I’ve been a customer of Drop.com.au since 2014 and I have the invoices to prove it. I’ve successfully paid them 621 invoices from 2014 until May 2021, many of them over $5000 and $10,000 each.
I was one of their TOP VIP customers, buying premium domain names for myself and my DBR Domain Brokerage clients. They even sent me a silly bottle of “Drop” red wine at one point.
I was never late to pay an invoice. I never asked for credit. I never needed it.
But that all changed when Drop.com.au banned me in May 2021. And ever since then, for over 3 years, I’ve been living in “no man’s land” as to whether I’m banned or not.
Ever since that date, May 2021, whenever I have tried to log in to any of my accounts I see:
Notice how they don’t list any “reasons” for blocking me? That’s because they don’t have any valid reasons.
The two silly reasons they have told me they are blocking me for are:
- They demand I won’t publicly talk about domain name sales prices. I will not agree to this. I will never agree to this.
- They demand I don’t publicly call them a “monopoly”. I will not agree to this as they ARE a monopoly over who has access to Australian daily expired domain names. I will only stop calling them a monopoly, when they are no longer a monopoly.
However, there have been some slithers of sunshine on occasions, when Drop have said I am “not banned”. But they have always been short-lived.
For example, on 14 January 2022, Anthony Peak from Drop.com.au sent me this text message from his personal phone:
And here is a successful invoice from April 8 2024, showing I was NOT BANNED for a couple of hours when I logged into my account and won a few domain names. But then, after this, quickly banned for no good reason again.
So, naturally I figured when I created a new account under Assets Australia Pty Ltd with “first name” Robert and “last name” Kaay on 6 June 2024, that they would also allow me to purchase another domain name. Especially when my opening bid was $30,000 and my WINNING BID came in 18 hours later at $325,000!
Can you imagine ANY INDUSTRY IN THE WORLD, where what happened next would be “OKAY”?
I didn’t hide my identity. It’s clear I was NOT banned for the SIX bids I made over EIGHTEEN HOURS that they allowed, as they watched me increase my bids for Superannuation.com.au on their platform.
It’s also clear I wasn’t banned for bidding on this domain because, as I pointed out in my article “auDA Complaint“, Anthony Peake PHONED ME after I had WON the auction after EIGHTEEN HOURS and said he “wasn’t sure if I was banned or not” and that it would depend if I was planning on writing more articles exposing some of their domain name acquisition techniques, if I was going to continue to expose domain name prices, and if I was going to continue calling them a “monopoly”.
It’s clear they deleted my bid because I wouldn’t obey their dictator “hush rules” again, then they invented an auction price out of thin air, heavily discounted, for the second bidder. It’s also clear the second bidder GROSSLY OVERPAID for the domain, because if Drop had deleted my account from the start, eighteen hours earlier, the domain would have only been sold for something like $30,000. What does that tell you? Isn’t that market manipulation?
It’s clear they discriminated against WHO was to receive and register the premium domain name Superannuation.com.au(.) They didn’t allow me to register a domain name, which I believe is a form of market manipulation and discrimination and is against auDA’s own Terms of Service as an auDA Accredited Registrar.
In the meantime, their own systems recognised me as THE WINNER of the auction and successfully registered my company as the Registrant, which they later changed without my approval.
And auDA have been told ALL OF THIS over the past few weeks in a Formal Complaint and then as an Internal Review… and they are stating “There’s nothing to see here!”…..
What would you call this type of behaviour? Across all these levels?
Can you imagine ANY INDUSTRY IN THE WORLD, where this scenario would be “OKAY”?
Today I have officially requested an EXTERNAL REVIEW of auDA’s decisions.
