Garrett Saundry
Like any other product or service that you put your money into, registrars are no different. There are good ones out there and then there are bad ones. There are bargain basement ones, and there are platinum service ones. The one constant between them is the fact that you pay them for a specific product and expect them to deliver. However much like the occasional shady contractor or telemarketing scammer, there are some registrars out there that demonstrate to us how not to do business. I present to you RegisterFly.com: A Cautionary Tale.
This company started out as a domain reseller, but then purchased a small registrar in 2006 and moved into the business of registering names themselves, and by 2007 they had about two million domains under management. About that same time ICANN launched an investigation of RegisterFly amidst complaints of fraud and corporate mismanagement, and that’s where things really started to go south. The two partners who ran the company were also romantically involved and each also owned a reported 50% stake in the business. After a complete and total breakdown of communications, one partner fired the other alleging that he had mismanaged company funds by spending them on high class male escorts, a Miami penthouse, liposuction and a $6000 Chihuahua.
Since all the company funds were being spent on things other than domain names, customers were losing domains that they had paid for since RegisterFly didn’t have enough money in the bank to cover registry fees. ICANN quickly stepped in and filed a lawsuit and then pulled accreditation on March 16 2007.
Much like all tales of woe, this one does have a lesson. ICANN reformed their registrar accreditation process and RegisterFly’s existing portfolio was bought out by another regstrar. ICANN did take it’s fair share of criticism though for not following through on the reported fraud earlier.
Much like kicking the tires on a new car or tapping your melons at the supermarket, registrars are also something that you should check out before buying. Just because you found them on the internet doesn’t mean that there aren’t any underlying issues.