I have almost all of my 4400 names at Godaddy, but I also have a few dozen at enom. I had the unfortunate opportunity to (attempt to) utilize enom support for the first time this week. Horrible. Nothing like the red carpet treatment I get a GoDaddy.

I had a name that I won in an enom Club Drop auction last year. When I ordered a transfer to Godaddy a few days ago, I realized a very strange problem with the contact data of the name. It still had the contact information of the Israeli drop catcher that caught the name for enom last year. So, I went into my records in my enom account and everything had the proper information in it. Enom’s own Whois showed the proper information too. However, every other Whois showed the old contact information, not mine. I was unable to transfer the name because my email address was not in the record.

I tried calling enom and the recording told me that there would be a one hour wait! I hung up and opened a support ticket. A few hours later I got a lame, canned reply to update the contact information. They were so proud of themselves that they even closed the ticket. The rep obviously did not read my very clear explanation. I wrote back, reopened the ticket, re-explaining the problem.

The next morning, no reply to my reply yet. So I called their support line at a few minutes before 6 am PST. There office was not open yet and there was no way to leave a message. I went back to the support section and opened a new ticket, telling them to look at my old ticket. LOL! After leaving two more messages in the original support ticket, with the last one complaining about them, they eventually closed the ticket with “Duplicate support ticket!” Unfrickinbelievable.

During this time, I had gotten in contact with the enom affiliate through which I originally won the Club Drop name. Even though the name had since been pushed into my enom reseller account, they took the time to work with me, and told me that they didn’t see a way to fix it unless I renewed it. They told me if I pushed it back to their account temporarily, they would renew it for me free of charge. Whatever the glitch was, that worked!

I want to take my hat off to this enom affiliate. It is CatchyDomains.com, a web site that also offers names for sale. They didn’t need to help me, and they did it for free and did it promptly. Thank you Darrell.

As for the future, I will definitely limit the number of names I have registered at enom. I cannot deal with a company that has such poor support. In contrast, the support I get from GoDaddy is incredible. I have never had to wait in a phone queue. I have a account rep that does all sort of things for me, like doing large bulk orders, single orders, creating custom spreadsheets for me, and handles any problems that might arise. This is the way a company should be run. The “Office of the President” even called me last week to tell me that they were sending me a $100 gift certificate because they felt bad for a little problem that a few customers had this month on an ordering quirk (and it was really no big deal).

GoDaddy all the way.

Technorati Tags: domain, name, godaddy, enom

If you want to see how ridiculous the GoDaddy appraisals are, look no further than this example: bizjobs.cc, listed at tdnam.

Godaddy’s Certified Domain Appraisal give it a price range of $13,160.00 - $34,216.00. I see no website for the name, no traffic listed, the name itself is stupid and it’s a .cc tld (growing, but still a lower priced tld). Unbelievable.

Technorati Tags: godaddy, domain, domain name, appraisal

Dang it! I did it again. I forgot that once you choose to send a name at Sedo, based on an offer received, the description is LOCKED!! The reason to send a name to auction at Sedo is to get more exposure for the name and not creating a great description is a wasted opportunity.

And I just did this with a great name — LearnAjax.com — a subject that is very , very popular among internet developers, but perhaps could use some explanation for a domain name investor who sees the name on auction. Not everyone knows what Ajax is. But, programmers sure do. Wordtracker shows around 50,000 search requests a month and searching Google for Ajax Programming shows 28,000,000 pages!

But, I’ve lost my opportunity to explain it to those who don’t know, so I might not get the price I would like. In case you are interested, the auction ends Jan/07/07 03:05 PM EST.

Always, always check your description before sending a name to Sedo auction.

Technorati Tags: domain, domain name, Sedo, auction, Ajax

Beware of a scam going on by potential buyers of your domain names. If you get someone who is very interested, and then after a couple emails says he must have an appraisal, he may be scamming you. You’ll know it if he forcefully suggests an appraiser that is not one of the biggies. He could have a deal with the appraiser and have no intention of buying your domain.

A friend of mine ran into a guy like this, did some research and realized that he was indeed pulling a scam. He’s been reported to the FBI.

Technorati Tags: internet, domain, domain name

I just had a bad experience trying to buy a name from a domain seller. Since they have nearly 1,000 names for sale there’s a chance you may encounter them so I wanted to share with you what happened. It’s an interesting story and if you are a domain investor, I urge you to read it all. In a nutshell, the representative would not sell me the domain for the advertised price, trying to get me for another 233%.

The web site name is DomainContractors.com, on which they list the domain names they have for sale. I’ve researched the company and I see that they are associated with Corporate-Image.com, a firm that sells toll-free phone numbers.

Here’s the story:
(Read on …)