Dear DP, I have with domainmonster.com a [dot]eu domain. Now, day 13 july I was going to check the status because I knew was going to expire day 15 july and guess what? The domain was not in my list! Mmm... I thought was an error of the system but I haven't contacted them. I did the same day 14 and of course day 15 july! Day 15 july I decide to write them asking: ----- Dear DomainMonster, I tried to renew my domain but I can't find it in my domain list. I never received any communication in my email address (neither in my spam folder) and of course you was not able to know that I changed paypal. I am in the needing to renew my domain. How can I do? Thanks ---- So day 16 I receive this kind email: ---- Hi Xxxxxxxxx, Thanks for contacting Domainmonster support. I can see that this domain that you want to renew actually expired yesterday, on the 15/07/2010. We sent you several emails reminding you of the impending expiry, and our failure to renew this for you due to your payment card being declined. We actually emailed you a total of nine times to warm you that we were going to renew it and then that we had been unable to. As we are afforded absolutely no grace with .eu domains unfortunately it will now be an additional 100 EURO on top of the usual renewal of this domain before I can renew it for you I'm afraid. Please let me know how you would like to proceed and I will be happy to help. Kind Regards, April ---- Now, reading their General Terms and Conditions: ---- NATURE OF DOMAIN NAMES, RENEWAL AND REDEMPTION 3.1. You acknowledge that You will not rely on the registration or continued registration of the Requested Domain until confirmation of completion of registration of the Requested Domain is notified to You by way of the Requested Domain appearing in Your Control Panel in the "Manage Domains" box and showing as registered status. 3.2. Subject to clause 3.3 We will automatically renew the Requested Domain on or before the Expiration Date and We will charge You the Renewal Fee at the single rate shown at http://www.domainmonster.com/domains/ (which shall be non-refundable) for such renewal. 3.3. We will notify You in advance, to the email address provided by You to Us with Your Account Details, that the Requested Domain is approaching its Expiration Date and when it will be automatically renewed by Us. You must notify Us if You do not wish to renew the Requested Domain. Alternatively You may alter the setting in Your Control Panel to deactivate the automatic renewal process before the date notified to You by Us, when the Requested Domain will be renewed, if You do not want to renew the Requested Domain or wish to renew the Requested Domain manually. 3.4. If the Requested Domain passes its Expiration Date and has not been renewed You acknowledge that at Our discretion We may: 3.4.1. renew the Requested Domain on Your behalf; and 3.4.2. change the Requested Domain's Name Servers to Our Name Servers, and display advertising on the Requested Domain and collect and retain any revenue generated from such advertising. 3.5. If We decide to renew the Requested Domain after the Expiration Date You have the right for a period of 16 days after the Expiration Date to pay Us the Renewal Fee. On receipt of the Renewal Fee by Us within the 16 day period, You will retain ownership of the Requested Domain and as soon as reasonably practicable We shall restore the Requested Domain to Your Control Panel. 3.6. If We do not receive the Renewal Fee within the 16 day period stipulated at clause 3.5 We shall have the right: 3.6.1. in Our sole discretion to terminate the Contract and change ownership of the Requested Domain; and/or 3.6.2. to place the Requested Domain on hold and mark it for deletion at Our sole discretion. You will then have the right for a period of time (which will end between 65 and 74 days after the Expiration Date, (when the Requested Domain is placed on hold and marked for deletion) the "Notified Period") to redeem the Requested Domain upon payment of an administration fee of 100.00 EURO , which shall include all redemption charges. On receipt of the administration fee of 100.00 EURO by Us within the Notified Period, You will retain ownership of the Requested Domain and as soon as reasonably practicable We shall restore the Requested Domain to Your Control Panel. ---- So it's clear that they cannot ask me 100 euros for a domain that was not in my domains list list since day 13 july, they need to wait 16 days anyway to ask me 100 euros and about the no grace period for EU domains, there's nothing in their Agreement page (I made screenshot and saved a page of it)!! So, are they trying to scam me? Are they trying to resell the domain name (ione.eu) to someone else without my permission? Should I inform ICANN? Thanks for the help! Edit: I informed ICANN. Edit: Surprise!!!! The domain name still point to http://yogem.com but they already selling it!!! Here's the trick! I will update with other news soon.
You definitely did a mistake by not contacting them immediately on the 13th... as soon as you noticed its absence from your list. Anyway, it does appear they are trying to cheat you as there is no such rule/law giving no grace period specifically for .eu domains. Do write to ICANN with this 'SEDO sale' proof. Do not allow this 'true to its name' monster... profit off you. Regards, RightMan
what u say abt this whois data for that domain ? ( checked in nic.eu site ) Registrar Organisation Tucows.com Co. Website domainhelp.tucows.com/
Did it... they are reseller of Tucows but the answer of Tucows Domain was first of all to try informally to talk with Domain Monster, then to inform ICANN and if I don't have positive answers from both... to talk with them again :-|
few domains have fast expiry ( delete ) period like .de gets deleted after a day. so it could be the problem u better write to nic.eu once and see the outcome
This is not the first EU domain that I own and no, eu domains have not such expiry period and the domain http://ione.eu still point on http://yogem.com - I really think that they had an offer for my domain and now they are playing. I had another answer from them and seems that on monday I will get more informations on it. So for the moment... let's wait monday.
u can try to contact sedo once. they may delete the listing as whois is with your name. try with that way
I registered an account on sedo.com, verified the domain under my control and removed as "For Sell"! The problem in the meantime remain the same... waiting for an answer.
