ASIA Domain Names for the Big Players Not for You and Me
(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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I’ve been buying domain names for 6 years. Recently, like many other investors, I jumped over to the dot ASIA domains band wagon. I purchased some 20 ASIA domains about 3 months ago and waited for the dot Asia registry to contact me. I thought they would’ve liked to verify my overseas (Asian) contact information that I went into great lengths to provide, since every dot Asia domain needs a contact person in an Asian country and I reside in the US.
Weeks and months went by, I waited for a phone call, I waited for an email but nothing happened. I registered more domains with a different email account, but got the same silence. I only heard from the domain registrar confirming my order but not from the Asia registry. I finally found a phone number and contacted a dot Asia representative in Hong Kong. They were very nice and explained how they wont need to verify my contact information.
I also was told if any other person had applied to the same domain I pre-registered for , that domain would go into auction and I’d get a chance to bid.
Yesterday, I finally got a word back on some the domains I hoped to own. The emails came from my registrar not the Asia registry which is not surprising. Naturally, I was excited. Holey smokes, I could be the proud owner of a cool domain such as FREE.asia. However, the first 5 emails politely stated that my registration was denied by the Asia registry. No reasons were given to explain why my applications were declined, no offers to bid on the domains, nothing what so ever.. to say the least, I was disappointed.
I had used GoDaddy to register some of my Asia domains. So far I’ve only received a few emails regarding the domains, the rest of my domain name orders remain pending. every single email came from GoDaddy and GoDaddy alone, not the Asia registry.
Out of the 7 emails that I received yesterday, 5 were decline emails and only 2 were to confirm my registration. I guess at least I got 2 out of 7, not that bad considering that all the domain names I signed up for were one word domains, like FREE.asia and BEER.asia etc.. The one’s that I was granted ownership for are less glamorous one word domains.
Here’s the email that you DON’T want to see from GoDaddy:
Dear Ethan Z***,
We regret to tell you that FREE.ASIA could not be registered in your name because your application was denied by the .ASIA registry. Your registration fee will be returned to you in the original form of payment (the application fee is non-refundable).
We value your business and thank you for choosing GoDaddy.com, Inc. for domain registration. If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to call us at (480) 505-8877 or email us at support@godaddy.com.
Sincerely,
GoDaddy.com, Inc.
Lack of Communication:
I just sent an email to GoDaddy asking for clarification to why my applications were declined by dot Asia. I don’t hold GoDaddy responsible for the lack of communication when it comes to the .Asia domains. The dot Asia registry has had zero communication attempts with me even though I applied for more than 20 domain names. I had to call them and make an international call to get any answers.
I guess it is not worth wasting further time and effort trying to get an answer to why my applications were declined. But if I receive more declining emails for the remaineder of my applications I may be tempted to pick up the phone and call Hong Kong again to ask why wasn’t I given a chance to bid on the domains before declining my application?
Just for the Big Players, not you and me:
I’ve invested a considerable amount of time and effort deciding which the best domains were, not to mention about $2k on dot Asia domain applications, but after all I am just one person.
I’m not surprised though, I knew early on that getting into this meant competing with millions of other people world wide on a finite resource (i.e domain names) and that this wasn’t going to be easy. But I expected it to be fair. Not giving me the opportunity to even bid on the domains and not being contacted by the Asia registry once is not fair. Not getting an explanation why my applications were declined isn’t fair, not professional.
Could buying new tld domain names be a game that’s exclusively reserved for the Big Players and multi millionaires only?
I will post again with an update on my dot Asia domain name hunt.
May 25th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
http://www.kctu.net/DotAsia.wmv
May 26th, 2008 at 7:47 am
Thank you Dr. Maguire. This is worth watching.
“Pulling off a dot Asia” I love that!! ha
You bet, I would not be surprised if there was some favoritism going on.. I had some domain applications declined with NO explanation whatsoever