Did you know?!
Today, Rings.com.au is owned by a customer of the Registrar “Drop.com.au Pty Ltd”.
Tomorrow, the domain will drop and the Registrar will exclusively sell their own customer’s domain to a new owner, for at least $9,990 profit for themselves, and ZERO DOLLARS to their customer who is losing it.
auDA (.au Domain Administration) have allowed one single private company the exclusive rights to catch and sell dropping Australian domain names since November 2020.
auDA have not allowed one single new Australian company to become a Registrar since 2016. Many companies have tried. This is an important fact to remember (over 7 years), because the only way a company can become a competitive “drop catcher” and provide domain name drop catching services in a fair environment is to have a direct connection to the Australian domain Registry by becoming a Domain Registrar.
Read more about this here (New Dropcatcher denied by auDA) and here (Domains.com.au is dropping tomorrow) and here (63% of every expired domain name in Australia during July was registered by ONE COMPANY)
There are many valuable domains that this customer of “Drop.com.au Pty Ltd” is losing tomorrow, and these are the current bids;
To be clear…
As this Registrar’s own client loses his domains, the same Registrar simultaneously and exclusively auctions them off to someone else, with no competition, profiting thousands of dollars from them. They are the one and only Registrar with the Domain Registry access, software and auction platform to do this, as governed by the current CEO of auDA and her board members.
I hope the registrar warned him
has anyone noticed who owns SQUIRT.au……??
SEO WEB RECOVERY PTY LTD? MMMM who really is behind that company I wonder? They own a lot of .au names.
Domain Name: SQUIRT.AU
Registry Domain ID: D407400000127284711-AU
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.auda.org.au
Registrar URL: https://www.drop.com.au/
Last Modified: 2022-10-05T00:50:51Z
Registrar Name: DROP.com.au Pty Ltd
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: support@drop.com.au
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +61.395897946
Reseller Name:
Status: serverRenewProhibited https://afilias.com.au/get-au/whois-status-codes#serverRenewProhibited
Status Reason: Not Currently Eligible For Renewal
Registrant Contact ID: DS55495687890
Registrant Contact Name: Domain Administrator
Tech Contact ID: DS554956879535
Tech Contact Name: Domain Administrator
Name Server: ns4.above.com
Name Server: ns3.above.com
DNSSEC: unsigned
Registrant: SEO WEB RECOVERY PTY LTD
Registrant ID: ACN 650850150
Eligibility Type: Company
>>> Last update of WHOIS database: 2023-03-13T23:25:03Z
Integrity for sale.
An official response from auDA to a concerned Domain Investor today reads:
“The registrant can renew the name for a 30-day period after expiry. On the 30th day it moves into Pending Purge, the registrant cannot renew at this stage as the name will drop within 24hrs.
Furthermore, there is no requirement that states Drop must publish the whole drop list. The full list can be found here – https://identitydigital.au/about-au/domain-drop-lists and here – https://www.auda.org.au/au-domain-names/domain-name-help/official-domain-name-drop-list, with a knowledge article explaining the process.
As you know every registrant receives a renewal notice at 90-, 60-, 30- and the final-day. Ultimately it is the registrant’s responsibility to manage and maintain eligibility, payment details and contact details.
Hope this answers all your questions.”
The “full list” can also be found every day at Backorder.com.au 😉
auDA are a law unto themselves. Their website states: Once a name is purged from the registry it becomes available to register again by the general public.
The fact is that a registrar can drop the domain before it becomes available to the general public (often never even showing as available). It seems evident that auDA have no intention of allowing the registration of any new registrars.
This gives the general public no option but to use drop.com.au and results in auDA providing a license to print money to the likes of drop.com.au.
I’m truly surprises that more is not being written about this problem which often causes businesses huge fees though simple mistakes causing their domain name to expire then auctioned back to them.
Please keep up the good work spreading awareness.
“Drop.com.au” have made over $17,000 profit today, auctioning off one of their own customer’s domains (rings.com.au – map.com.au – consolidation.com.au – computerrepair.com.au – poloshirts.com.au) to new owners. Now they will profit off these new owners as they continue to pay their annual renewals. Rinse and repeat.
It really is quite disgraceful that auDA have allowed this monopoly to thrive, a more cynical man might think they have a vested interest.
This page on auDA’s website lists all 34 current registrars: https://www.auda.org.au/accredited-registrars
Guess how many are owned by Drop.com.au Pty Ltd? EIGHT. That’s around 25% of the entire Australian Registrar market monopolized by one entity.
auDA’s Terms of Endorsement from the government says they need to: “Promote principles of competition, fair trading and consumer protection.” They can hardly be said to have lived up to those terms while they actively stonewall new potential Registrars.
I was told by a senior person at auDA last year that at least FOUR new companies had filled out the Registrar Application papers and submitted to auDA. I wonder why NONE of them have been approved?
How many Registrar Applications were submitted last year by new companies?
How many were submitted in 2021?
How many were submitted in 2020?
There’s no way to tell. No transparency. No ombudsman looking over auDA. This is crazy.
And…. today it happened again. The same customer lost the premium valuable domain names “Scam.com.au” and “Funnel.com.au” today, in the same way.