unfair terms in RoR dropcatcher's T&C

[dropped.uk]

My service doesn't charge anything *unless* the domain is caught.

Nor does mine!

 

[RobM]

Was going to say that but I didn't want to be out of line if you'd changed your model or something same goes for the other 2.

 

[dropped.uk]

I don't know if caught has changed but they were pre-pay last time I checked. I'm not sure about dbcatch.

Edit: Just read their website, they are pay-on-catch, so just caught that's still pre-pay, and obviously dropcatcher.

 

[Siusaidh]

The reason I like dropcatcher's model is that there's no danger of a caught name going to auction. I respect ukbackorder and dropped.uk because I have confidence they're honest services. Dropped.uk worked for me, this time round, so thank you for that. But the last thing I wanted was to have to enter a bidding war, after the name was caught, with someone who might outbid me. The attraction of dropcatcher for me was twofold: (1) if I got it, I got it, and no-one else could then outbid me; (2) any domain that was not caught meant I effectively got a refund, because I could keep using the catching slot in the future until I'd caught something else with it... I love the fact that 1 purchase can give me multiple shots to acquire domains I want. To me, that is a good deal.

Actually, there's a (3): I trust Simon, from experience over time, and well before this present .uk release. He's responsive, he's caught me names I wanted again and again, and he's earned my trust.

Now, I can see if you buy 250 catching slots (or however many were bought by Tim) then the model might not work so well, because at the heart of my use of dropcatcher is the intention to use the catching slots again if they don't catch the first domain I wanted. With the small quantities I deal in, that works well. 250 catching slots may not be what Tim wanted. But he made that choice.

Different models work for different people. I suspect Tim, sadly, chose the wrong model for him.

 

[Aaron Clifford]

Nor does mine unless I have people prepay for a discount. I'd rather not be dragged into this! If you can remove my domain would be appreciated.

 

[DropCatcher-co-uk]

Tim,

I feel you are being a little bit duplicitous here. I'm not sure how it could be any clearer regarding the service that we offer and the commercial model. Here is the front page of our website.

This is not buried away but is the entirety of the non-navigational text on the home page. Within the Terms and Conditions it further states.

At the checkout stage where we take credit card details it states

This has always been the model that DropCatcher has used. It works well for some people and if it didn't then we wouldn't exist. It would not be fair to give you an advantage over all the other customers who used the service on those days. We have many satisfied customers some of whom are happy to say so and others who prefer to keep quiet for obvious reasons.

To address a few other points there are significant costs to writing scripts and raising the funds (£90k) to participate at Tier 1. We email all customers when they win a domain to move it to their own TAG or other registrar as it is not our core business so the list posted above is not reflective of the domains we caught which is why Susannah's domains aren't showing I suspect.

I'm happy to discuss further but airing your frustrations on a public forum just damages your case further in my opinion. I'm sorry the release did not go the way you expected it to but it's the nature of the business we both work in.

Simon

 

[super-whois]

Within the Terms and Conditions it further states.

I'd be interested to know how these terms and conditions, particularly in the case of the RoR release, comply with the Distance Selling Regulations and Unfair Contract Terms Act.

 

[lazarus]

Wow. 250 and not one catch.. You gotta feel for the guy.

 

[Johnp]

Hello

Give Simon a break, he runs a business with a clear charging structure and clear information on how the credits bought can be used. I myself I bought a number many years ago when Chris Holland ran the business, which I have never asked a refund on nor would I, I knew what I signed up to.

I think in this case we have a clear case of buyer's remorse. Nobody knew how the ROR drops were going to pan out, how truly competitive it was going to be or how many TAGS had acquired Tier 1 / Tier 2 status. Many others from what I could see, were making last minute changes day by day and we possibly all ended up with less than we hoped for. From recollection Simon's posts on here about the service he was offering were accurate and anybody who came via this forum would have reasonably known others on here were not rushing to buy new dropcatcher credits for the ROR release because of the no refund policy.

Anyway my heads up - I still use my dropcatcher slots - every year I have less, so I got what I paid for.

JohnP

 

[lazarus]

Is it possible to transfer the credits to another user ? Are they transferable

 

[Johnp]

In the Chris Holland days he turned a blind eye to users making private deals and simply taking over someone else's dropcatcher account. Update of email address / contact information etc. Even back then the slots traded at a discount to 'list price' If you search around this forum from ages ago you will probably find 'sale of dropcatcher credits' type posts.


