Unfortunately we may never REALLY know what went on. What is good, is that Snapnames had the guts (some could call it a moral obligation or duty of care) to admit they had a problem and are in the process of addressing it.

Can I suggest a few questions to be added to their FAQ:

Q1. Given all the noise (some could call it evidence) in the industry, why has it taken us 4 years and 8 months to identify this?

Q2. Given due diligence, accounting standards, segregation of duties etc.. how come we failed to identify this in the first place?

————-

• Bidding affected approximately five percent of total SnapNames auctions since 2005, most of which occurred between 2005 and 2007.
• The incremental revenue from the bidding represented approximately one percent of SnapNames’ auction revenue since 2005.

• Enhanced monitoring of bidding activity for suspect behavior
• Additional controls over financial transactions
• Specific domain name registration policies for employees

SnapNames, and all in the Oversee family of companies, are deeply disappointed with this incident.  Since its founding in 2000, SnapNames has been committed to the principles of fairness and trust; the company wants to assure customers—through both words and actions—that it remains committed to those principles.

I backordered two domains (com and net) last year that were closely linked together by topic. Both of them were parked at a well known parking company. While both domains got a bit of traffic, they just werent converting. To be honest, I probably could have sold them on DNF for $XX, but I just don’t have the time.

Another domain name I won at auction many years ago has been declining in both traffic and consequently revenue. In 12 months to date its made US$4.50 on a very popular topic. In my book, that’s not enough, so I decided not to renew any of them!

The domain names are now gone, expired, thrown back into the drop. Some domainers that I know would have a heart attack and say “But you could build a site around X and use Adsense and blah blah blah”. But do you *REALLY* have the time to do this? Are you *REALLY* going to do it anyway?

What are your thoughts on this? When do you draw the line and say, enough is enough?

On Feb 2, 2008 I won a Snapnames auction with a final price of US$173. The domain has more than made its money back, yesterday it made US$1.50.

When I won the name at Snapnames, the registration provider was ItsYourDomain.com. The domain expires in December 2008 – so I thought it was about time that I transferred it out to another provider.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been trying to get the name transferred. The domain is in my account, I have the auth code, transfer shield was disabled – everything is ready to go.

The only problem was that it appeared that SecureWhois appeared to be on and therefore my new registrar couldn’t send emails to the admin and technical contacts. Here is what it looked like:

Registrant
Pending Renewal or Deletion
SecureWhois, Inc.
pend...@onlineaccess.net
96 Mowat
Toronto, ON M6K 3M1 CA
+1.4165385428
+1.4163520113 (FAX)

After a number of failed requests to disable SecureWhois, I received this email from their Technical Support staff:

“It looks like the domain had expired long time ago and was deleted from our system, it is now in pending delete status at the Registrar level. If you are interested we can check the price to get the domain back from the registrar.”

I was thinking… wait a minute…. something isn’t right here… I won this thing in Feb! So after writing back to their support dept asking them to “get the domain back immediately” – I decided to give them a call…. and by some miracle, they answered their support number!

It turns out that I never received the domain in the first place! Although the name appeared in my registrar account and I could make changes to it, the domain was “marked in the system” as being a backorder, and not actually “allocated” to me. After feeling somewhat in the twilight zone, I was told that they would immediately put a request through to allocate it to me and that I should see the change in the whois record. Sure enough, the change went through. That domain in my account that I’ve been making $$ from is now… well… mine.

What’s the lesson learned from all of this? Just because you see a domain in your account at your registrar, doesn’t mean its yours! Check the whois record.

P.S. Yes, this is a separate issue from yesterday. I don’t know whether its the “law of attraction” here, but everything seems to be happening at once!

—

Dear Simon,

The registrar was Moniker. They have informed us that they have put a
system in place to prevent this from happening again.

Sincerely,

SnapNames

—

I’d like to keep an eye on this issue. If you find yourself in the same position, with Snapnames or any other backordering company (NameJet / Godaddy) then please let me know or post a comment up here.

In the meantime, who’s really to blame here? Moniker for not passing the name onto Snapnames (I wonder what their contract says) OR Snapnames for not checking that they can auction a domain name?

What do you think?

Fast forward a couple of weeks and its been announced that Sam Nunez will handle Product Development, Marketing and Strategy.

You’ve just gotta love those warm, fuzzy, cuddly Germans.

It appears that Nunez has been around the traps. He has worked at both Oversee.net, Ask.com and SGI.

“I look forward to helping Sedo strengthen its market position in the global domain name marketplace,” said Nunez.  “Sedo will continue to leverage its tremendous success with online auctions, as it extends other services such as live auctions, globally.”

Good luck Sam. We will be watching closely to see what pops out of Sedo.

Edit 29/8/8: A point of clarification. I’ve just been contacted by a representative from Sedo who tells me that Sams role is purely product management and Matt is still an advisor with Sedo.

It’s been reported that their Police Department has allowed their domain name to expire.

The new owner of eurekapd.org in Russia has allegedly kept some of the content.

Police Chief Garr Nielsen told the Eureka Reporter that he wasn’t aware of the domain name being taken over and made it clear he didn’t want the Web site online anymore, but the city of Eureka has not yet decided if it is a “problem” or not.

Well… my guess is that it will be – especially when Jack Bauer comes looking for an answer!

Like a kid in a candy store, I quickly visit the Network Solutions website to check that everything is ok – but I can’t – their web site isn’t accessible. Grrr… Unfortuantely I can’t make any DNS changes to park the domain name. But then again, should I even have to? If you use Snapnames, you can go into your settings and nominate default DNS servers. Not in this case – I won using NameJet! Network Solutions has my beautiful domain name, parked with their ads! Noooooooo!

Lets look at their cashflow model:

1. Sally buys name at Network Solutions = $$$
2. Sally doesn’t renew her name
3. Network Solutions provides NameJet with the ability to auction the domain name = $$$ ?
4. John wins the auction and pays NameJet = $$$
5. The domain name is parked at Network Solutions until the owner changes the DNS = parking $$$
6. The domain name is renewed by the new owner = $$$

How the role of a domain name registrar has changed!

This is really quite strange as Overture belongs to Yahoo. When you visit the link you get:

To VIP Status: OK
Server Status: OK

The title tag changes to “Hello from Apache ”

and then it diverts to the Overture Small Business website. Perhaps Snapnames has included some Yahoo code somewhere?

—

Dear SnapNames Customers:

As you are likely aware, the SnapNames service was unavailable between last Thursday evening U.S. Pacific time and today.  We are pleased to tell you functionality has now been restored and that important data, including transaction history, has been fully retained.

Please note that auctions scheduled to close between July 4-7 will now close at (time EDT) on Tuesday, July 8. Please monitor any auctions accordingly.

We apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced during this time.  Should you have furtherquestions, you can reach us here:

Technical Support:         support@snapnames.com
Telephone:                    (800) 385-4075 (toll-free in the U.S.)
+ 1 503 241-8547 (outside the U.S.)

Sincerely,
The SnapNames Team
—

Their website reads:

Thank you for your patience during the recent outage to our service. The SnapNames system is again fully functional and ready to accept your orders and bids.

Please note, auctions scheduled to close between July 4-7 will now close on Tuesday, July 8 or later. Please monitor any auctions accordingly. If you have questions, please contact us at supp...@snapnames.com.