How to Exit eNom Reseller Business?

Patrick · Administrator

Hello,

I'm looking for a little advice. I was an eNom reseller for a couple of years with my own domain name registration business. Mainly to complement my hosting solutions. The rate was $9.99 a year. It grew to be over a hundred active clients at one point (probably as much as 150). Earlier this year, I decided to get out of the business.

I considered my options carefully. They included things like selling the clients to another registrar, etc. The most important thing for me was to ensure client satisfaction as best as I could. So, the course I decided on was to give each client their own eNom account set at the same $9.99 price point. Their domains were already at eNom, so all I needed to do was push them over and they could have the same services, pricing and be supported by eNom, which I have always had good experience with. Could I have made more money from them? Sure, but I really just wanted everyone to be happy and this seemed to be perfect.

This plan was set into motion in late March with an e-mail to all clients. Over the next 3 months, I worked with clients, one by one, to get username suggestions and set up each account by hand and then push their domain names into it. In all, some clients were sent as many as 5 e-mails with at least 1 phone call to those located in the United States that were left near the end. There were a handful that had old, outdated contacts and there was no way to get a hold of them, but the vast majority was reachable, informed and transferred over or transferred their domains away.

On July 1, we officially closed. However, toward the end of July, I received an e-mail from eNom that was in reply to a client with me as the CC. eNom was referring them to me. Apparently, eNom doesn't support sub-accounts and forwards them onto the parent account. I was unaware of this. I should have asked and I accept responsibility for that. I had contacted eNom for support approximately 15-20 times over the years and I had not once, to my knowledge, been forwarded to a parent account. They had always simply helped me. So, I mistakenly believed that that was standard practice.

When I asked eNom what sort of recourse I had or what they offered for resellers that were getting out of the business, the only option they offer is to help people setup their own accounts direct from eNom with the standard $30 a year fee. Of course, this isn't acceptable. eNom tells me that people can contact them and that they will try to help them, but that they will forward them to me on certain issues. The issue they forwarded to me was a person asking why they weren't notified of an upcoming expiration. It would seem that if they can't handle that issue, that I will be forwarded virtually everything, anyway.

I considered changing all of the accounts to reseller accounts, but the $100 minimum plus fees for credit card account filling would be too damaging and, besides, eNom won't guarantee support to them anyway, even though I, again, have never been referred to a parent account. I also asked them if I could push my sub-accounts to someone else who could support the pricing because I could probably find someone I am comfortable with and just give them the accounts. Nope, no good.

I am out of the business and I am not providing anyone with any dedicated support. My final option is to e-mail my previous clients and tell them that they are welcome to keep the account, but that they should be forewarned that there will be no dedicated support for it. If they have trouble, they can try contacting eNom and see if they will assist. If eNom forwards them onto me, I will do the best I can, but I can make no guarantees. For this reason, I would then recommend they transfer their domain names to another registrar as soon as possible.

But, before I did that, I thought that I would post a thread here and see if anyone has any experience with this sort of thing. I would appreciate any advice, if you did.

Thanks,

Patrick
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Patrick O'Keefe - DeveloperCube Administrator | Articles
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