Those of you who have had domains with RegisterFly for a while may have received two relatively amusing emails today. I have no idea what might have been the catalyst for this, but eNom and RegisterFly are now engaged in an all-out battle for control over customer accounts.
A little background info...
RegisterFly used to be an eNom reseller (certainly one of their largest). They became ICANN accredited approximately a year ago and started transitioning clients away from eNom to their own system. Some technical glitches occurred throughout the process, which drew the ire of several large RegisterFly customers.
Today's war of words
A few hours ago, myself and several other RegisterFly customers received an email from eNom announcing that since RegisterFly had attracted a large number of service-related complaints of late, eNom had terminated its relationship with the company. In connection with this, eNom is offering RegisterFly customers the ability to transfer their names directly under the control of eNom at no cost.
RegisterFly responded with an email to their customers just a few moments ago. Their response counters eNom's accusation and points to the fact that most RegisterFly customers have already transitioned across into the new system. To those who haven't, they're offering a special $5.99 renewal/transfer rate to speed up the process, while pointing out that this is less than eNom's renewal rate.
As I said, I have no idea what triggered this sudden action, but as a long-term customer of both of these companies, this leaves me with a bad taste in the mouth. On the one hand, RegisterFly are countering accusations of bad service with price-competitive behaviour, which says nothing about their ongoing commitment to improving customer service and the reliability of their own platform. On the other hand, eNom appears to be taking an opportunity to deliberately scalp customers from one of their biggest and best known resellers, which is never a good impression for a company to make when it's entire business is based on the goodwill of its reseller base.
Have these companies both dropped the ball on this occasion, or is one a saviour to deliver us from the other?
A little background info...
RegisterFly used to be an eNom reseller (certainly one of their largest). They became ICANN accredited approximately a year ago and started transitioning clients away from eNom to their own system. Some technical glitches occurred throughout the process, which drew the ire of several large RegisterFly customers.
Today's war of words
A few hours ago, myself and several other RegisterFly customers received an email from eNom announcing that since RegisterFly had attracted a large number of service-related complaints of late, eNom had terminated its relationship with the company. In connection with this, eNom is offering RegisterFly customers the ability to transfer their names directly under the control of eNom at no cost.
RegisterFly responded with an email to their customers just a few moments ago. Their response counters eNom's accusation and points to the fact that most RegisterFly customers have already transitioned across into the new system. To those who haven't, they're offering a special $5.99 renewal/transfer rate to speed up the process, while pointing out that this is less than eNom's renewal rate.
As I said, I have no idea what triggered this sudden action, but as a long-term customer of both of these companies, this leaves me with a bad taste in the mouth. On the one hand, RegisterFly are countering accusations of bad service with price-competitive behaviour, which says nothing about their ongoing commitment to improving customer service and the reliability of their own platform. On the other hand, eNom appears to be taking an opportunity to deliberately scalp customers from one of their biggest and best known resellers, which is never a good impression for a company to make when it's entire business is based on the goodwill of its reseller base.
Have these companies both dropped the ball on this occasion, or is one a saviour to deliver us from the other?
