.FAIL
Something is very fishy with the .me domain name registration system. Individuals who have signed up and paid for .me names are not receiving them. Multiple people have even been approved and charged for the same domain name!
Most of the really good names were registered by Afilias. There are super shady registrations where it appears that Afilias pre-registered all the good domains April 29, 2008. Afilias got a deal on all the premium .me names they wanted.
What is even more shady are the trademark dates. Trademarks were done in the year 1900, signed and sealed the same day. Very interesting. A company that was founded in 2000 received trademarks 100 years before their incorporation, and the Afilias.com trademarks were approved faster than any other trademark in history.
Domain registration for bite.me
registered: 4/29/08
trademarked applied: 1/1/1900
trademarked registered: 1/1/1900
Domain registration for mobile.me
registered: 4/29/08
trademarked applied: 1/1/1900
trademarked registered: 1/1/1900
Here is an available name: Do.me
do.me domain name available
but do.me is not available for registration on enom.com
Gogaddy has the same problems with the .me registration
It seems that the .me registrar wants to use their auction system to sell names themselves at an increased price. Most domain names in the .me auction start at $75 but have gone for a lot more topping out at $3605 for lastminute.me
Boy lots of people have been experiencing problems with the failed .me domain name registrations.
20 Responses
I’m obtaining a new computer but wouldn’t like to lose my Firefox bookmarks. Is there a simple way to avoid wasting accurate documentation of all the so-called URLs in my Bookmarks after which quickly upload these phones Firefox on my new computer?.
Excellent stuff – .me is the .fail of domain names.
Anyone have any luck with finding an attorney for class action type lawsuits on this?
-Dan
Dot.ME is a great extension for branding. It’s a perfect marketing package where the domain is also the brand or service. Like successful.me for education, champion.me for a sports company. The advertising community will make use of the intrinsic names.
Mark –
I’m interested in seeing how this flies too.
We did get one of our .me domains built pretty fast, it’s already up and running:
uan.me
It’s a social bookmarking site for business and internet marketing links.
UanMes last blog post.
I am just curious on how successful the .me domain will be down the road? Any thoughts. I was very happy to get http://www.computerize.me, it was almost a day after the registration began.
Regards,
Kelsey
Good luck with your lawsuit. I’m fairly certain that Godaddy and the people running the .me tld have super strong terms posted somewhere on their websites. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is going to end up without much action from the court systems.
The bright side for me is that I saw the problems with godaddy registration on the opening day of the .me landrush and hopped on over to dynadot.
Nabbed quite a few good ones. Here’s a couple:
uan.me
envio.me
localsearch.me
seoconsulting.me
And a bunch more. So look for those sites to be developed in the near future.
Anyone know of a lawyer to represent those who were affected ?
There must be something that can be done about this!
I brought 6 great domain names via Godaddy including http://www.sail.me and http://www.defend.me I was so happy when I registered them, I got the confirmation email and was on cloud 9. I took my wife and kids out for lunch to celebrate.
Later that evening I checked my mail to find all 6 failed to register ” Already registered” This is bullshit, how is it possible that one company was allowed to register all the good names?
montenegro=.me? For those who couldn’t get get fuckme.com, fuckmontenegro.com is available 😉
Yes, they will be auctioned off. But if you didn’t buy a domain during the sunrise or landrush phase, you won’t be able to participate in that auction.
Which is even more unfair.
This is a scam. What it’s starting to look like is that they ran a script that picked off the most requested registrations in the opening minutes. Then, auctioning those same domains to the highest bidders in a closed arena.
Can somebody call a cop? A whole bunch of people have been robbed…
All the domains that GoDaddy’s system is having hiccups on are either premium or reserved domains. My guess is the reserved domains that are set to be on auction were not found by godaddy’s whois search.
“RESERVED AND PREMIUM NAMES
A list of Reserved Names ( PDF, and text file) has been held back for government and registry use. These names are not available for registration by the public. This list was updated on April 15, 2008.
A list of Premium Names ( PDF, and text file) has been held back, and these names are not currently available for registration. The Registry plans to make these names available in manner(s) to be determined at a later time. ”
From: http://www.domain.me/index.php?page=6
Learn to do some research first. FAQs are very nice.
@Nick
We will receive a full refund — great but it seems that all the registrars were allowing the .me’s to be bought at the same time thus allowing people to be entering in the same domain URL within seconds of eachother on different websites.
Many of the best domain names will be auctioned off later so they kept showing them as available. Instead of letting it be first come first serve, as namecritic says on SEOJ, greed takes over.
I was alerted to your blog post and I would like to set the record straight.
Months before the .ME extension went live, there were two lists posted on Domain.ME for everyone to see. These lists are the Reserved Names list and the Premium Names list. They can be found by visiting http://www.domain.me/index.php?page=6. These names are not names registered by doMEn or Afilias. Rather these are highly desirable names that the registry wishes to ensure go to interested bidders that value them. Information on our premium name distribution should be available this fall.
You also make reference to auctions.domain.me. The names listed here were requested during the Land Rush period by multiple parties. You can read about the auction process on the Rollout FAQ located http://www.domain.me/index.php?page=15#20. Many of the names in auction may appear in the WHOIS as not found as they are neither available for registration nor awarded yet.
It is also important to note that much of the funds raised through domain auctions are intended specifically to go to fund Internet development in Montenegro, not for the benefit of Afilias, MeNET or GoDaddy.
I hope this clears up any confusion.
Thank you,
Predrag Lesic
Domain.me
You state, “Individuals who have signed up and paid for .me names are not receiving them.” This is not true.
Go Daddy knew the .ME Open Registration response would be tremendous, but it went beyond our highest expectations. As a result, Go Daddy experienced system issues in our communication with the registry. The issue was ours and did not involve the registry.
Once we became aware of the issue – we worked diligently to correct it and everything is now resolved.
Any customer who did not successfully register the requested domain name will receive a full refund.
Thanks,
Nick
GoDaddy.com
Communications Manager
I wrote a blog entry this morning soon after being successful in purchasing three very cool dot me domains.
Received an online receipt from GoDaddy at purchase and then a few minutes later a nice follow up confirmation of the order by email and a thank you.
About an hour later GD took them away.
I’m trying to figure out if GD=GoDaddy or God Damn!
You can read my report at LinkMoney.org
Rich Hills last blog post..Did You Purchase Your dot ME (.me) Domain Yet?
Afilias manages the registry for .me. Similar to how VeriSign manages COM and NET.
What you are seeing are the premium .me domains that were set aside for auction. Afilias does not get to keep these.
g1smd – interesting point about dates. Let’s see if Afilias, Godaddy, or domain.me offers any public explanation for this.
If you are upset with the registration process contact domain.me
Phone Support: 480-366-3505
Email Support:
In any Unix/Linux-based system, the date 1900-01-01 appears when the date field is blank, or zero.
For some systems, the date 1900-01-01 represents Day Zero in the Unix/Linux epoch.
Wow… we’ve seen a bunch of problems with the domain registering but this is the first post that we’ve come across with solid shady info listed…. this is total crap. GoDaddy has some serious explaining to do.