I’ve been using Fabulous as one of my trusted domain registrars, thanks to the great work and persona of Mike Robertson, who worked there until a few years ago.
Over the course of several years, I’ve retained Fabulous thanks to their strong domain management back-end, two factor authentication support and overall ability to maintain a pleasant experience.
Currently, an issue with how they handle the nameservers (DNS) of expired domains is baffling me, as it disrupts the normal workflow and positive experience.
I don’t always renew domains before they expire, or on the day of expiration. Sometimes, there are reasons to let domains past their expiration – safely so – to gauge metrics about WHOIS traffic, and see if other parties are interested in letting the domains drop.
Sometimes, I even receive inquiries for domains that have expired a week or two ago; speculators want to buy them before the domains enter an aftermarket such as NameJet.
The current issue in a nutshell: Domains that expired 4 days ago or longer, do not revert to their previous DNS once I renew them.
Fabulous displays a lander with their own ads, indicating that the domain has expired and that the owner can renew it, etc.
However, when I renew those domains, the message of expiration is removed but the domain conveniently retains its advertising banner, pointed to Fabulous.com DNS. The domains are thus being monetized for the benefit of Fabulous, as I don’t have a PPC agreement with them.
So now, I have to manually edit the DNS of every domain that I renew past that 4 day window.
This is not how things should be done, and I have reached out to Fabulous support to gauge their feedback on this matter.
I have found that my expired domains were reverting to original DNS.
It would be interesting to see what support says.
Kosta – Fabulous support said that DNS *should* revert but not in my case. Even for domains I renewed 3 days ago. Unless I go back and edit them, they retain the Fabulous DNS they switched to.
the bigger issue with Fabulous, is they keep losing domains from user accnts. Auto renewals dont get renewed, renewal issues.
This is really troublesome as there is NO other registrar than offers features that Fabulous offers.
FX – I have not experienced such losses.
For now, Fabulous reverted those domains that didn’t restore the original DNS upon renewal. I have not received an official response as to what is going on, yet.