ICANN Suspends Registrar ALL New Registrations & Transfers Blocked

Under the 2009 RAA ICANN was given a number of new “powers” to wield against registrars that do not comply with the RAA and ICANN policy.

One of the new “tools”, to borrow Compliance’s terminology, is the ability to suspend a registrar. Effectively what this means is that instead of sending warnings (breach notices) and more warnings and then terminating the registrar completely, ICANN can put them “on hold” for a period of time. If the registrar is able to resolve the issues then the suspension can be lifted.

It looks like Cheapies.com are the first is the second registrar to be suspended by ICANN under the 2009 RAA.

In a letter sent to them earlier today ICANN’s Compliance team has informed Cheapies.com that they are blocked from processing any new domain name registrations or transfers.

Cheapies.com triggered the suspension as they’d already had two strikes so far this year, making this one the third.

This time round they’d failed to comply with the domain transfer policy and still weren’t displaying a link to the Registrants Rights & Responsibilities page on the ICANN site. They’ve also failed to keep their contact details current with ICANN, so ICANN has been having problems communicating with them!

The letter doesn’t pull many punches. While it might be written in very formal legalistic language you get the clear impression that ICANN are not impressed with matters:

ICANN also considered that during the complaint process, (1) Cheapies.com does not
respond to ICANN inquiries until the deadline of third compliance notices, (2) ICANN staff is
not able to contact Cheapies.com via telephone during business hours, and (3)
Cheapies.com does not return voice messages left by ICANN staff

Under the terms of the suspension the registrar has to display a prominent notice on their website:

No new registrations or inbound transfers will be accepted from 4 October 2013 through 2 January 2014

And if they haven’t resolved all the outstanding issues and shown ICANN that they’ve got their house in order two weeks before the January deadline then their accreditation could be at risk.

Here’s the full letter:

serad-to-jeske-13sep13-en