They are probably looking at wasting more days so that your 16 days grace period expires! Regards, RightMan
Sorry for the Long Awaited Answer The domain is safe, I already renewed it because they re-added it in the control panel and... received another email saying: Well.. Habit? I was renewing it before it's expiring date... Card?? I thought that they were talking about a prepaid card that I don't use anymore... but no, was my credit card and I still pay (as today) with the same! At this point I don't know what to think... Today I made the payment and the domain is... paid... with the same declined card! Well, I don't want to know what's happened... but all is well what end well!!! I think.
They probably realized that you are no easy push-over and so retracted... to give back your domain name to you. Good for you! Regards, RightMan
I guess I've missed the entire thing here but I do want to recommend that you use somebody else... This kind of service is appalling and you shouldn't tolerate it! One day they will really have you over.. If I were you, I'd renew then transfer the domain asap! Chuckun
Hi All I'm the CEO at Domainmonster.com and someone's just noted this thread to me, so thought I'd comment. Firstly, I can assure you we pride ourselves on being Gamekeeper not Poacher and can categorically assure you this incident was not a scam or attempt to sell this name. I would suspect the Name Servers were previously pointing to Sedo, so when the name expired it continued to do so, but can't be certain. Either way, we would not of changed them and do not currently work with Sedo. Let me take each other point in turn. 1) The Registry here is EURid. They are not governed by ICANN. ICANN are responsible for gTLD's only, so any complaint should be made to EURid as a complaint to ICANN will simply be ignored as they are not the contracting party. 2) .EU domains are very complex with their polices. Until VERY recently they actually didn't have any grace period at all and still don’t technically - I explain more in 3 below. This is why we renew .eu domains 4 weeks prior to expiration, way ahead of other TLD's. We do this, because typically there can be payment issues (As in this case), where a card has expired or is being blocked as suspected fraud; that kind of thing. This period then provides ample time for the customer to get in touch following our comms to them to sort this issue out. Reason of course, is that with zero grace period, we don't want a customer to get to the day after expiry and lose their domain. 3) EURid have now implemented a small grace period; of a fashion. This was why our support team back peddled a little here. They weren't bowing to pressure, they were simply doing their best for our customers (as we always do, hence our reputation) and rather than assume zero grace period was still the case, they went away and triple checked, to find it had just changed and were able to resolve the issue after all. I say of a fashion, because there is still no grace period as the industry generally knows a grace period to be. However, they do now allow us to recover a domain up to the end of the month in which it expired at no cost. So if your domain expires 30th July then you get a 1 day grace period, if it expires 2nd July, you get 29 days. A complex rule rather than just saying 16 days post expiry or similar, but most importantly a new rule that we un-earthed for this registrants benefit. 4) We charge an admin fee to recover a domain, generally only were we incur a fee. It may well seem extortionate but I can assure you it directly relates to our costs from both the Registry and the manual process that most invoke to recover a domain post expiration. If we can recover it post expiration without a fee, in most cases (Not all), we won't then impose a fee to our users. We want your custom, we don't want to aggravate you! The simply rule here is I would highly recommend renewing domains within term. Post term you are always on rocky ground and at the mercy of the registrar and/or registry rules. In this case, we had payment issues and the support contact from the registrant didn't initiate until the day before expiration. We had communicated the issue many times prior to that and within a good time frame, with no prior response. It then unfortunately took a day or two to resolve because the support agent wanted to triple check the rules once being allocated the ticket - all to the registrants benefit, as we ultimately resolved at no cost. 5) Re 4 above, that time period is essentially 16 days with us. Enom don't' specify it in their terms, but give themselves between 0 and 30 days, Go-Daddy state 12 days and most other registrars state entirely at their own discretion, so could be Day 1,hence my comment on renewing within term above. We are definitely a market leader with a long 16 days after expiration in which you can recover your domain with no fees at all. I fully recognise that .eu is an exception here. Whilst they now do actually have a sort of grace period, its still much shorter/longer than others, so will be an exception in our T & C's. It's duly noted that we don't state that in our terms right now and I'll have that fixed. I can absolutely assure you I've spent good time discussing this with all internally this morning (Hence such a long post - thanks for still reading!) and hope I've managed to answer the points made with a level of accuracy that helps clear this one up for all. Most importantly I hope I've restored your faith in Domainmonster - I can assure you we are one of the good guys or I certainly wouldn't be taking the time and level of detail I have, to respond! Thanks all, Matt
I've gotta say, I've been using domainmonster for quite some time. Several years in fact. All I can say is that domainmonster has been great to work with. Anytime I've needed support, I've gotten it. Anytime I've had a question, they answered it. They are one of the best registrars for new TLD launches IMO. They have some of the best tools and don't overcharge for them like NODADDY. Many old school domainers from the DNforum community use domainmonster because they DO offer superior service and cater to PROFESSIONAL domainers and web professionals.
This is, first of all, a month old thread closed and everything is fixed. Second, am glad you stay well with DomainMonster as I love to stay with NetFirms and maybe someone else will have troubles with NetFirms and not with DomainMonster but this are personal experiences and again, the problem is fixed but the proof are all there! I was unlucky and that's it! Cheers to All also to DomainMonster!