Namecheap users how to overcome this problem?

[Jbro]

Namecheap domain registration for me sucks because namecheap makes customer confused by sending emails to them directly for renewal

with login links that go no where as customers do not have accounts with name cheap.

What you guys do to get around this issue?

[bear]

Change registrars to one that offers an actual reseller account which allows you to brand and edit content in those reminders.
Namecheap will never stop that practice.

I've been complaining about this for a long while, and they use two excuses:
"We don't offer reseller accounts, so we're allowed to send what we like"
"ICANN forces us to send these reminders, we have no choice"

When I point out ICANN is not telling them to advertise competing services in those emails, they go quiet. 
My favorite one was they suggested (and provided detailed instructions on how) I mass edit all domains in my account to use my own email instead of the owner's email. 

Edited July 11, 2019 by bear

[Jbro]

Thanks yes it is very frustrating and have spent hours explaining again and again in chat sessions. They do not understand and I am stuck because I have a lot of money as funds through bitcoin . The do not refund  so very much frustrated at this.  What else does name cheap have worthy of sale I do not know I have to save my money :(

[bear]

8 hours ago, Jbro said:

They do not understand and I am stuck

They absolutely do understand. We can't be the only two customers that have explained that they are causing confusion and attempting to poach business from us. The disregard for that along with domain ownership rights (by suggesting I change all registrant and admin emails to my own) shows they just don't care to change.

We did a transfer for a new handed off client recently, and the email that arrived to say the transfer completed had offers for SSL certs, hosting and more in it.

Had a client confused by the email about renewing, and reached out to support via the handy link NC puts in the reminder. They said the domain was in someone else's account (mine, as the person that sold it to them) so they can't allow them to access/renew it, then suggested they create their own account and have it pushed there, where they could then help and "oh by the way, we can offer cheap hosting", too.

We're working on getting our customers off there, but have had trouble finding any registrar that's decent.  Thought we'd found one recently, and during signup was linked to the terms. In it was a clause that stated they don't guarantee any domain reaching expiry will have *ANY* grace period (if they decide to give one, it's 14 days) and may be made available to someone wanting it immediately when it expires. We canceled the signup. Our customers are human, and occasionally late in renewing, so that won't do.
Still looking. 

[Kian]

10 hours ago, bear said:

When I point out ICANN is not telling them to advertise competing services in those emails, they go quiet. 

Yes and no.

As you probably already know, every TLD has its own rules. For example NicIT (.it domains) forces Registrars to provide a "drop-time" service to end-users so that they know when domains expire. It doesn't matter if the domain has been sold by a Reseller. Registrars must send expiration notices otherwise they would be responsibile for Resellers refusing or forgetting to send reminders to end-users. From my experience 99% of Registrars don't know anything about it but the remaining 1% (the biggest ones) strictly follow the rules.

In my opinion companies like Namecheap prefer to send expiration notices to everyone since they don't want to waste time reading Terms & Conditions of hundreds of TLDs and manage them separately. What sucks is that they send misleading notifications with spam included 👎 At least some Registrars like Internetbs allows you to customize email notifications so that they include your name and no reference to Internetbs. It would be relatively easy to implement for Namecheap but obviously they clearly don't want and we all know why 😛

Edited July 11, 2019 by Kian

[bear]

1 hour ago, Kian said:

Yes and no.

As you probably already know, every TLD has its own rules. For example NicIT (.it domains) forces Registrars to provide a "drop-time" service to end-users so that they know when domains expire. It doesn't matter if the domain has been sold by a Reseller. Registrars must send expiration notices otherwise they would be responsibile for Resellers refusing or forgetting to send reminders to end-users.

More yes than no.
It's not about them sending reminders (I get that, and it's not the issue), it's what's ALSO in that reminder that I take umbrage with. They are not obligated to include direct renewal links, nor upselling offers. That's purely voluntary and predatory, IMHO. They refuse to entertain the creation of true reseller accounts, in order to continue this practice; again, a deliberate and conscious decision.

