Domain aftermarket and auction platform, Pheenix, received a barrage of unsavory comments over at NamePros.
Coming fresh from the drop of several of its satellite registrars, Pheenix appears to have angered a customer, who claims they are “warehousing customers’ expired domains.”
The Pheenix customer is livid over the fact that his winning bid did not count.
According to the exchange at popular domain forum, NamePros:
“I recently won forexspot.com in the expired auction for this domain. However, Pheenix did not deliver and have informed me that they do not intend to deliver the domain to me. […]
But it turns out that Pheenix are warehousing the expired domains of their customers.
I already knew that they have their own domain portfolio, but I was not aware that they are cherry-picking domains from their users expired domains.
I think in this case they should have owed up to their “mistake” and delivered the domain to me, rather than still go ahead and warehouse it, as I won it in an auction run by them. But completing their own auctions and maintaining the integrity of their own platforms is apparently not important to them.”
As it turns out, Pheenix claimed that the domain was auctioned off by mistake. Forexspot.com is now listed as a premium domain at Pheenix, with an $18,995 dollar price tag, as seen below:
Some say this is a typical case of domain warehousing, a legal, yet fringe practice of domain registrars to stockpile domains of customers that expired, in order to auction them off, or sell them at increased prices. The normal course of things, would be to release these domains back to the availability pool.
Pheenix appears to have other “forex” domains in its 15,000-strong domain portfolio, per below:
forexadvisor.org
forexate.com
forexbeast.com
forexdigital.com
forexeo.com
forexhandbook.com
forexspot.com
forexstate.com
Pheenix caught V.TV on the catch and kept it for himself earlier this year. I’m a little surprised more noise wasn’t made of it.
I have the same problem with snapnames. I backorder a name and then they send me an email saying “Good news! Domain names you have ordered are now available for immediate purchase at SnapNames. Please note that these domains are not in auction, but are offered on a first come, first serve basis at a fixed ‘Buy It Now’ price. ”
No one else backordered it and now the buy it now price is over $8k!!!!!!! scumbags.
domain warehousing is polite speak for fraud
Every registrar engages to one extent or another is criminal conflict of interest, domain warehousing fraud and theft.
from my experience, when one shines the light of criminal conflict of interest on registrars, it is sure to result in a swift and efficient
black balling by the ‘circle the wagons’ registrars, icann, aftermarket site controllers of the domain name industry
THE DOMAIN NAME BUSINESS IS A CROOKED, INCESTUOUS COLLECTION OF FIRST TO THE TROUGH CIRCA 1996-1999 MILLIONAIRES, NOW REGISTRARS AND ICANN ENTRENCHED PROTECTIONISM PREDATORS, WILD WEST DOMAIN PROPONENTS AND MAINTAINERS OF THE STATUS QUO, THAT WOULD JUST AS SOON SELL GRANDMA, THAN GIVE WAY ON THE STRANGLE HOLD OF CRIMINAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST THAT IS THE NORM.
Domain Warehousing? lol THEFT FRAUD criminal conflict of interest and ICANN is collusion entrenched.
Robert McLean
We need a list of registrars that don’t do this domain warehousing stuff and just boycott them altogether. A true list of ICANN accredited registrars whose domains expire all the way from redemption period to pending delete. Anyone have other ideas on this?
vw – Here’s the list below.
.
Funny no one talking about how the GoDaddy machine, the same who pledged to follow every politician’s beckoning in congress for privacy invasion as part of their IPO obligation, has routed up nearly every registrar out there, and is paying them commission to have access to their expiry base to remove quality deletion drops in the future. So when service goes awol, support decreases, and technical bugs are no longer fixed, you’ll know it is because the new GoDaddy model is simple: focus and profiteer on the loss, harming, and taking from others. The more domains lost, the more income their original shareholders can make when they keep cashing in shares with a zero profit base. Billions. Even their faulty valuation model and other decisions were part of this strategy. They want to reduce value, create conflict, and bring your domains down to the point of lease interaction, so that when 135,000 of them go into expiry mode every day, they can saturate their buyers, investors, internal collectors, and others with their daily hot pick lists. Then a portion of that goes back to the originating registrar (not the owner). Not much incentive for improved services is there?? Or keeping…
Pheenix the domain thieving crooks,
were blocked by my multi level, security systems, long ago,
luckily I felt there change to dishonest business practices, with fire wall pop ups.
I had just finished transferring out most or all my auction wins,
before they were blocked completely, from me, by me,
branded unsafe, and sold to who ever, scam. They need to be put in jail !
domaingang, not able to see any list, can you please repost?
@vw
not 100% sure but I think that was the point 🙂
haha ok i get it now.. funny : )
i do think namebright might do it.. just got confirmation via email and $8.03 prefund .com domains… they are prob so fast at catching stuff, they don’t care if it goes to pending delete!
VW