OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
Afternic sent an email today to Epik domain name owners regarding Fast Transfer. These are Afternic customers that are selling their Epik registered domain names using Afternic Fast Transfer.
People with domain names in their Afternic account that are registered with Epik will no longer be able to participate in the Afternic Fast Transfer program starting January 5, 2021.
The complete story of this issue and the termination of the Afternic/GoDaddy/Epik relationship was described in detail in my post 3 days ago. There are about 40 comments in that post already. I guess this is GoDaddy’s way of acknowledging my post as they have not made a single comment on this issue.
Here is the email from today:
Dear ********,
We are contacting you because according to our records one or more of the domain names in your Afternic account are registered with Epik. Please be aware that starting January 5, 2021, Epik will no longer participate in the Afternic Fast Transfer program.
What does this mean for you:
- Domain(s) registered at Epik will no longer be eligible to opt in to Afternic’s Fast Transfer program
- Existing domain(s) opted in to Fast Transfer through Epik will remain available for sale in your Afternic account but will be opted out of Fast Transfer
If you have any questions please email service@afternic.com.
Best regards,
The Afternic Team
OnlineDomain.com - © Copyright 2012-2024 - All Rights Reserved
Afternic sucks. Broken platform, massive programming issues, internal chaos from staff, reports of leads being shifted to sell GoDaddy owned properties, and management rebellion within GoDaddy. They should be careful before they trigger real news and real exodus. $400m of fraud initially using the platform purchase to swindle shareholders. Lost terminal access to even update their home page names. Now they have lost pagination abilities to even show more than twenty results for single phrase searches. This company is a clown show.
The reality is that many of our customers experience nothing but problems in the way that GoDaddy and Afternic handle their business. Fast Transfer is a liability for many registrars and the clients they are supposed to serve and protect, as Afternic does not have the attention to detail – or commitment to real customer service – to prevent unauthorized transactions. Their system is loaded up with inaccurate listings, they have displayed (for years) no commitment to advancing security or protecting assets, and all of the added “Fast Transfer” benefits amount to very little if your name gets sold without your approval. Or resold post selling it to another customer, because Afternic didn’t honor your removal request (many examples of this). GoDaddy is slow to pay, non-cooperative for needed repairs, and notorious for their arrogance and vindictiveness in handling any complaint or problem they create. In twenty years of experience, I believe they are one of the most disconnected companies in our age for truly demonstrating care and concern for the people that entrust them. That is before you even get into shooting elephants, promising porn as a signup incentive, or laughing at dead puppies. The disdain they hold for others has always been on display right in front of our faces.
They don’t respond, because for the most part, they know they are too big at this stage to be held accountable, and they see any short term industry bumps as non-related to their core scope that has now elevated their monopoly to “untouchable”. They are a protected company, because the individuals who are moving lines, like the ability to have a single source provider that can remove content and run damage control on their behalf. It happens every single day. Technically speaking though, GoDaddy is horrendous to reply upon, and they have made themselves a fixture in this industry against all odds even with the billions in past loss and despicable track history of managerial decisions.
The future is not going to be kind to them, as their deeds will be brought into the light. Most large investment portfolios do not use them anyway. As I heard it described today “they are a leaky boat with an endless sequence of unauthorized listings”. They should hope we never give the public a real display of examples that illustrate this. We were addressing massive security concerns with them, even before they decided it would be easier to terminate agreements than actually fix their house.
Your site intelliname is registered with GoDaddy, you advertise GoDaddy on your site.
and offers checkout with paypal! lol
Is this a potential anti-trust issue?
I think it might well be
Never got any such email from Afternic, and all my Fast Transfer domains are at Epik.
Honestly though, ever since the whole PayPal issue I started looking at a few alternative. Not because the loss of PayPal was a big deal to me, it wasn’t. But how Rob Davis handled it. Customer service is important to me and I like Rob Monster and his availability, that was a huge thing that sold me on Epik. But how their communications are being handled with Rob Davis is becoming too much of a liability in my book.
I was going to transfer out slowly as names came up for renewal. Now this Fast Transfer change is just speeding up the process. Actually after looking into it it seems you can still do a Standard (non-fast transfer) listing for Epik domains, and that will still get you into the registration path at many registrars including GoDaddy itself, Plus, I think most registrars that require fast transfer to get in the registration path will also work with Sedo MLS which is still an option. So I think Afternic Standard + Sedo MLS is a viable option for those sticking it out with Epik who still want registration path syndication.
But like I said, I am concerned the messaging is doing great harm! I can imagine something similar happening with another service provider that is more important. Maybe even Sedo who is of huge importance now without Afternic fast transfer. Or I can imagine a small minor ICANN complaint being blown out of proportion into an issue that could cause Epik to loose its accreditation. So I am wanting to get out before anything like that happens. So I will be mostly out by years end and should be completely out of Epik before the end of March. If I could afford to I’d just take everything out at once but sadly that’s just too expensive.
Could not disagree with you more.
Looking forward to transferring more domains to Epik.
Now is the time to support Epik even more than before, and great options like Epik don’t grow on trees.
You are making a mistake in your assessment there, quite a mistake.