[Kian]

Yep, it's the typical shady situation.

[Jbro]

Perhaps this needs to be reflected in webhostingtalk and they get some bad review perhaps they wake up

[bear]

8 minutes ago, Jbro said:

Perhaps this needs to be reflected in webhostingtalk and they get some bad review perhaps they wake up

It's been discussed there plenty. The rep basically said the same thing as support. 
-ICANN makes us do that
-There are no reseller accounts
-We're looking into having actual reseller accounts (years later, no movement)

They won't change this, no matter how many "resellers" complain. 

[Jbro]

2 minutes ago, bear said:

It's been discussed there plenty. The rep basically said the same thing as support. 
-ICANN makes us do that
-There are no reseller accounts
-We're looking into having actual reseller accounts (years later, no movement)

They won't change this, no matter how many "resellers" complain. 

But I have a resellerclub account with Zero issue. Every thing customized. the ICANN is just so stupid lie

[bear]

3 hours ago, Jbro said:

I have a resellerclub account with Zero issue

You should probably consider moving your domains there and drop Namecheap. The only way they will ever get the message is if they lose a lot of business over it, but they don't seem to be after reseller type users anyway. Odds are they're happy as is and won't ever change.

[Jbro]

On ‎7‎/‎12‎/‎2019 at 4:32 AM, bear said:

You should probably consider moving your domains there and drop Namecheap. The only way they will ever get the message is if they lose a lot of business over it, but they don't seem to be after reseller type users anyway. Odds are they're happy as is and won't ever change.

I already have funds through bitcoin and they say it is not refundable so I am stuck

[bear]

Is it quite a lot of money? If not, I'd consider using it to buy renewals for my own names, or SSL (if you need any of those), or something to use it up. You might consider keeping only your own domains there until the funds are used, and move all client domains off now. Bitcoins not wasted, clients not getting solicited, I'd call that a win. 

[Jbro]

About 2000 US Dollars 🙂

[bear]

Good grief. If you don't mind my asking, why would you put that much money all at once into something like that?

[Jbro]

I did not know I thought they were like resellerclub  and saw a lot of good review about them ,  My stupidity and now when I look closely I do not see any thing namecheap has that works for me 🙂

[bear]

Wonder if they'd allow an account transfer if you could find a buyer...
Might be worth trawling the terms, but since there is no reseller type accounts...I can't think of anything that would prevent it. 

[GoZen]

Since this discussion is on WHMCS why don't you take advantage of the WHMCS offer to get a sub-reseller account with ENOM...no emails from them if you follow the rules (that is configure WHMCS to email domain owners properly).

[brian!]

18 hours ago, GoZen said:

Since this discussion is on WHMCS why don't you take advantage of the WHMCS offer to get a sub-reseller account with ENOM...no emails from them if you follow the rules (that is configure WHMCS to email domain owners properly).

have you compared their prices to those offered by other registrars ? even if the account is free, i've never been able to think of a financial incentive to even apply for it.

[GoZen]

I agree with you on that but then it comes down to, if you are not a registrar the price will always be somehow cheap on some higher on others. 

[Craft]

4 hours ago, brian! said:

have you compared their prices to those offered by other registrars ? even if the account is free, i've never been able to think of a financial incentive to even apply for it.

Hi @brian!

Do you mean that you don't prefer to use eNom? and why?

[brian!]

20 hours ago, GoZen said:

I agree with you on that but then it comes down to, if you are not a registrar the price will always be somehow cheap on some higher on others. 

quickly comparing those prices, I couldn't see any where eNom were cheaper... not that pricing should be the only factor when choosing a registrar, e.g the quality of support comes into the equation too.

20 hours ago, Craft said:

Do you mean that you don't prefer to use eNom?

without checking our records, i'm pretty sure that we've never bought anything from eNom in the years i've been registering domains... of course, they're now owned by Tucows and i've had a long business relationship with them - I daresay that at some point down the road, the two brands will merge under one name.

