WTF: Domain registration completed, then got a "failed" reply..
 

Ok, today was the launching of the first non english characters in the .biz domain [eg: ü, ä, ö] - which are commonly used in german (ofcourse) and [ä, ö] also used in Swedish.

I was well prepared for the launch of those, which was supposed to begin at 9 am EST. I had several different registers ready with "bulk register" so I only needed to push a button at 9 am EST, after first trying on a "test browsing window".

What happens at 9 am? Nothing. 5 minutes goes and I start to look around for even more registers. I found out later that only those registers affiliated with "Schlund + Partner AG" did work to register with. Ok, instead of paying $5.49 with Ev1 or $4.99 with GoDaddy, the prices possible to get if you didn't have a german bank account was about $12. I started to register a few, missed some of the gems of couse but that was already discounted for before even jumping into this.

Anyway, picked up "hälsa.biz" (eg: health in english or Gesundheit in german). All was cleared, then I get a mail saying I got a refund for that domain and it didn't go thru.

I wanted to know why so I called up a german number. They were very friendly and spoke perfect English. He got my details and said he tought that the word was on a black list. WTF, health on a blacklist??? He put me on hold for 3-4 minutes and came back and told me that someone else registered the domain just a before me, it could have been a few seconds or so...

Really irritating... did it ever happen to you? After all, the electronic ordering system doesn't work perfectly??? Might have been a very busy period..


Anyway, grabbed some sweet real estate domains,
like bostäder (housing), lägenhet (apartment), lägenheter (apartments), fastighetsmäklare (real estate broker)... and not to forget: män.biz (like: men.biz). KRL, are ya interested ?

:Graucho :1orglaugh

Yeah, happened to me with joker (German) and nominalia (Spanish) in 1999, when NetSol lost their monopoly and euro registrars didn't follow NetSol's ban on the seven dirty words. They both screwed up a ton of registrations, probably bilked me for a couple thousand bucks in registrations they approved then revoked (like you described) that I never could get refunded, and I still have domains with Joker that I can't access because of their screwed up database errors and impossible authentication policies. I figure one day I'll go to Germany with a passport, birth certificate, and a big sack of fecal samples to try and convince them to transfer the domains out.

I don't know what it is about euro registrars, but I would never choose to use them unless there were no alternatives, as with your situation getting umlauted .biz domains. Maybe US companies are easier to negotiate with to resolve problems reasonably, since there's always looming lawsuit potential if they're unreasonable.

My first comment is what value is there in .BIZ ...? International names in .COM would seem to make more sense. But that's just my opinion :2 cents:

Arg-

Have you tried registrar transfer outs? That's really the only way to get control of them without lots of hassles.

Another thing to be aware of is that even though many CORE "registrars" became ICANN accredited, many of the domains registered through them back then are still held by CORE; at least the last I checked.

Request registrar transfer out requests, repeatedly say every 7 days or so if necessary, on the domains - many will go through ... eventually :BangBang:

Ron