JohnP

 

[Johnp]

I offered up slots on my own Tier 1 tag for bulk catchings at £ 50.00 a catch hoping that people would wish to book some of the second order names. The only lists I got was those which started with z.uk, insure.uk, glasgow.uk www.uk, other llls and lots of the other 3/4 figure names and nothing else. I basically had to close the discussions down. Suspect that Simon had loads of bookings for all those premium names knowing it was a tall order - but Dropcacther, Dropped, Caught etc. accept bookings every day on that basis for regular catches.

Just my thoughts.

JohnP

 

[mibut]

The first step would be to make an official complaint to dropcatcher.
Depending on the outcome would be whether you need to seek proper legal advice, remembering that this would be classed as a business rather than consumer case and therefore looking at Unfair Business Contracts law.
One thing that immediately jumps out at me is
"Domain monitoring credits expire after two years unless agreed otherwise with DropCatcher.co.uk."
which I would term grossly unfair.

 

[dee]

"Domain monitoring credits expire after two years unless agreed otherwise with DropCatcher.co.uk."
which I would term grossly unfair.

Although not enforced I dont think. I seem to remember a thread recently where someone had asked if old account credits from years ago would still be valid. Got back into the account and still available. SImon helped I believe.

I'll also add that i book some on here, but knowing the no refund policy only bought about 10 credits knowing i can use them anyway after the ROR

 

[keys]

So Dropcatcher accepted a booking for 250 domains. Assuming these were all top names, therefore attracting the most competition, then the chances of any success were remote and predictable.

Terms state that payment is non-refundable and only accepted for attempting to catch domains.Total failure is a possible (almost inevitable) outcome, at the customer's expense. Furthermore, any subsequent use of credits will expire within two years.

To make this booking, even without hindsight, was a poor decision, perhaps swayed past performance of DC. There were several other options, seemingly none with potential for a worse outcome.

Perhaps further action will determine that acceptance of the booking was not the windfall that it appeared to be.

 

[mibut]

Although not enforced I dont think. I seem to remember a thread recently where someone had asked if old account credits from years ago would still be valid. Got back into the account and still available. SImon helped I believe.

I'll also add that i book some on here, but knowing the no refund policy only bought about 10 credits knowing i can use them anyway after the ROR

Whether the term is enforced or not it is an unfair term in a contract.

 

[Murray]

@DropCatcher-co-uk

Would you be willing to post your logs for .uk release days? to show your customers how you ordered the lists and what you caught

Good chance for positive publicity, to show how good your system is and why you felt so confident in taking £7500 worth of bookings from one person

 

[anthony]

Although not enforced I dont think. I seem to remember a thread recently where someone had asked if old account credits from years ago would still be valid. Got back into the account and still available. SImon helped I believe.

I'll also add that i book some on here, but knowing the no refund policy only bought about 10 credits knowing i can use them anyway after the ROR

That was me. I would say the credits were at least 8 years old, and hey-ho, one of them was used during RoR by Simon, and he caught a domain on it!

 

[DropCatcher-co-uk]

To answer all the points raised;

The 2 year expiration is only for the case where people haven't logged in for 2 years and are no longer contactable. It's a required term for accounting purposes. I've never removed anyone's credits and would have no issues restoring anyone who got back in touch even beyond the 2 years. In many cases people don't have credits as they are actively monitoring domains even though they are not scheduled to drop. We still check these domains periodically in case they are cancelled or dropped out side the normal schedule.

I'm not sure how I feel about transferring credits to other people but I don't see any issues with someone who wanted to sell their entire account.

I have logs ready to release if required by a court but I won't be breaching the confidence of my customers by posting them on here.

 

[Siusaidh]

No offence, but what's unfair about it? If I buy some ketchup, and the bottle has a sell-by date of July 2021, do I have grounds for complaint?

I'm a bit surprised this thread is still going on. You may not like Simon's business model (I do, I like it, and use it, and it works for me, because I use it proportionately), but the guy is up front about how the site operates, and then all the responsibility falls on the person who chooses to use it in accordance with those terms.

As I've said before, I like the model, because you can use the slots again and again until you get something. That's how it works for me.

Now when you pay £7500 for 250 domain catch slots, you are not exactly some innocent punter wanting to make - what? - 250 websites about their granny, their pet dog, and their football team. You're speculating, to make money yourself. It's business.

And as a business decision, I'd question the wisdom or the proportionality of using the Drop Catcher model on this scale.

Let's face it, when domains drop en-masse it attracts speculation, and people try all kinds of ways to make a killing. It's a case then of caveat emptor. Inevitably some people get their fingers burnt. It's the risk you take.

What's really important, in my view, is that process is open and protocols are true to what they advertise. Simon's are.

