The ultra-premium ‘Uber.com.au‘ domain name was captured off-market for under $10, all while Drop.com.au’s auction never listed it.
Two weeks ago, ‘Uber.com.au‘(,) one of the strongest commercial generic words in the Australian namespace, expired and was deleted by the registry (Identity Digital).
On a normal drop day, expired names often surface on the only public ‘.au’ drop-catch auction: Drop.com.au, that has a monopoly in offering expired premium Australian domain names to the public. That is where the market is supposed to discover and bid for them.
‘Uber.com.au‘ never appeared.
What the drop lists showed
According to BackOrder.com.au(,) the Identity Digital (auDA Registry) expired drop list and reports from Domain Investors, ‘Uber.com.au‘ was among domains deleted on 1 August 2026, alongside names such as MobilityEquipment.com.au, FishingEquipment.com.au and Postal.com.au(.)
[SCREENSHOT above: BackOrder.com.au drop list – 1 August 2026]
A domain investor later shared with us, Drop.com.au’s completed-catch list for that day. Every name from that BackOrder list that Drop caught appeared in Drop’s results — except ‘Uber.com.au‘.
[SCREENSHOT above: Drop.com.au results as at 3 August 2026 – ‘uber.com.au‘ absent]
So no Australian business, no brand owner, and not even Uber (Ride-Share) itself could see the name or bid for it on the platform that presents itself as the public market for dropping “.au” names (and holds the monopoly).
Who got it instead?
WHOIS shows uber.com.au was registered from drop day to SEO Web Recovery Pty Ltd (ACN 650 850 150).
[SCREENSHOT: Current WHOIS / registrant for uber.com.au]
SEO Web Recovery is not a stranger to Drop’s rails. We have previously reported that:
- Drop allowed SEO Web Recovery to register 1,238 names in a day, then delete 1,223 inside auDA’s cooling-off window
- SEO Web Recovery has repeatedly been the dominant catcher of expired .au inventory
- Public requests for auDA to investigate were met with no action or silence
Who controls SEO Web Recovery — and how that sits next to Drop
ASIC extracts show:
Glenn Fawcett is the Richmond chartered accountant behind Fawcett & Company.
TRILLION.COM PTY LTD (ACN 098 223 048) — formerly Trellian Pty Limited — is the Australian company in the Warmuz group associated with Above.com, Drop.com.au and related domain infrastructure. Its director is David Warmuz. Principal place of business: Beaumaris.
ASIC also shows:
- From 2001 to mid-2023, Trellian’s (and Drop‘s) registered office was:
C/- Fawcett & Company Chartered Accountant, Level 8, 227 Collins Street, Melbourne - From June 2023, TRILLION.COM’s (and Drop‘s) registered office is:
45 Bridge Road, Richmond VIC 3121 — the same address as SEO Web Recovery, Third Exhib and First Exhibition - Both stacks use the same ASIC contact box: PO Box 19, Flinders Lane, Melbourne VIC 8009
There is no shared shareholding on the extracts between Warmuz’s TRILLION.COM and Fawcett’s SEO Web Recovery. The documented link is long-term accountant / registered-office / co-located company administration — not common equity.
That is still enough to create a serious conflict of roles:
- Drop runs the public auction for dropped names
- Drop (or its multi-connection drop-catch stack) has the technical capacity to secure names at registry level
- A company controlled by Drop’s long-term group accountant ends up as registrant of a ultra-premium name that never hit the public auction
If the market only sees what Drop chooses to list, Drop is not a neutral auctioneer. It is gatekeeper, and, in effect, selector of who gets a private path to premium domain name inventory.
Why this matters
Drop has dominated “.au” drop-catching for years. When the dominant, monopoly, catcher can:
- withhold a name from the public board, and
- land it with a registrant tightly linked to its own corporate administration,
then “first come, first served” becomes “first-connected to Drop’s back door“.
We are lodging (yet another) detailed complaint with auDA.
Story developing . . .
I was absolutely shocked to see this about Uber.com.au as I watch the drops diligently every single day & I definitely didn’t see it on the drops list?
How & why did SEO Web Recovery get a hold of it without anyone else seeing it?
Does auDA know? Does UBER know?
Many questions need to be asked & answered.
All roads lead to ….Trillion!
Make an offer on ANY of seo web revovery names and Trillion handle the enquiry and sale…
Call the accountant and he sends all contact to….Trillion
isn’t this domain potentially worth like $1 million dollars to an end user?
Girl.com.au. a TRILLION company….
And auDA does…nothing .. when it’s a Registrar themself involved…
A creative way to capture generic premium names as a monopoly.
Maybe INTERVIEW face to face the “accountant” behind this large generic portfolio….that would get some views!
You’ve laid out the proof of this particular instance succinctly. There is surely a case to answer. For whatever reason though, auDA seems reluctant to touch Trillion / Trellian.
It’s one thing to ignore the regulator, but to deny or screw your own customer base for personal enrichment is another matter.
This is what lack of competition (and governance) breeds.
I’ll be interested to read the outcome of your complaint.
