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.
ADDED CONCERN:
Domainer is lead to believe that both domain names had originally been purchased with “create dates” dating back to over a decade old.
The “create date” for both domain names has now been reset, thanks to the Netfleet system sending them back to the drops without notifying the Registrant.
This now effects the chances of the Registrant ever owning the Direct .AU domain names in the future.
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.
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
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!
Hi Dean,
I personally have hundreds of domain names at Drop.com.au – hundreds more at UniRegistry.com and hundreds more at Synergy Wholesale.
I am in the process of moving a whole bunch away from Netfleet, even more so since the way I am being treated by them since posting this article.
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.
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.
I can respect your opinion Michael and mostly agree on most domain name related topics with you, but in this case, I would hope that when you perform a COR, the Registrar also updates their own database.
Perhaps it’s time for Australian Registrars to make this clearer to their clients? Should we all be told that if we initiate and perform a COR at the same Registrar, do we also have to separately contact our Registrar and remind them to also change our Account Contact details for the domain? Or should it be automated?
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.
Who was the registrant contact email address on the WhoIs prior to domain dropping? Do you have a screenshot that you can post?
The Registrant contact email address BEFORE the domain name dropped was the same owner as it is now. As mentioned in the article above, Nikki from Netfleet emailed me directly and stated the renewal notifications were sent to a completely different email address that was NOT the current Registrant according to the WHOIS.
Yes, I have the screenshot from BEFORE the domain dropped.
Here it is.
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?
I didn’t know that they were struggling until I read your post. Thanks for the information and the link to the article.