Wanted: Service Catching a .COM

[Admin]

What's the best service to use to catch a .COM domain?

Thanks

Admin

 

[accelerator]

A few years ago snapnames got me games consoles .net, but how they compare with others now, I don't know.

Rgds

 

[Edwin]

Snapnames, Pool.com, Namejet.com

Here's the problem: depending on the registrar the domain's currently at, there may be no "competition" at drop time in that unlike .co.uk, .com domains are quite often farmed off to a partner drop catching company. So ALL the dropping names from Registrar X will end up at Snapnames, all the names from Registrar Y will go to NameJet and so on. So you need to find out who the partner(s) of the registrar it's currently at is/are to work out where to book the catch.

 

[philipp]

Strange isn't it, that for all the prestige of .com the underlying rules seem, well, rather dodgy compared to the design of .uk

How is it that all the dropping names from one company tend to end up with one partner depending on the registrar? Does the registrar control the time of the drop, as opposed to it being an instruction from the registry at a random time?

I have also heard of desirable .com names not actually dropping from the registry, but apparently being renewed by the registrar and transferred to their ownership in the absence of the registrant - is this truly permitted?

P.

 

[Admin]

Thanks for the info guys, I have tried to catch a .COM so your guidance is invaluable.

 

[bensd]

Strange isn't it, that for all the prestige of .com the underlying rules seem, well, rather dodgy compared to the design of .uk

Indeed. You also sometimes see that most registrars have the own portfolio and they seem to "aquire" the domain rather than let it drop.

 

[Skinner]

Its a murky world out there in .com land, almost like deep blue sea that shark film with sam l jackson

The partner thing is pretty accurate too, I think the partners get 'pre-warned' that a names about to drop, it may only be seconds or minutes, but you do tend to see for example godaddy seem to have about as a high success rate of catching godaddy names as god would, namejet a few years ago had a remarkable catch rate netsol names, it was just nuts, didnt need to book elsewhere heh.

Its also not unusual for redemtion and suspended times to be sliced, diced and hacked to give partners a higher success rate, unlike the 97% of the time, that nom drop on 92/99 .com's can be altered.

I have heard of premium names going from regged to dropped in a few weeks to partners.

 

[Edwin]

Actually, it's not like .co.uk in that the .com catching playing field is less regulated and therefore there are deliberate, contractual deals between certain registrars and certain drop-catching companies (and sometimes also internally if a company does both).

In other words, Snapnames will ALWAYS 100% of the time catch names from its registrar drop partners, because they pass the name over via a back door and it never gets into the public domain. This is "legal" and "acceptable" in the .com industry (let's leave a discussion of ethics off the table as it just muddies the water, and stick to the legal aspects)

The only time a partner drop catcher will "fail" to catch a name is if there's zero interest in it, both from any of the customers using them (i.e. nobody booked to catch the name through them) and internally (i.e. nobody at the drop catcher wanted the domains for their internal portfolio).

So that's why it's VITAL to book the name you're after at the right drop partner, otherwise your chance of catching it isn't small - it's zero!

(NOTE: I abandoned the .com drop market because it became so insanely complicated, but there are plenty of people who have put in the time and effort to master it and who are still picking up valuable drops today)