[Registrants-rights] Registrars and Resellers

[crawley and sons]

Dear Sirs,

As a business owner I find the unregulated confict of interest issues 
among some Registrars and the total disregard of the Registrant as 
unbelievable.

I had my business domains registered through a reseller, of course with 
the professional looking templates available to him and being busy 
looking after my own business and customers I never had reason to know 
there was a difference between a Reseller and a Registrar.

The Reseller went through a stage of very bad health (it can happen to 
humans), having failed to get replies to my emails regarding the renewal 
of the domains I sought the advice of a professional web site builder.

He was able to tell me who the real Registrar was Wild West Domains, I 
tried to contact them directly to renew my domains but the emails were 
ignored except for the Auto Reply feature.

My advisor suggested requesting the domains be transferred using the 
services of one of the (claimed) largest registrars in the USA Go 
Daddy.com who it transpired is also an affiliate of the original Registrar.

Of course they took my money to transfer the domains which were still 
well inside the redemption period but nothing was happening except my 
domains were then showing an advertising page for the very registrar I 
had paid to transfer them into a safe account where I could use them 
once again.

I manged to contact a gentleman on one of the few email addresses listed 
on the ICANN web site, in fairness he replied both by email and telephone.

The result was I now could get replies from the original Registrar Wild 
West Domains, but nothing positive or helpful just the bare minimum to 
be able to say they replied to my emails very much the same as Go Daddy 
replies.

Having made the connection between the original registrar and the one I 
was trusting (and paid) to carry out the transfer I was sending 
duplicate emails begging for help which was not forthcoming because I 
could not access the Resellers account.

What is interesting are the Lies I was told by support for Go Daddy and 
Wild West Domains, they claimed they could not access the Resellers 
account, I do not use the word lies lightly however I now have proof 
witnessed by an ICANN representative that they could and in fact did 
access the Resellers Account at a later time.

On the last day the Registrar's change department sent me the document 
that would allow the domains to be transferred back to my care, the 
amount of paperwork and the manner I had to reply was nothing short of 
obstructing any chance of progress.

Of course the next day they reduced the amount of paper work to one page 
and easy to establish proof of identity, it appears that as soon as the 
best Domains had been transferred away the Go Daddy Group decided my 
credit card details, and PIN number in their accounts system actually 
stood for something.

The two .com domains had been sold by the Go Daddy Group's internal 
auction system for a substantial sum of money at one minute passed the 
redemption period, of course I should have known something was wrong as 
the first form was partly completed in favour of a corporate name I had 
never seen before.

The Go Daddy Group have made it clear to me that I will not get my 
domains back, ICANN are playing the role the three brass monkeys (blind, 
deaf and dumb), despite the ICANN Representative having been in receipt 
of all email correspondence  and assurances that he could get my domains 
restored to me.

I believe the fact that the Go Daddy Group could appoint a Reseller then 
claim they are not responsible for the actions of Resellers amounts to 
nothing less than abuse of the status and role of a Regstrar, there is 
no other commercial enterprise that I am aware of where a Licence holder 
(Accredited Registrar) can appoint Agents / Franchises / Sub Contractors 
or Sub Offices and claim no responsibility fot the conduct of the 
management.

The Reseller is not responsible to anyone, he / she has no contact or 
contract with ICANN, yet they are allowed to register domain names that 
so many businesses depend on to trade, We the General Public / Consumers 
can not be expected to know the difference between a Reseller and 
Accredited Registrar or the many rules laid down by ICANN, in fact most 
of 100 million domain owners may never have heard of ICANN.

Sorry but the www is too big and too important to the world economy to 
be left in the control of Registrars who refuse to accept responsibility 
for the actions of their Employees / Agents (Resellers) and provide 
consumer's with the necessary help to recover their domains when their 
Reseller system fails.

I also believe it is totally unacceptable to allow an Accredited 
Registrar to run a business where they use the inside information to 
pass on domains that appear to be expiring to an "In House" Auction 
System, the problems that arise from such "Conflicts of Interest" lead 
to domains being sold to maximise the returns for the group at the 
expense of the consumer.

The Go Daddy Group and their Reseller system appear to be everything 
that is wrong with the Registry system, they appear to believe they are 
untouchable by ICANN, in fact it looks like the Go Daddy Group believe 
they are more powerful than ICANN.

I believe if ICANN do not begin to Police the Registrars it is only a 
matter of time before Governments will have to step in and protect the 
consumers and business.

Yours Sincerely,

Peter Crawley