Re: RealNames

[digirave]

hello, we are a korean domain company.   anyways we have had a very bad experience with realnames.   first of all i registered the equivalent of "shopping mall" in korean as a korean realnames keyword and after about 6~8 months(i haven't checked how long exactly) realnames just canceled it without even telling us why. after i asked why realnames canceled the domain they said it's to generic. i call that HORRIBLE business practices for a domain(domain-like) service. after asking for my keyword domain or refund back they asked for my understanding... after threatening legal action i finally got a reply "I would be happy to refund you for the unused portion of your subscription" but they couldn't find my account so i'm still waiting for a reply. i don't think that's really fair at their isn't much left in "unused portion" and they sucked 150$(cost of a korean realname domain last year from realnames.com) out of me for a domain i won't be able to use anymore. if you want to check my realnames account, my login is gagadomain@[EMAIL PROTECTED] without the antispam. i think i'm at least entitled to a full refund...   from what i know(not sure but 99% sure from posts on forums i have read) they also canceled the equivalent of "flower shop" in korean. who knows what else realnames will cancel !   i would appreciate an explaination how you think canceling keywords already paid for and in use is acceptable???   another thing is in korea, about 40%~70%(i would guess about 60%) of the DNS servers redirect the domain(i think it was something like auto.search.msn.com) used to forward keywords to Netpia's keyword system here. almost all ADSL, cable modem providers in Korean use Netpia's DNS system. in other words in korea realnames keywords will work only about for 50% of people... probably less because of search engine browser plugins that redirect keywords to their own search system. on my computer realnames keywords don't work because i use ADSL. anyone know the reach of usability of realname keywords in america/europe?   we actually are a realnames keyword reseller using a korean based solution... we don't like accepting keyword registrations because more than half of our keyword customers complain their keywords don't work and are concerned realnames will cancel our customers domains which would of course cause problems for us !   b.t.w. i do think keywords are useful. they are getting quite common place for users to get to large search engines like yahoo in korea. only i don't like the way realnames has treated me as a customer and what i think is a very very stupid "cancel generic term" practice.   have a nice day, Michael Yong Park   ----- Original Message ----- From: KeithTeare To: �ڿ뱸 Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 5:23 AM Subject: RE: RealNames Answers embedded below. Keith >-----Original Message----- >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] >Sent: Sunday, March 17, 2002 5:09 AM >To: Keith Teare >Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Keith Teare >Subject: Re: RealNames >Hi Keith, >I think there is a market for Keywords now. The whole RealNames concept >sounds good on the first look: web navigation without "www" and "dots". >But?I also think the benefit of RealNames is not that big that the average >Internet user would use it. There is no big difference if someone has to type >in (www.)bmxx5.com or bmw x5. See my answers to George Kirikos on this point. Also worth saying that more than 1 million Keywords have already been sold - in 160 countries. Many of these are Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Hindi, etc. DNS doesn't do this well. >Moreover RealNames are too expensive therefore it won't go mainstream and >Internet users won't use it. Maybe it is something for trademark holders but >not for the average webmaster or a speculator (which are important in this >industry (ever sold a keyword on afternic?). >My conclusion: We think we would sell some RealNames keywords but >registrants wouldn't renew it because it won't pay for them. Glad you could sell them. On renewals, we are seeing about 60% renewal rates right now. >Btw. what's going on with xtns and which impact has New.nets Quick! on >RealNames? XTNS contract was terminated by RealNames. It turned out we could not support dot delimited Keywords following a technical change that Microsoft made to the browser. New.Net's plug-in has had more or less no effect. Even the Yahoo! Plug-in has had no effect and they are much bigger than new.net. Generally I think plugins don't work too well. It's what a company does when it has no other plan. We also used to have one pre 1999. Best Keith