It’s official.
TPP Wholesale have given up.
Nine days ago, every Australian domain name was moved from the old AusRegistry Database to the new home of Australian domain names on the Afilias Servers.
At the same time, on July 1, new rules were implemented where you could register your domain name for
1 year, 2 years or 5 years, for the first time in Australian domain name history.
Tonight, I tried in vein to navigate TPP Wholesale’s dinosaur-age system to renew some domain names for one year.
Apparently, TPP didn’t get the memo.
This is an
unedited transcript of a live chat tonight that I had with a
TPP Support Agent called “Pamela”.
( 4m 17s ) Pamela: Hello. How can I assist you today?
( 4m 31s ) Visitor: Hi Pamela.
( 4m 36s ) Visitor: I want to renew some of my domain names.
( 4m 42s ) Visitor: Some only have 2 days to go
( 4m 48s ) Visitor: I want to renew for ONE YEAR ONLY.
( 5m 1s ) Visitor: How do I set this up, so TPP is ONE YEAR by DEFAULT from now on?
( 6m 32s ) Pamela: Hi there Robert
( 6m 40s ) Pamela: just to verify, are you trying to renew .au domains for 1 year?
( 6m 47s ) Visitor: Yep.
( 7m 3s ) Pamela: thanks.. Unfortunately the registration/renewal rules for .com.au domains only allow us to register/renew the domain on your behalf for up to 2 years at a time.
( 7m 14s ) Visitor: Wow.
( 7m 16s ) Visitor: Okay thanks.
( 7m 22s ) Pamela: You’re welcome. Thanks for contacting us for assistance and enjoy the rest of your day…
I deal with several registrars and Crazy Domains are the only registrar that I have found who currently recognise the new renewal regime
Drop.com.au , onlydomains.com, crazydomains.com.au , synergywholesale.com.au and others all have 1 year working.
The secret is Afilias is charging $0 for July so the only fees are the auDA and auDA Foundation rip off fees.
auDA management and Board are now ripping off every Registrar, Reseller and .au Domain Name Consumer.
Another reason why the current management cannot be trusted to be accountable and transparent.
auDA should be made to have their fees disclosed on all advertising by Registrars like the Icann fees are advertised and disclosed which are around 18 cents us.
Anon wrote “… auDA management and Board are now ripping off every Registrar, Reseller and .au Domain Name Consumer. …”
I suggest that you (and others who share such views) consider lodging a confidential complaint or submission with the ACCC relating to market behaviour or business practices of concern and, if a compelling case can be made, request the ACCC to inquire into alleged ‘over-charging’ and ‘anti-competitive’ pricing and other behaviours by auDA, as the “monopoly’ provider of .au domain name services, having regard to existing agreements, arrangements, understandings and policies.
For what it’s worth, I point to this SETEL submission to the ACCC in 2001 <https://web.archive.org/web/20091014112628/http://www.setel.com.au/site.php?id=240>. auDA has had many years to address concerns raised in this submission. Concerns raised in 2001 and possible remedies still appear relevant.
Even UniRegistry have already implemented 1-year and 5-year registrations. And they’re not even based here.
I’ve had 1 and 5 year renewals & registrations with Synergy and VentraIP. The sooner I can get all my domains from TPP (both old DistributeIT and AussieHQ accounts), the better. I don’t know why it has taken me so long!
Couldn’t agree more Joel. TPP Wholesale is the Titanic.
I had many phone calls today about this post. Some people were insinuating that perhaps TPP Wholesale are just trying to make as much money as they can, before closing shop, by forcing two-year registrations.
It could be that?
But… even so, why did the TPP Support Tech state:
She clearly didn’t even know policy had changed?!
This is very important information you would tell your support staff. You’d think you’d tell them at least even a few weeks before the migration. Poor Pamela, it seems, had NO IDEA the policy rules had changed.
You would also think the Chief Technology Officer of this drowning company would have informed the technical support staff of major policy changes and the biggest migration of domain names in internet history!!
Nope.
It’s seems clear that everyone involved with TPP has/is giving up and are looking forward to when Melbourne IT wraps it all up in one or two years…
As the saying goes, it appears they’re all rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
In the meantime, the Chief Technology Officer is currently on auDA’s Policy Review Panel, strongly voicing his opinions on Direct .AU Registrations and trying to back-date existing domain monetisation rules for existing .com.au domain names.
Take us back to the stone-age.
Yet he can’t implement 1-year renewals for his own Registrar 10 days after the migration?
And it appears he’s in control of the only registrar that is yet to do so.
This madness just tumbles every few days from OMG-status to WTF.
TPP used to be one of my favourite registrars before they were taken into the MelbourneIT fold. Their service was excellent and I had many a chat with their knowledgeable account managers. They even used to be one of the cheapest registrars out there.
Lucky for me I moved all my domains to Synergy last year.
Good luck to those who wish to move now. What with Afilias seeming to running by their own rule set it is a bit like the wild west. Can you imagine trying to get 10, 50 or 200 domain passwords in order to migrate your portfolio. 2 months later……
I wonder if Pamela is one of the new members of auDA??
Yes fortunately synergy and some other domain providers have got their act together.
Once TPP sold to netregistry it all went down hill and has never been the same again. They killed the servers and overloaded things, botched up domain management and records.
I remember reading the email from Larry Bloch and sadly laughing to myself about how unlikely it was his words would be true.
“The TPP Wholesale business is key to this acquisition and will be maintained exactly as is, in terms of platform, pricing and support. Current resellers will not be impacted in any negative way — it is business as usual.”
[…] week in this article, I pointed out that the Support Rep. over at TPP Wholesale had no clue that one-year registrations […]