20 hours ago, Craft said:

and why?

by the time I started using WHMCS in 2013, i'd already built relationships with existing registrars by then, e.g a Nominet member - so the WHMCS/eNom solution was totally irrelevant.... pricing wise, it wasn't even close to what we were paying.

in any event, I prefer direct business relationships with my suppliers as i've found that to be the most constructive, and productive, path to follow - the idea of having an intermediary step in that relationship just seems pointless... perhaps, if that intermediary could provide significant discount or advantageous products, then it might be worth a punt, but neither the free eNom subreseller account, nor even MarketConnect in general does that for us... which is why we don't, and never will, use either option.

that said, if a newbie user, new to both domains and WHMCS, wants to use either the eNom subreseller account and/or MC as shortcuts to get started, I can understand the simplicity of them doing so.

Edited July 16, 2019 by brian!

[GoZen]

eNom might not be cheaper and i believe the same (haven't checked their prices), but it's ok for starters when you just need the ability to provide domain registration, not the best option business wise.

[Craft]

13 hours ago, brian! said:

of course, they're now owned by Tucows and i've had a long business relationship with them - I daresay that at some point down the road, the two brands will merge under one name.

@brian! What is the problem when eNom is now owned by Tucows and two brands will merge under one name?

 

13 hours ago, brian! said:

by the time I started using WHMCS in 2013, i'd already built relationships with existing registrars by then, e.g a Nominet member - so the WHMCS/eNom solution was totally irrelevant.... pricing wise, it wasn't even close to what we were paying.

in any event, I prefer direct business relationships with my suppliers as i've found that to be the most constructive, and productive, path to follow - the idea of having an intermediary step in that relationship just seems pointless... perhaps, if that intermediary could provide significant discount or advantageous products, then it might be worth a punt, but neither the free eNom subreseller account, nor even MarketConnect in general does that for us... which is why we don't, and never will, use either option.

I know that direct business is better than being a sub-reseller for a registrar.

Would you mind to share us with your experience with the registrars?

If we need a registrar to start our business with. At the same time, this registrar should support at the features, so I found these registrars

https://docs.whmcs.com/NetEarthOne

https://docs.whmcs.com/Stargate

https://docs.whmcs.com/HexoNet

https://docs.whmcs.com/ResellerCamp

[brian!]

4 hours ago, Craft said:

What is the problem when eNom is now owned by Tucows and two brands will merge under one name?

I haven't made any comments, positive or negative, about eNom - never used them, almost certainly will never need to... my intention was merely to say that using the free eNom account was not the cheapest, or perhaps best, route to follow.

in terms of pricing, there are multiple cheaper options if pricing is a concern - if we were talking the odd cent difference, then that's almost irrelevant - but were there are $1 difference in .com yearly prices, or $3 difference in .net etc, these are significant hits to the bottom line.

I don't know if they will merge, currently they seem to be run independently - but base OpenSRS pricing is not cheap, e.g $12 for a com; $15 for a .net, $5 for whois privacy... and their support quality is not what it once was.

5 hours ago, Craft said:

Would you mind to share us with your experience with the registrars?

that might take too long! 🙂

off-topic, but i'll tell you that CentralNic's new invoicing system is damned weird to get your head around! 😕

5 hours ago, Craft said:

If we need a registrar to start our business with.

well i've never put all our eggs in one basket and just used one registrar - I think we started off with 2, we now have accounts with multiple different registrars, of which we primarily use 4 of them.

if you put a gun to my head and told me I had to choose one, then i'd go with resell.biz - good pricing, reliable, integrates with WHMCS... though their support people are often not the brightest (but we rarely have need to contact them).

6 hours ago, Craft said:

At the same time, this registrar should support at the features, so I found these registrars

resell.biz uses the Stargate module - effectively all LogicBoxes registrars (resellerclub, NEO, resell.biz) use the resellerclub module in WHMCS anyway.

Hexonet write their own WHMCS modules too and i've never had need to use resellercamp.