Comment by Syonyk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Syonyk | Hacker News Reader

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If the only ethical way to engage with modern consumer tech is to do a full analysis of the positives and negatives of every aspect of it (which is a position I think has some merit), then the only reasonable conclusion is to simply avoid all of it, because it's all corrupted, at some point or some level, by something someone will find distasteful or worse.

I honestly haven't delved deeply into the list of domains each registrar has removed, decided if I agree or disagree with it, sat down to evaluate the severity of each violation, etc. And I fundamentally don't want to, either.

If you've got a better domain registrar suggestion that isn't full on "bulletproof hosting Bitcoin only" stuff ending in .ru, I'm open to it, but... otherwise, at the end of the day, my goal is to register a domain.

Though, don't get me wrong, I'm seriously considering ending my entire involvement in modern consumer tech and going back to a 1900s tech level once I retire...

I (and many others) have had good experience with Namecheap.

I had an extremely bad experience with Namecheap with an extremely high value domain (5 letters, dictionary word.) They had a fault on their backend and dropped my domain where it got picked up by a parking service. This happened despite me having paid in advance on time for over a decade. After weeks of going back and forth with Namecheap management I contacted an attorney. Some research hours later we find out Namecheap has absolutely 0 western presence other than some extremely low value holdings companies. In the event you have an issue with Namecheap you would need to go through the Ukrainian court system which isn’t feasible for westerners. I had to write off a domain with a 5 figure valuation due to their incompetence.

High value domains use Mark Monitor. It is their entire businesss and most importantly they’re US based.

I'm not familiar with this particular case and I'm sorry that you had a bad experience but most of you what have said here is incorrect and frankly absurd. We're a US-based company and most of our executives and owners are US/UK citizens. After over a decade with the company, I've never seen a domain "drop" because of a "backend fault." There are certainly quirky edge cases with obscure registries where bugs can occur but if we're talking a major TLD then it is highly unlikely. Feel free to email me if you want me to dig into it though: ted [at] namecheap.com.

This is what I was told by an attorney. That in (the attorney) doing an asset check they revealed that NameCheap simply has a virtual office in a Regus office space with little to no US assets. Further, that even if we went through the struggle of getting a judgement against NameCheap's US entity that getting cash out might be impossible. If anyone reading this wants to verify you can look at Namecheap's site where they list their US address as "4600 E Washington St". If anyone has ever interfaced with any staff at Namecheap it's very clear that 100% of the support and middle management is located in the Ukraine. Just because you have some executives living in the US with a virtual office somewhere doesn't make you a US organization.

I've been all up and down the contact chain with Namecheap and quite frankly every time I make a stink about it in a public forum it's always the same playbook. "Yes a mistake was made, no we can't compensate you." Here is the reply from your support where you admit a fundamental systems flaw resulted in my domain being dropped:

"My name is Oksana and I am the Shift Leader of Domains Department. I would like to follow-up with you with regard to the issue you have faced with your domain name. We are very sorry that such unpleasant situation happened. We have reported it to our Technical team and they are doing their best to fix the issue that affected your domain renewal so that similar situations would not occur again. While we cannot change what has happened, we are planning to take steps to ensure that similar incidents and misunderstandings will not occur in the future. Unfortunately, we do not have any ETA on the fix implementation. Rest assured that as soon as there are any updates on this improvement, we will inform you via the ticket. Regretfully, we will not be able to recover your domain name, as it expired and later was re-registered by another Registrant. As a compensation for this negative experience you have faced, we can offer you the XXXX coupon code. You can use it to receive a 20% discount for registration, renewal, and transfer of domains."

To add some circumstantial evidence, Namecheap currently has 52 job openings, of which 47 are in Ukraine, 1 each are in Portugal and India, and 3 are remote: https://www.namecheap.com/careers/openings/

It's 2021. Most companies of our size have an international presence. So what?

Nothing wrong with it, I was just curious about the claim that the company is legally based in the US but most employees are in Ukraine.

Take note. Calling someone's experience "incorrect" and "absurd" before you have all the details will never end well.

I was simply saying it is incorrect to say that we are not a US-based company. We have a large support team in Europe but we were founded in the US and remain a US entity. We have always been a distributed company with remote teams all around the world. It is indeed absurd that their attorney suggested that they would have to through the "Ukraine court system."

You are still welcome to email me and I will try to help you however I can.

Very few people reading your comment have high-value domains.

Also, every registrar sends you scary emails before and after a domain expires and enter the redemption period [1].

That means you failed to:

- register for 10 years in advance

- pay attention to your email for at least 60 days (including your redemption period)

- enable auto-pay

If you had done any one of those very normal measures for a high-value domain, you would have kept your domain.

1. https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/domain-name-renewal-ex...

Many domain registries allow you to send domains directly to the pending delete status (or drop them entirely.) It's how domain tasting used to work about 10 years ago before ICANN/Verisign changed up the rules.

Most users have good experiences with most registrars. It's only in extreme cases that you find out what character your registrar has.

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