I was REALLY unpopular back in 2003 with a gentleman called Konrad Plankenstein from Austria who in the .info Trademark period obtained (temporarily) 4981 .info domains using fake trademark details. He must have invested a stack load of money. Fraudulent trademark questions were also raised against members of the Afilias board who were running the roll-out (notably their Hawaii-based director Govinda Leopold who submitted a fake trademark for Hawaii.info), but also including another 10,000 other suspected or fake trademarks, involving (in case you recognise any of them) Adam Jonathan (48), Adam Boyce, Al Amili (9), Alexander Mayerhofer (20), Allman and Co (9), Andreas Gruener, Andre McGann of Montego Bay (72), Anthony Scialla (22), Arnold Katz (11), Arthur Szabo (10), Barry Wallace (12), Bastian Siebenbuerger, Bert Brunia (94), Callum McKeefery, Carol Quinn (7), Cass Foster (164), Chan Champell (31), Chris Denman, Chris Myer, Chris Riley (5), Christine Steuer (40), CJ Lovik (360), Clive Treacher, Curd Bems (101), Daniel Knoshnood, Dan Kasal, David Singh (46), Dean Ayer (29), Donny Simonton (9), Don Stark (9), Ed Corcoran (7), Frank Scheifgen (5), Fred Miller with John Hand (Landbase) (176), George Schwartz (33), Gnahichevansky (9), Gregory Carbonaro (62), Ha Jea Sung (5), Henri Ouevray (44), Jack Beveridge, Jack Weaver (9), James Merrett (8), Jim Schinkel (5), J. Kaufmann (7), John Hubbard (18), Jhon W. B. Lee of Wooho Registrars (42), Layne Stephens (6), Leo Hillock (16), Leonid Volnitsky, Linda Kreter (5), Marc Gough (70), Michael Jordan (6), Michelle Quinn, Mike Hill (8), Mike Ward (15), Nam Jeong Woo (165), OMPC (235) Patrick Nobriga(114), Pete Lucas, Peter Hoffmann, Rainer Weiss (112), Ricard Verdaguer, Sebastian Dieterle, Siegfried Langenbach of Joker Registrars (333), Spy Productions (177), Stephen Rumney (53), Steven Nelson (132), Tariq Ghafoor (25), Toby Lawrence (60), W. Dyer (51), William Lorenz (91), William Robathan. In addition fraudulent trademarks were used by certain registrars themselves including YesNic (261), WorldNic (94), 1st Domain Net (24). Afilias (who ran .info)'s CEO Hal Lubsen's registrar company DomainBank submitted over 5000 fake trademarks, which raised them over $500,000 but which abused Afilias's own system and rules (not to mention the Internet public who were initially thereby deprived of access to the best names). Only one Afilias director - Robert Connelly - had the principle to resign from the board over this scandal, describing it as an "abomination".

So perhaps you can 'get' why I believe the internet and the DNS needs and deserves open and honest protocols and oversight and responsibility. I staggered upon these frauds and dug deeper, whistleblowing and complaining to ICANN who initially refused to do anything. I listed the names online and the BBC picked it up and a group of us networked around the world, until the fraud was so obvious that ICANN intervened, and Afilias were required to confiscate all the fraudulently obtained domains. Konrad Plankenstein in person must have lost around £50,000 from the speculation.

Now in the case above, Tim has acted honestly but speculatively. I'm really sorry he has lost out, but on principle I believe that the primary thing is transparency and clarity over processes, and it's abundantly clear that Simon's terms are open and clearly-defined.

In roll-outs, and mass domain releases, we all know that speculation is a temptation, but it is also a risk (as Konrad Plankenstein found out). Going beyond Tim's case, what I feel very strongly is that there should be accountability placed on Registries to ensure their own protocols and rules are followed. I am *very* unimpressed by Nominet's decision to offer 'free' .uk domain registration just before the names were due to drop (after 5 years) and the opportunity that gave Fasthosts and others to mass-register domains, which then became unavailable to the public. Who is Nominet accountable to? Does the UK namespace not, fairly, need to be accountable to the UK and its people? It concerns me.

But in all fairness, given that there's bound to be speculation at these times, if a company has operated in line with its clear rules and terms (as DropCatcher seems to me to have done) than to me, that is proper process and deserves defending. Yes Tim has speculated, but the obvious calculation to any domain speculator should have been... I am going to end up with catching slots running into the hundreds. Do I really want that? And I think that was a miscalculation. I think the scale of Tim's use of DropCatcher was probably disproportionate to his better interests, *unless* he was happy to be lumbered with all those catching slots afterwards.

Speculation comes with risks. What we should at least hope for is clear protocol and rules, which are adhered to, which is what Simon provided, and which Afilias Directors in 2003 did not. You gamble... you may lose.