Today DropHero.com.au has closed it’s doors on offering an Australian Domain Name Drop Catching service. The top of their main homepage states:
Until further notice, we are no longer accepting new drop orders. It has become apparent, thats it’s near impossible to become a domain registrar in Australia – dropcatcher.com.au letter.
This leaves exclusive access to all dropping .au domains to a single company allowing them to sell to the highest bidder with no competition. Until this changes, we will not longer offer domain drop services.
Under auDA CEO Rosemary Sinclair (Appointed CEO in January 2020), auDA famously allowed Trellian and Drop.com.au to purchase Netfleet.com.au in November 2020. That’s 11 months after she was appointed CEO.
This of course allowed Drop.com.au to be the ONE AND ONLY Australian domain name drop catcher with a Registry connection (an Identity Digital Registry connection is absolutely vital to catch domain names), not only in Australia, but the entire world.
At the time, when WebCentral sold Netfleet, WebCentral went on to state, “It is expected that this practice will be redundant in the near future once (auDA), the domain governing body makes much needed changes to the industry.”
No changes to the industry have been made in regards to drop catching over the past 2.5 years.
Drop.com.au remains the one and only private monopoly service that can catch Australian domain names with a direct Identity Digital Registry connection. Their cost is less than $8 for every domain name caught, with no competition. You read that right! This means, when they catch domains for $500, $5,000, and $20,000 they profit ALL the money paid, except for around the $8 wholesale it costs them to perform the first year’s registration fee. It should also be noted that Trellian (owners of Drop.com.au) have been approved at least 7 Registrars by auDA. Again, you read that right. They own SEVEN Registrars (it could be more?).
The monopoly drop catching scenario continues to occur for as long as Rosemary Sinclair, current auDA CEO (.au Domain Administration) refuses to approve a single new Registrar during her time as CEO. Although many, many professional IT people, tech companies and Domain resellers have paid money to submit their Registrar applications over the past 30 months (2.5 years), she has approved ZERO.
In fact, auDA have not approved a new Registrar since the year 2016. That’s 7 years ago. It’s impossible for a domain company to compete to catch dropping domain names unless they are approved as an Australian Registrar.
About a year ago, the previous owner of Domain Reseller: DropCatcher.com.au threw his hands up in the air and gave up trying to become an auDA Registrar after spending thousands of dollars applying, only to be given never-ending hurdles for over a year. You can read his letter here.
Discussions are happening here: LinkedIn
