tamar

Hi, everything looks up and running from here. Any ongoing or long term downtime will be posted here: https://www.namecheap.com/status-updates/

If you cannot access the site, please try a different connection (e.g. mobile instead of ISP or vice versa).

If that does not work, please reach out to your ISP and let them know as we are not currently down from what I see. If we were, it would have been temporary.

Again, if you would like to get assistance with this issue, you will need to open a ticket per our policies and I will have this investigated. I will not be able to engage further on these posts, as your claim is invalid; the price is just higher than you would like it to be.

You can sell on another marketplace; you are not bound to Namecheap's. Good luck with your sale.

Actually, I did not decide anything was true and opt not to answer. The replies to this comment thread did not notify me for some reason, and further, I'm about to go offline for the Jewish new year and am rushing in preparation for the holiday. I am already responding outside my work hours.

Contacting support will give me some clarity on why the domain name pricing changed. You said they won't let you sell the domains; they are definitely letting you sell, just at a higher price than you claim was entered, unless there was some glitch and the amount changed on our backend or something else occurred that will necessitate a further look. The only way for someone to investigate further is for you to contact support.

I cannot "explain here and now" because I am not part of that team, nor am I able to drop everything and respond within your desired timeframe with other obligations. Opening a ticket is your only recourse, and my job here is to escalate tickets.

I am a generalist at Namecheap. I do not have access to the information you seek for security purposes. A specialist needs to look at your issue in depth. We are a company of 1k+ employees and there is no way for me or anyone else at the company to know everything, hence the number of different departments we have, and hence my request that you open a ticket with the proper department so that you can get your answers. I certainly do not have your answers in my role. I simply can ask someone to clarify why it happened by responding to you in a ticket.

Due to the sensitive nature of account issues, that is how we move forward. If you choose to share the response from support publicly, that is totally your prerogative, but we will not be able to give you any additional context or detail at this stage and certainly not in public without you opening a ticket. This is our policy.

At this point, I am signing off, but you are encouraged to follow my recommendation and contact support. You want answers; to get those, you have to ask the right person.

Have a great day and happy new year to those who are reading and celebrate :)

Hello, I represent Namecheap. Have you spoken to support? Do you have a ticket number? If so, can you please provide that to me?

Hi, Tamar from Namecheap here. This is not a practice we partake in as you can read by the comments. Please share the domain in question via DM (I use the same name on reddit if that helps). My guess is our service reported it accidentally as available due to a technical miscommunication with the registry but it was already registered. However, I would need to know the domain to do that. Otherwise, we can open an investigation into what would've happened but it is not in our interests to do this for a number of reasons. I would like to see what occurred though, so please be in touch.

Hi, Tamar from Namecheap here.

It's common for newly registered domain names to be targeted, especially if the WHOIS information is not protected. Some domains do not allow WHOIS protection due to registry restrictions. These include .ca, .ch, .cn, .co.uk, .com.au, .com.es, .com.sg, .de, .es, .eu, .fr, .gg, .id, .in, .is, .law, .li, .me.uk, .net.au, .nl, .nom.es, .nu, .nyc, .org.es, .org.au, .org.uk, .paris, .sg, .to, .uk, .us, .vote, .voto, and .xn--3ds443g domains.

As a result, you may receive calls (you're not alone; I get them too if I register one of the aforementioned TLDs). The good news is that these calls typically stop after a few days. The bad news is that this situation occurs. While we wish we could apply our domain name privacy to all TLDs (we were the first domain name registrar to offer this for free, as privacy and security are of utmost importance to us), some registries do not permit this additional layer of security, and all registrars must comply with their regulations.

I hope this clarifies the situation. Rest assured, we would never sell your information. Doing so would go against everything we stand for.

Super, much appreciated. We'll take a closer look and see what might be happening here, and appreciate your understanding.

Support is aware of your issue and is awaiting details, and this is now in a specific escalation process to upper management. I will need some information in order to further assist you, especially to understand why this is impacting you and/or if it could be impacting others. This does not sound like something that is "by design." If you don't own or manage the domain, it shouldn't be listed in your account. Period. But we can't address any such underlying issue without a starting point.

You don't need to tell me the domain here. Please simply open a ticket and let me know the ticket number and I will have management take a closer look.

If you can open a ticket (via support at namecheap dot com) with details and the domain name, I'll make sure this gets appropriately escalated. Just let me know the ticket number when you do.

Hi there - can you please reply with the ticket number? I work with Namecheap and would like to investigate this further. Thanks so much.

I can reply. I work with Namecheap. Will reach out to the OP.

Hi, I work with Namecheap. There's an incredibly high load on the ticketing system right now and unfortunately it's designed that replies to tickets ends up bumping the ticket to the bottom of the queue again which I recognize is an issue in this case. If you want assistance, please let me know the ticket number and I'll escalate. Thank you and apologize.

Me too!

Hi guys - I work for Namecheap. We don't own any call centers. We don't even offer phone support. It sounds to me like the domain may have been premium and we accidentally reported it as available. Can you check the whois and see when it was registered?

Namecheap has and never will do this - period.

(the reply link didn't show up before, so I don't know if you saw my response posted right after this)

To be fair, your third edit was only for me. And that was the only comment I was replying to.

As I said, we are working to respond to hundreds of comments across dozens of platforms. I certainly respect your distaste in the more rushed responses in order to address all of the deluge, and that is why we were also simultaneously working on a longer and more thoughtful response that speaks for all of us at the company via that blog post (in a far more emotional tone).

It certainly is difficult to envision the challenges of responding to dozens of responses if you're not in our shoes. But I genuinely thank you for the feedback - and we're noting this (as well as the feedback all have been sent to date; a lot of that was factored into policy adjustment and our blog response) for handling it differently next time.

Let's not throw personal attacks at me (and the tongue-in-cheek "congrats for being promoted to executive!" comment). There's plenty of remorse and there's plenty of acknowledgment of mistakes here. That said, as we acknowledged elsewhere, we're responding to the matter across several different platforms and specifically say we're rushed in trying to get out some basic insights behind what happened and transpired. A more well crafted blog response for all to see (this time from the CEO) has been published to https://blog.namecheap.com/social-engineering-issue/

Namecheap made a response here: https://blog.namecheap.com/social-engineering-issue/

Yes, and this matter has been appropriately handled. We'll be doing a lot more to ensure it doesn't recur.

It's in the works. We're aware of the request.

Sure it does. People in positions like this are required to learn. If they repeat serious mistakes like this, they're not the right fit for the job.

I'm aware. This is an isolated comment about other security mechanisms that are in place for the user (not for the support staff).

skj, there's a lot more to policy and procedure than just human intervention. We're fully aware of this valid concern and are committed to security on both human and technical sides.

We're always keeping tabs on what's going on - it's called taking care of our customers and making sure we learn from our mistakes.

This isn't new behavior for us. I've been at this since 2009.

Doh.

Thanks for edit2 :) I see us having used the word "mistake" many times here! But yes, we apologize that this happened as well.

OpenDomain -

We have apologized, admitted mistakes, and made tremendous internal change to move on for the better. We would not do that or even post here if we didn't care.

Yes, learning experiences are had when things happen like this. We look to the future, not to the past, to ensure the same mistakes do not recur.

^^ we'll take it. We've been responding for the last 1+ hour to things in real time across several social networks, so we're a little rushed. But thanks for the role play :)

Namecheap has security notifications that inform you of login attempts. https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx...

That's exactly what I'm advocating. Standardization would expose millions of people to policies that can be exploited in time. It's better for all of us not to know.

I know, this is an issue some would disagree with. I do not think it's safe to standardize at all.