jweidner
join:2008-06-09
Kings Park, NY
| Tucows/Netidentity sold my domain name
I've been a loyal customer of mailbank/netidentity/tucows for over 7 years. I received a message last week that they would be 'releasing' my domain in 10 days. I know as of a couple of years ago there were a number of other folks sharing this domain name (weidner.com). I presume their declining stock price is forcing them to make some quick cash in exchange for loyalty to their customers. Anyway, this sucks on many levels.
1. They only gave me 10 days to ship take care of this--I guess to make it harder to move to a totally new provider. Also, the email was easy to miss--the sender was some strangers name instead of customerservice@... If my wife didn't read it I would have found out when everyone started hollering where my site is. Really minimal effort to inform customers.
2. Security--someone else will be receiving my personal emails in the future. I know there are some sites that when you click 'lost password' will email the same plain-text password which you entered at registration. I guess I will need to change my email and password on every site I use.
3. I emailed customer service last week to find out when I would be getting my refund for the accounts I just renewed. No response yet; I'm expecting some run around about and will call my CC company.
4. They are still selling the sub-domain name! I went through the screens to request a new website with the works for 5 years at $864, and they appears more than happy to take my money.
Well, maybe I can make friends with the webmaster who now owns my 2nd level domain name. I'm probably related to the owner 10 generations back. |
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Mellow
Premium
join:2001-11-16
Salisbury, MD | You have lost me, did you own weidner.com and not pay to renew it in time? |
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jweidner
join:2008-06-09
Kings Park, NY
| Let me clarify? I had the subdomain john.weidner.com and the associated email address. They're dropping *.weidner.com altogether, so me and many other users are stuck going through all the work associated with changing email accounts, web site addresses, etc. Besides being a huge inconvenience, I'm a bit afraid of missing some important email, or worse, identity fraud. |
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decx
Premium
join:2002-06-07
Vancouver, BC
 ·Bell Sympatico
| Well if you were only paying them to use the subdomain, you never had the rights to the domain (or the subdomain for that matter) to begin with. That right has always rested with the domain registrant. They probably received a large enough offer that made it worth their while to sell the domain. |
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Mellow
Premium
join:2001-11-16
Salisbury, MD
 ·HostGator
·Cavalier Telephone
| reply to jweidner
That is interesting, never really heard of someone renting a subdomain like that. Most people just own the domain itself. Guess you could talk to Dean Weidner, who appears to now own the domain to see if he could have his techs forward john.weidner.com to your server.
--
SurfingOC.com / GsdPhotography.com |
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jweidner
join:2008-06-09
Kings Park, NY
| reply to decx
I knew there was some risk of the domain name disappearing, but I assumed they would continue their business model of providing services attached to common surnames. Well, I got 7 years of a really easy to remember email address/web site. According to a press release, it looks like they are getting out of the web hosting business too. I wonder if this is the start of a trend where they sell off their domains? |
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PhoenixDown
-- Ron Paul 2008 --
Premium
join:2003-06-08
Fresh Meadows, NY
clubs:   | I had a domain with them, I am glad i got it transferred out! |
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removed
I performed my own circumcision
Premium,VIP
join:2002-02-08
Houston, TX
clubs:
| reply to jweidner
said by jweidner  :I wonder if this is the start of a trend where they sell off their domains? They own the domain name, so it's their decision to make as they see fit. The domain name was never yours to begin with, and since there is no formal registration process for subdomains, you have no recourse other than buying a proper domain name for yourself.
Why didn't you just buy johnweidner.net or johnweidner.org or johnweidner.us instead of investing in this? All of these domains are available right now.  |
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jweidner
join:2008-06-09
Kings Park, NY
|  I went into it knowing this was a risk; hopefully this will serve as a warning for other users unaware of this. Mine is just a inconvenience, but imagine a small business owner launching a site from a subdomain, advertising their site, then losing it to a competitor. Sure, it's the the business's fault, but it still sucks.
I just registered weidners.us; back in the day the Mailbank solution seemed ideal. It was cheap and my email address was as simple as can be. |
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craig70130
Premium
join:2004-04-27
New Orleans, LA | Any business owner that gets into a subdomain deal like that deserves everything he/she gets. |
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jayco437
Premium
join:2001-08-11
Lincoln, NE
·Windstream
·AT&T Southwest
| reply to removed
said by removed :The domain name was never yours to begin with For what it's worth, nobody really ever really truly owns a domain name so it could happen to anybody. WIPO, DMCA, theft, and old-fashioned forgetting to renew can all lead to a loss of your domain. Sounds like Mailbank was making money off of selling services that used the domain (subdomain, email, etc.) and obviously got a better deal to sell, so who can blame them.
It certainly sucks, and it is kind of shady only giving 10 days notice. I'm sure the actual deal took longer than 10 days to put together, but Mailbank being greedy probably waited until the ink was dry to send notice out. |
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invincible
join:2008-08-13
| reply to jweidner
Tucows didn't sell weidner.com. They lost it in a UDRP in which they failed to respond. The decision can be found: »domains.adrforum.com/domains/dec···0246.htm |
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jmcnally
join:2008-09-22
edit:
September 22nd, @02:30PM
| Hi there. I work for Tucows Inc. and just wanted to post some updated information on this situation.
We didn't respond to the original UDRP complaint because we never received it. Once we learned of the UDRP judgment, we defended our legitimate claim to this domain name in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, which dismissed the original claim. The judgment does not appear to be posted online, but for the record it's dated July 2, 2008 and the case number is 07-CV-343954PD1. After successfully defending our claim to this domain name, we agreed to sell the domain name to Weidner Investment Services Inc. Existing users of the weidner.com domain name were given 30 days notice of the suspension of service, and we worked with each user to make the transition as painless as possible given the circumstances.
It's obvious that our email customers want us to hold onto these domains so that we can continue to provide them with this unique service (personalized surname email addresses), which is why we always defend ourselves vigorously when presented with a UDRP complaint. In this particular case, we weren't able to respond in a timely fashion, and for that I can only apologize to jweidner, the original topic starter, for the inconvenience this caused him. Normally we do respond and have been successful in defending our customers from this kind of disruption.
James McNally
Community Specialist
Tucows Inc./OpenSRS |
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