Is Snapnames getting desperate?

On November Snapnames started making charges for “catching” unregistered domains for a $69 fee. The result was that a lot of Snapnames customers were charged for forgotten domains in their accounts with one user being charged for 56 domains, at $69 a pop, for a total of $3,864.

Back is September Snapnames got me 3 domains I backordered 5 years ago in an account I thought was closed!

The past few days Snapnames has been mass emailing old customers with inactive accounts asking them to reactivate the accounts so that they can participate in upcoming auctions. Tens of emails arrive at each email address, one for every domain name in the backorder list of each user that is coming up for auction. And several emails arrive for each domain name.

This is supposed to be a “service” offered by Snapnames by I am sure that this is not welcomed by these users. There is a reason these accounts are inactive and the reason is that they don’t want to use the Snapnames auction house.

It seems to me that Snapnames is not doing that well lately and this desperation is obvious. They are doing everything they can to attract old customers or just milk the ones they have. The result will be to drive even more customers away from Snapnames.

Here is a sample of these emails:

Inactive accounts with SnapNames

Dear ,

We are emailing you this one last time before the domain *****.info, that you have interests in, goes to auction tomorrow. Your account, [******], has not been activated and we need to reactivate it prior to the domain name becoming available.

The case number that was created to help you manage this is 0****75. This will allow you to communicate with us so we can update the account allowing you to get your domain.

Please do not hesitate to call us and get this account activated while on the phone with a support representative.