netfleet domain drop platform

Netfleet drop platform is broken.

The Netfleet daily drop platform appears to be well and truly broken.

As many Australian domain name buyers have found over the past 6 months, Netfleet doesn’t appear to be able to win any domain names dropping against the dominant Drop.com.au platform.

What’s worse, is now the platform also appears to be dropping existing clients’ domain names without informing them. Without delivering any renewal notifications to existing owners.

On Saturday the premium two-letter domain name ZR.com.au was dropped by Netfleet.

The owner never received a renewal notice or reminder. In fact, the domain name didn’t even appear in the owners account, even though the WHOIS was correct and displayed “NetAlliance Pty Ltd trading as Netfleet” as the Registrar.

On querying Netfleet about the lack of notification, Domainer was told:

Zr.com.au is in the account with email address *******@*******.com.au

After 30 day grace it’s removed from the account. 

I confirm that notices were sent to the email address. The final notice was sent 04.16am on 20th Jan advising that it was their last chance to renew. The email was opened at 09.24am the same day.

The massive problem is, the email address and owner that Netfleet had on file WAS NOT THE ACTUAL OWNER.

It was the previous owner.

The domain had been purchased from a domain investor over a year earlier.

The COR (Change Of Registrant) had been performed perfectly by both seller and buyer.

Even the WHOIS showed the new owner correctly, the day before the drop happened, again confirming the COR had been properly performed.

Yet, the Netfleet platform DIDN’T UPDATE CORRECTLY when the COR was performed, so the renewal notifications were being sent to the OLD OWNER.

Then…

On Sunday, the same thing happened again, to the same Netfleet customer in the same circumstances with another premium domain name…

ZW.com.au dropped too.

Both domain names now appear to live at the Drop Platform. This suggests the owner had to purchase his own domain names back through the Drop Platform, as the same owner seems to have retained the names through the drop process on Saturday and Sunday.

I wonder if Netfleet will be footing the bill?

As for me personally, I’m going to be moving all my domain names from the Netfleet platform this week.

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13 Comments
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Dave

If these circumstances can be proven, then decision making should be easy for NetAlliance / Netfleet. They should do the right thing by a client who clearly has been a big spender with them over the years. If they don’t, then there appears little doubt that they would be in breach of their registrar obligations with auDA.

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Toby

Who cares about create dates

Who wants to be first in line to buy a bag of horse poo?

That’s what “.au” will be

And will be no more useful than “.uk” and “.nz” and “.us” and “.aero” and “.guru” and “.melbourne”

Non issue if you ask me

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Dean

Robert, any idea where it is you might relocate your names to? Always keen to hear of a safer place to hold my own investment.

Thanks!

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Michael

I feel this is the users fault, not Netfleet’s. Just because you do a COR, does not mean that domain gets transferred into it’s own account at Netfleet or the gaining user’s Netfleet account if they have one.

All registrars are different, some send renewal notices to account email, some send renewal notices to registrant email.

It’s up to the user to track their domains, not registrars.

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Larry

No. You’re meant to have a functional & working service that does what it says on the box. If this were consumer law it would be ‘not of merchantable quality’ in my opinion. If a registrar is paid to transfer a domain from one owner to another, it is that registrars obligation to ensure that the email addresses provided are reflected where they need to be.

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Michael

This is pretty much how all registrars work. I’m fairly sure Drop would work the same way seeing they are using WHMCS. WHMCS only sends renewal notices to the account holder, not to the registrant email.

The domain was in a reseller account. Domain has COR. Just because a domain has COR does not mean it should get removed from the reseller account. If my registrar removed domains from my reseller account because there was a COR, I wouldn’t be happy.

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Garth

Who was the registrant contact email address on the WhoIs prior to domain dropping? Do you have a screenshot that you can post?

Nick

You know what’s broken? Melbourne IT now Arq Group.

https://www.arnnet.com.au/article/671396/arq-group-future-hangs-balance/

It’s share price has lost 68.5% of its value in less than 1 month

Doesn’t Melbourne IT / Arq Group own NetRegistry?

Doesn’t NetRegistry own half of Netfleet?

Will the end of Arq Group mean the end of Netfleet?

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Peter

I didn’t know that they were struggling until I read your post. Thanks for the information and the link to the article.

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