Expert: Charles W. Field - 11/19/2004

Question
Hello:
I have renewed my domain name zuvermieten.net for $9
with Registerfly.com a month before it was to expire.
They issued a receipt for my credit card payment but it turned out that Registerfly.com is only a sort of a reseller for Enom.com. Registerly did not pay Enom for some of the names they sold and therefore Enom.com "locked" my domain name until I paid them $ 29. Which they claimed they did not get so I had to send it TWICE more and it did turn out at the end that they DID get all the payments I made.

I had a little newspaper ad campaign during the months my domain name was "locked" and therefore my domain which was mentioned in the ad was not available.


NOW this Monday the very same thing happened with Registerfly.com I renewed another domain and paid through their link with paypal and got a receipt from Paypal and it shows as paid at Registerfly but the domain showed as expired.
Therefore I suspect some scheme or fraud is going on.

In my feeling of justice - it should not be my business if Registerfly does not pay their bills to Enom. Enom should not be able to take away my domain only because they did not get paid by their reseller. ?????

What would be the proper procedure to stop this sort of thing. Registerfly claims they have 400.000 customers. This happened to me twice within 2 months. Imagine what a lucrative scheme that is ..... on the back of innocent clients who pay them $ 9 for the name and then $ 29 to Enom.com
How can this be allowed to go on.
What can I do now ?
(sorry I had to write so much to explain)

Thank you

Peter Scherer (in Tenerife, Canary Islands)

Answer
If you are considering legal action, I think you are going to have to figure out where Registerfly is physically located and contact an attorney there knowledgeable in this area of the law. I can't help any further; I don't handle this type of litigation.