

Why do people change the nameserver when using eNom anyway? I never understood that. I've found their nameservers 10x more reliable than my own server's and it lightens the load just that much more.

Just set A address and point it to your server IP and park the domain on your server, it's set. The bonus is you can redirect it within seconds if something happens to your server or you want to route the domain differently for some special event.

On the other hand, them not letting you change the nameservers for these names sounds like a "feature" to prevent transfers?

 

[adoptabledomains]

No offical word, but you can now accept or delete the free .info's enom registered in your name. If you go to your domain control panel, you will see a "promotions" tab at the top of the page. Click on it and you should see the domains they registered. You can select the domains to either accept them into your account, or mark them for deletion. Here is the text from the page"

These domain names are free promotional .info domain names. If you are the registrant, or have the apparent authority of the registrant, you may either 1) "activate" the name or, 2) delete the name or, 3) do nothing. The names are not resolving, which means they are not pointing to any IP address in the DNS.

All the options are free:

Activate
If you choose this option you will proceed through the normal shopping cart and checkout process but you will not be charged for the name. You will confirm that you agree to the registration agreement and then the name will move to the normal paid status listing in your account. After you activate the name, you can push it to any other eNom account, change the whois information set the name server (DNS) information and otherwise use the name like any other .info name. You can even transfer the name to another registrar if you wish.

Delete
If you choose this option the name will be deleted at the registry. After proceeding through the normal ICANN "redemption grace" and "pending delete" periods, the name will go back into the registry's pool of names which are available for registration. If after you delete the name, you change your mind and wish to bring the name back from the redemption grace period (RGP), in effect "un-deleting" the name, you will have to pay the standard RGP fee. If you wish to delete all of the .info promotional names in this account, please contact eNom customer service.

Do Nothing
If you choose this option the name will either be automatically deleted during the 45-day auto-renew grace period after the name expires, or before.

So, this finally explains that the domains are free if you want them, or can be deleted if you don't through the normal Redemption Grace Period after 45 days. All are currently marked as in RGP, but with no cost to redeem right now.

I did accept 2 of 23 names,and will let the others delete on cycle. I've heard that some are still having trouble changing DNS settings, but it may take a day or so for the domain to be officially removed from RGP to get DNS control again.

 

[Anthony Ng]

This just in:

eNom Technology Partner,

You probably know that Afilias, the registry for the .info TLD, has been offering a promotion for free .info domain names.

Our intentions are to offer, for free, a .info name that matches registrants' .com name before the .info name becomes unavailable.

Due to the fact that the ICANN budget is changing, the ICANN fee for the names would likely be five times more ($0.25 verses about $0.045 per name) if we had not registered them when we did, and therefore we would not have been able to offer them for free as we are doing.

We recognize that the speed with which we acted has created some confusion, for which we apologize. Here is what is going on:

These domain names are meant to be free to the registrants. Afilias' hope is that registrants will become more familiar with the .info TLD as a result of this promotion. Afilias and eNom hope that these domain names will be offered for free to the corresponding registrants of the .com domain names. Though the names point to eNom's DNS, they are not being resolved. If the registrant accepts the free domain (or if you accept it on the registrant's behalf) by "activating" the domain, then the registrant can change the whois, update the DNS, perform a transfer and otherwise utilize the domain just like any other domain for the remaining registration period. You can activate the domains from the new "promotion" sub-tab in the domain manager portion of the eNom or PDQ websites. If you or the registrant chooses to do nothing, the name will be deleted at the end of the registration period.

Since the domain names are a promotional offer, the registrants need a way to easily delete the domain names if they do not want them.

We request that you will not require the registrants to pay for these .info domains, but, at a minimum, we insist that you allow the registrants to delete these domains if they are not wanted.

Here are the ways you can allow the registrants to delete these .info domains if they do not want them:

1) If you do not want to deal with this promotion at all, let us know by contacting [email protected] or eNom's customer service and we will delete all of the promotional .info domains in your account.

2) Allow the registrant to use the push tool (if you have this implemented in your interface) to push the domain from the account it is in to the account with login ID <enom-deletedomains>. eNom will periodically delete all of the promotional domain names in this account. Or you or the registrant can do this via the eNom or PDQ website by logging into the account then clicking on the new "promotion" sub-tab in the domain manager, and clicking "delete" next to the promotional name you wish to delete.

3) Inform the registrants that they can send an email to [email protected] and we will delete the domain name. These emails must be sent by either the registrant or administrative contact for the domain name. We will reply to these emails to verify that the "from" email address is not being spoofed.

We apologize for any confusion this has created and we hope you understand that we are trying to allow the registrants to take advantage of Afilias' program while the names were still free and available.

Enjoy your free names!

The eNom Team

 

[Theo]

Enom: Spellchecking helps :-D

($0.25 verses about $0.045 per name)

 

[ExpireGuy]

Due to the fact that the ICANN budget is changing, the ICANN fee for the names would likely be five times more ($0.25 verses about $0.045 per name)

Yes....their budget is changing due to expenditures in various high end lawsuits.....and here's a perfect example of a registrar setting them up for another one.

if we had not registered them when we did, and therefore we would not have been able to offer them for free as we are doing.

My how competitive in spirit.......strange how other registrars had no problem offering this free info deal at the beginning of September......the only difference was they let their customers know about it via advertising and promotion instead of registering .info's using their own account holders personal data by a no name third party.......no confusion there.