After the Sale, Are You More or Less Likely to Use Moniker?

I’m sure you’ve already read the news that Moniker and Snapnames  were  acquired by KeyDrive in a private transaction. I am very surprised that neither Oversee.net nor Key Drive sent an email to Moniker / Snapnames clients, and I don’t see anything that would indicate that either company issued a press release to announce the news yet.

I have met a few employees of KeyDrive, although I don’t know a whole lot about the company, aside from some of its business assets and location. For some people, having a registrar whose European corporate “home base” will come as good news, while others may not wish to have their domain registrar located outside of the United States (keep in mind that the .com registry is of course located in Virginia).

Technical support and customer service are both important to me, and I don’t know anything about the support or service that will be given by KeyDrive. At one time, I knew I could send an email to Bari Meyerson, and she would handle any issue very quickly. That changed in recent months, and I was then required to submit everything directly to Oversee.net support.

With all of this said, I am wondering what your immediate thoughts on the sale are, and if you plan to use Moniker going forward.


Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

19 COMMENTS

  1. I have never been a fan of Moniker so I’ll start with that.

    MUCH less of a fan when Oversee took it over and killed it.

    I suppose KeyDrive could do a good job but they are going to have to spend A LOT of money to educate the consumer and current customers.

    Like… where’s Luxemburg and what are the risks of having my domains there. Who are the owners? Who are the account reps? What can they do that GoDaddy, enom, Fabulous etc can’t do? Why should I keep my domains there? etc etc.

    I hope they bought it cheap.

  2. What is the deal lately with domain-related companies? Parked.com goes dark on the home page and never sent me anything (i still can’t access my account). Afternic takes days to respond to my e-mails that their system is broken (it still is) and I can’t add domains to my account. It’s a joke. Poor customer service is what 2011 was about. I don’t believe anything will change in 2012.

  3. Where did these guys go wrong, they had high end clients like the King Rick S., they had one of the best security registars out there, they just got left in the dust. They should have built out a better internal sales channel for clients, better pricing, and most off, seems customer service was lacking, a more friend control panel could be of service…

    They got a deal on this, they were not even top 10 when the sale went through… like catching a falling knife…

  4. Depends on price imo. If they don’t bring the Moniker bulk price down to the $8.50-8.75 range (.com), the slide is going to continue.

  5. @Spike

    I work here at Afternic and I would like to help you out with your account if you still need assistance. Can you please let me know what specific issues you are having (be it adding domains to your account or otherwise)? I can help you get your domains added today if for some reason you are unable to do so. You can reach me directly at dvescuso (at) namemedia.com

  6. It can’t be any worse. Moniker had been swirling the customer-service toilet since 2009.

    Perhaps a few high profile domain bloggers received adequate service (for the same reason Dan here just posted in response to poor Spike’s lament) but for everyone else, it was a nightmare.

    For me, it’s nowhere to go but up, but they are going to have to take a page out of Godaddy’s customer service book. I’ve been scaling out of Moniker since late last year. Unless they up their game, I will continue.

  7. @ Anon

    I likely receive good service because I have registered/owned thousands of names there, have used them in the past for expensive escrow transactions, have spent thousands of dollars at Snapnames, and sold thousands of dollars worth of names at Snapnames and Moniker auctions (TelephoneCall.com was the highest public auction sale of mine I can recall for $20,000 http://dnjournal.com/archive/domainsales/2006/domainsales12_12_06.htm ).

    That being said, I know of a number of people who don’t have large accounts at Moniker but have received great customer service from Bari or Don.

    The only other registrar I have an account representative at is Go Daddy, and I’ve had one since 2004 – several years before my blog. That is because I’ve registered and owned thousands of names there.

  8. Well with some of these places it’s a race to the bottom on price, with customer service to match. If the new owners keep the Moniker interface and don’t fix the bugs, they just won’t be on a par with the competition. Will they keep the Moniker name?

    Luxemburg sounds good to me, it’s an EU financial centre. So I’ll say wait and see, not rushing in or out.

  9. @DanVescuso: Can’t speak for Spike but since you asked, here are a few suggestions:
    – Re-enable buy domains advanced search
    – Re-enable sortable columns in selling stats
    – Domains getting stuck on pending review even if whois matches account data exactly
    – Review the codebase for blank popups (don’t remember where but they definitely exist)

  10. Also for Dan SL is right on the money…

    Domanis get stuck in pending review FOREVER

    Also you need to run more whois checks, and their is a large % of domains in the system, that are not even owned anymore by that account.

    I had to ask twice last week to have one of my domains removed from someone elses fixed price listing, not sure why twice, but it is very choppy… I am sure this will lead to a better customer, and seller experience.

    Afternic needs a facelift as well, menu could be a lot more smoother.

  11. Thank you for your concerns/suggestions. If anyone has specific problems, please email either myself or our customer service manager, Christina Forker, at cforker (at) namemedia.com. Either of us will be happy to assist you.

  12. I will be sending you an e-mail Dan.

    A few of my continuing problems with your service are:
    * Excessive pending review delays (how about weeks for some of my domains?)
    *Domains submitted via Afternic not appearing in my SmartName account (they should automatically)
    * Slow customer service (more than 2 days to respond to a ddomain conflict when I give you all the info? really?)
    * All of the above repeated month after month with no permanent fixes

  13. I am happy to report that Dan and Christina did resolve the overdue pending review domains within an hour or so of notification. Howver, it would have been nice to receive an explanation as to why the domain reviews were not conducted in a timely fashion in the first place.

  14. I just logged into my Moniker account to ask a question in Support and got this nice message:

    Support Error
    Support Error

    Could not open the support page.

    Off to a great start.

  15. As an employee of Key-Systems, a subsidiary of KeyDrive, I might add a little to the discussion.

    KS prides itself with delivering hight levels of customer support to small and big customers alike. If anything, we will work hard to make sure the Moniker will reach the same level of customer support in the coming year.

    We are very exited with the new “family members” and believe that Moniker and SnapNames have great potential to be one of the best addresses for good quality service. While the ownership has changed to a European company, the day-to-day business and support will stay in the US, e.g. Moniker and SnapNames will continue to be american companies.

    That said, please give us some time to implement our plans. these things will take time to implement and plan properly. We know there is work to be done, and we are just about to get started.

    Volker

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