The ICANN Registrar Accreditation Agreement is up for review and comment right now until August 4th.

Every domainer should insist that ICANN add language to that agreement that reinforces section 3.7.9 and SPECIFICALLY PROHIBITS registrars from warehousing and speculating.

Tucows is unfairly skimming 6000 to 8000 domain names a month by their own admission.

Whether or not such policies have been adopted is almost secondary to the obvious spirit of the provision. It’s hard to imagine that any policy allowing the auctioning off or adoption of a customer’s domain name wouldn’t require the registrar to first make an attempt to contact the owner through other means, such as a registered letter or at least a phone call.

The truth is, many people and companies lose their domain names over nothing more than a broken email address. Even when these broken addresses return an error message to the sending registrar, they make no attempt to contact the registrant by any other means. Personally, it’s difficult for me to characterize this type of half-hearted approach as helping original registrants.

I think the blinding beacon of revelation should shine on this issue until it is properly addressed.

hmnn wonder the portfolios of tucows,netsol,namejet will look like in a few yrs? and just maybe those expiring reminder emails? how many will not be sent out because of some email server problems, or “crash in our system excuse”? :-/

A huge conflict of interests indeed. Tucows GM cmon, who are you fooling do you think we were all born yesterday? Warehousing domains is a conflict of interests and should be investigated by state attorney generals for companies operating inside the US. ICANN obviously is impotent on this matter.

Thank you for the opportunity to answer some of the questions you have asked about how Tucows handles expired domains. Unlike some of our competitors, we believe in transparency and welcome the opportunity to discuss our policies.

You asked…

Q. How long will Tucows allow the original registrant to renew the domain name for? And at what cost?

A. Tucows has one of the longest Grace Periods in the industry: 40 days. What this means is that for up to 40 days after a domain expires (which is after several *months* of reminder notices being sent via email), the original registrant can reinstate their domain name for the standard renewal fee, which will vary in price depending on which of our resellers they used to register/renew the domain name but is usually in the $10-20 range. From 40 days to 70 days after a domain expires (another 30 days), the domain is in the Redemption Period, and the orginal registrant can reinstate the domain name for a flat $80 redemption fee plus standard renewal fee. And from day 70 to 100 (more than 3 months after the domain name expired), if the domain is still under Tucows management, the original registrant may still be able to reinstate the domain name for an additional fee (which varies from name to name but is discounted 50% for the original registrant).

I challenge you to find another registrar that goes this far to help original registrants reinstate their domain names.

You asked…

Q. Does being a registrar give you the right to keep domains that its customers fail to renew?

A. Yes. And keep in mind the original registrants have been notified for months leading up to their expiry that their name is expiring, and we have a team of people who help our resellers and their registrant customers reinstate their expired domain names if at all possible. Just yesterday, for instance, I received two different emails from original registrants thanking me and my team for helping them reinstate their domain names long after some of our registrar competitors would have told them, “tough luck, you’re screwed”.

Regards,

Bill Sweetman, General Manager, Tucows Domain Portfolio

What does it mean to be promoted into a leadership position?

Frankly, it means now we have the authority to serve people in a special way - Anonymous