UBERs auDRP for Uber.com.au will be interesting
This from David Warmuz on Linked In to Ed (see screenshot picture).
David Warmuz’s public response is that NO ONE BID on the domain, and then it quietly went into the Dutch Auction while no one noticed… Sure!
LOL.
So the drop.com.au sort by traffic and value was broken also on the day but only for UBER.COM.AU which by technical fault never showed up?
Theyve actually used this same trick and excuse before
What the hell is really going on? Is it worth the risk, media and Registrar exposure for Drop really?
Hi LOL,
When you say “the sort by traffic and value was broken also on the day but only for UBER.COM.AU” – where did you read this?
David W claims it was listed. It wasn’t
Their system puts the highest value and traffic names at the top by default. .. Uber would have been at the top of their listings by their system traffic and value default if it was listed and I would have bid thousands of dollars for it as a generic name.
Even if David’s false claim was right that it was listed but hidden down the listing page it would mean their usual automatic display by traffic and value was broken for JUST UBER.COM.AU on that day.
Total Bullshit.
REGISTRAR Domain name warehousing – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_warehousing
Do any auDA Registrars themselves engage in “Warehousing”?
You bet they do!
It’s amazing how many generic high value .au names numerous auDA Registrars have registered via tricky methods ultimately for themselves.
Netfleet back in the day (now owned by Trillion) had a huge generic .au domain portfolio themselves they would sell off for the right price…
Does auDA even have the power to do anything?
The domain expired, Drop grabbed it. They’re not obliged to offer it to others.
A company that respects fairness and openness would; or perhaps one with competition would. That is the only lever auDA has – allow real competition, but they won’t.
Hopefully Uber just ignores it and the .au space entirely. I think as tech rolls on, there’s less and less point to trying to capture traffic on different tlds or misspellings. The ai/search/browser/app gets them where they need to be without ever needing to type it.
I agree with Cam. auDA is toothless. As a private company, Drop has no obligation to display ALL expired/deleted domain names. They can sell them for whatever they want to whoever they want. The company that is buying the domains has enough separation from the registrar that auDA does not care. The business practices show they don’t care for their customers; that is a given, which cause people not to trust such a company. But this company does have a monopoly, so you must put up with their practices if you want to play. auDA does not care. (auDA has demonstrated they do not care so many times)
This should worry anyone holding .com.au names, not just the domain investing crowd. As the whole thing only works if people trust the drop process.
Uber.com.au was on the expired list. Then when it came time for the public auction on Drop… it wasn’t there. No listing. No chance for anyone to bid on it. And for a name like that, I don’t think you can just shrug and move on.
You don’t need to prove some grand conspiracy before asking a pretty basic question: “why weren’t drop.com.au users given the chance to see or bid on Uber.com.au?”
That’s the bit I’d like to see properly answered.
And I’m genuinely curious to see Warmuz’s Dutch Auction explanation in full, because “no one bid” doesn’t really answer it.
If the domain was never publicly listed in the first place, nobody had the opportunity to bid. That’s the question sitting there unanswered.
There may be a perfectly boring explanation for all of this. Fine. Publish it.
Because if we’re supposed to have confidence in the .au drop process, this is exactly the sort of thing that needs a clear answer.
Good points James. We would be happy to share a ‘perfectly boring’ explanation for it all too, if one exists with proof.
I successfully registered a domain at Drop on August 1 but I never saw the domain uber.com.au and would have bid on it as it is generic
I can confirm the name was available to bid on – on Drop.com.au.
I thought long and hard about it and did about 2 hours DD but decided to pass. Too many TMs covering my classes of goods & services.
So what Warmuz is saying about picking it up because no one bid is correct. I have seen this happen on a few top names lately. One of them really hurts as I made an approach to buy it several years ago. And a mate got it for $25!
Uber.com.au has something like 1 million historic backlinks according to Majestic.com. Is it a million dollar name? potentially – but many names are.
Do you have a screenshot Tim? Email it to us if you do. We have someone else who has also reported they saw it in the dying moments on the bottom ‘dutch auctions’. Although, no one has reported seeing it in the main drop list or has submitted a screenshot showing same. There are still many domain investors that have stated to us they didn’t see the domain listed at all, even though they made bids on other domains that day, and would have bid on it if they had. It is a generic dictionary-word domain name, so could have easily been purchased and used for multiple businesses. There are over 100 businesses and companies that would easily qualify to purchase this generic domain name according to ASIC records… if they knew about it.
what if drop allow certain accounts to see certain domains but hide it from others? there’s no competition or other bidding in the market to keep things fair
even if UBER appeared in the last few mins of the dutch auction, whos to say Drop didn’t maniuplate the search volume and value so it was buried at thw bottom of the drop list before it slipped through everyones net for SEO WEB RECOVERY to slurp up? this is whayt happens when theres no competition. i was on that day and i didnt see it. drop should take the name off seo recovery and drop it again if they care about their customers.
100% spot on
But
Drop lists names from top to bottom by traffic numbers and value. UBER would not be down the bottom.