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When buying domains goes wrong.
I recently purchased a few really neat domains from porkbun.
Imagine my surprise when I log in today and find my recent purchases are gone, and I have a refund in my PayPal account.
When I search porkbun, my previously owned domains are now listed as "aftermarket" and have been marked up 30,000%.
It doesn't seem fair to me and it doesn't seem like good business; but maybe there are some things I haven't considered:
Porkbun is a reseller and doesn't own the .cloud top level domain, so perhaps it isn't something they had control of.
Was this a software failure in which the domains weren't defined as premium?
Google tells me cloud is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) delegated by ICANN. It is managed by the Italian company Aruba PEC SpA, a wholly owned subsidiary of the same Aruba S.p.A., one of the largest distributors of Hostings and Providers in Europe.
So is Aruba the one conducting business in a lackluster manner, failing to honor a sale made in good faith?
Are my expectations unreasonable? Should one expect this sort of business when dealing with newer gTLDs? Is it common practice to take domains from customers on a whim? Should I just stick to .com .net and .org? Are there any domain resellers which are trustworthy enough to buy and not have to worry about my domains being taken from under me?
Comments
check with support what went wrong they have ability to restore things back.
The best you will get is "oops, sorry" and that's it. No matter who's fault. Better move on different things. Save your time.
I have contacted support.
I don't expect a reply.
Aftermarket usually meant already registered domain but relisted by fucking scalpers. Premium usually meant still unreg domain but with registry premium. At least thats with porkbun. Other registrar marked them on their own way ie namecheap always showed premium for both cases, gotta click the premium tag to see more.
If its really end up being aftermarket, either its porkbun incompetent backend fck up querying registry and marking the domain as available when its really not, or its the registry fault telling porkbun the domain is available when its not. Either way, when in doubt always fire up local terminal and do "whois domainname”. Hell even when not in doubt I've always did that to double confirm myself since registrar webui search aren't that reliable.
My guess is that you registered a premium domain for the price of a regular domain and their system didn't recognize it at the time of registration. It happens from time to time and you can't do much here than move along or pay a premium price.
Domain registrar can't do much here either and they can be badly screwed by that unless registry Terms of service allow domain tasting (grace period for domain return & refund).
According to whois it is available for registration.
I assume the domains you registered were in fact already registered, by someone else.
Like @cupcake mentioned, there are cases where there are "technical glitches" with the backend system when querying registries, leading to the incorrect display of registered domains as available, or registry premium domains as non-premium/standard domains.
Then its not aftermarket. Its premium. Its registry fault not properly marked it as premium when porkbun backend query them. Nothing can be done by porkbun and its not really their fault. Well they can pay from their own pocket money and absorb the difference but obviously they wouldn't do that.
I always avoided those newer gtld with registry premium for this exact same reason, its a gamble at the time of paying that registry doesn't fck up not properly mark prem domain as prem. Avoid those stupid gtld with stupid tier pricing.
In my inbox from porkbun:
Hello,
We regret to inform you that due to a technical issue with the registry backend, Tucows, who provides services for the .XYZ registry, several premium domains were released that should not have been available for sale. Unfortunately, the registry has decided to recall these domains, as described in this article: https://kb.porkbun.com/article/191-registry-deletion-of-domains-explained
[List of domains]
While we had no control over this situation, we profusely apologize for this inconvenience. We have fully refunded the transaction and additionally have applied $100 in account credit to your Porkbun account, available for immediate use.
Let us know if you have any other questions or concerns.
Exactly. Stupid registry going with tier pricing trope but with potato backend.
Disregard however squatted they are, .com .net .org doesn't have that registry prem thingy, when you double confirm with local whois that its really available and you paid for it then its guaranteed to be yours, no premium and shits.
That's a far more generous solution than I would have expected, honestly. Especially for the .xyz gTLD as they're trying to differentiate themselves from their history of being the scum of the internet from every possible registration being dirt cheap.
I told you :P
btw. nicely written article on the URL
score!
That is nice of them
Was reading this as I myself use Porkbun and never had any issues so to see that they handled it in such a good way and even offered you $100 for an issue beyond their control is a massive plus for a company I have always had a great experience with, any amount of credit is great as they did not have to even reply but they did, admitted fault and gave you money to say sorry.
Time to go buy some new domains with your free $100
@oborseth deserves a shout-out!
I have a related question : Do premium domains have different renewal price than regular ones? Or is it the same?
Depends on why its premium and depends on what TLD.
Crazy compensation considering it's not even remotely their fault
Good look for them, though
This.
But also, I have never read a guarantee that a gTLD owner won't jack up prices in the future to anything they want, including using broader criteria than just the name. I wouldn't put it totally passed some greedy person at some point to create the 3% of yearly revenue renewal fee. That's why for me gTLDs are a nice extra if I own a similar .com (ie. superdupercloud.com and superduper.cloud), but I would never overly invest in a TLD that has the potential to do per-domain premiums at the registry level. At least with .com it's owned by the US government so maybe I can call my congressman, or something.
Wow generous. +1 Porkbun.
Whatever the TLD owner decides happens. The whole system is beyond the public's control now. It's all under an industry trade group that is controlled by rich people who can afford hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend per gTLD. And these rich people want to control a pay-to-play system wherein they charge whatever they want for whatever reason they want so that's what they created.
The US should never have given control over the ICANN. Such a stupid decision by a certain past president.
Context, pick your bias: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=obama+icann&ia=web
I still believe that name.space would have done a better job than ICANN at gTLDs, honestly. I still wish name.space, Inc. V. ICANN, No. 13-55553 (9th Cir. 2015) had gone differently, nearly 10 years on.