Radix a new gTLD registry, landrush for three new gTLDs .Host, .Website and .Press opens up on August 26th and runs until September 15th.
Applying in landrush for a new gTLD domain gives the applicant early access to domain names ahead of general availability.
The wholesale cost to apply for a .Host, .Website and .Press domain in landrush is $160.
Radix has been advertising on social media calling their landrush a “no risk landrush” meaning that the $160 landrush fee is fully refundable if you don’t get the domain name you applied for.
However some registrars are making that $160 fee non-refundable, meaning you don’t get your $160 back even if you don’t get the domain name you apply for.
There are several ways you may not get a domain you apply for in landrush. The most frequent reason would be that more than one person applies for the same domain name in landrush, thereby sending the domain to auction, if you lose the auction, you won’t get the domain name and if you applied with a registrar that is not refunding the $160 landrush fee you won’t get your $160 back either.
We were alerted to this by a reader a week ago who was going to place a landrush order at Godaddy on a .Website domain.
So as you can see above Godaddy is charging now $174.99 for a landrush application which includes Radix $160 landrush fee (the price was $189.99 last week).
However if you look at the fine print by the pricing it says:
“Includes: $160.00 Application Fee (non-refundable)”
So basically if you apply for a landrush application with Godaddy on a Radix landrush new gTLD domain you would not get the $160 back but you would get back the $14.99 Godaddy additional charge.
I reached out to Radix who clarified:
“From our end as a Registry we are not charging for the applications that don’t get assigned a name. Some registrars are yet to implement the refundable application option on their page and a few are still under discussion.”
“Our final Landrush micro-site will be up shortly, which will clearly segment the risk-free registrars from other registrars like Go Daddy that will not be refunding the application.”
We can only assume that Godaddy is not the only registrar that is making the $160 landrush fee non-refundable so make sure you know what your getting when you apply in landrush with your registrar.
So to be clear Radix is doing like they are advertising, offering a basically a no-risk landrush, where you get a refund if you don’t get the domain but depending on the registrar your using, you may not get your money back.
I believe this is again one of Go Daddy’s mistakes. They did the same with the Donuts EAP fee where all invoices state that the EAP fee is not refundable in case they don’t get the domain:
http://onlinedomain.com/2014/03/17/news/go-daddy-is-inclined-to-miss-eap-pre-registrations-they-keep-the-eap-fee-and-pay-nothing-to-donuts/
http://onlinedomain.com/2014/03/18/news/go-daddy-refunds-eap-pre-registration-fees-to-affected-customers/
http://onlinedomain.com/2014/07/19/news/i-have-been-refunded-3000-from-go-daddy-and-i-have-yet-to-find-someone-else-with-the-same-problem/
Of course the EAP fee is refundable.
Even their customer support can’t get it right.
I think that all these fees will be refundable but you can never be sure with Go Daddy.
K-
I don’t think this is a mistake
GD has a nonrefundable fee of $160 for a land rush app
If you apply with GD I would not expect a refund
Godaddy has to close the gap SOMEHOW of its annual $200 million loss, in order to justify the executive officer’s total $28.6 million total compensation for one year, 2013! This is according to Godaddy’s IPO filing. It must be the sum of the salary, plus the option awards:
– put together by Angela Gonzales of BizJournals.com
What GoDaddy’s IPO filing can teach us about a company with $200M in annual losses
http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/blog/techflash/2014/06/what-godaddys-ipo-filing-can-teach-us-about-a.html