Hi there,

First of all we are sorry to have to post that in English, but it´s important to us to bring our point across and since we are not native Swedish guys it would be really hard to do so in Swedish ;) :). So we apologize to the administrators and mods of this board - in case it´s not liked to write in English here, but we feel it´s important for your members as well as ourselves to state some things clear. If it´s totally forbidden to write in English, Moderators/Admins, please let me know so I will have that text translated.

We were notified that in this forum it is asked/questioned wether catch.info would be a clone of snapback.se:
Now to state that clear: Catch.info is NOT ASSOCIATED IN ANY WAY to snapback.se.

The only thing we got in common is that we provide a similar service (allthough we believe we differ a lot at success rates ;)).

Our Service is live only a few weeks, so the drop today has been the first, that we tried to catch domains for customers and we can proudly say, that our success rate in this drop is > 90%. All of the domains backordered with us had been backordered with snapback as well, so I guess you understand, why we believe that we differ in success rates... ;)

Thanks for taking the time reading here. If you got any questions on that matter or any other, I would be happy to answer those.

NOTE: I would prefer you asking in English if possible, simply because I would be better able to get the meaning of your questions :)

best regards,
Al, Catch.info

I don’t mean do distrust you, and of course one who is innocent shouldn’t have to prove that, but can you (and this of course has been the issue discussed with snapback.se) tell us a little bit about your service and organization?

For example, who’s behind the company ? Where are you based? Do you haven open bids? How can you say you’re the leading service after a few weeks and 1 drop? Competition with a crippled snapback.se maybe isn’t that hard?

Is it just a coincidence that you start your service (according to yourself) at the exact same time as questions’ regarding snapback.se has been raised?

You use Ulrich Internetmarketing for registering .se domains?
Can you tell me a little bit about them, I could not find much on Google, and has no insight into the industry.

First of all thank you for asking in English :)

Concerning your questions:

1) Our service is based on a cooperation of several Austrian companies (whereof Ulrich Internetmarketing is one of those) that are based in the ecommerce market for quite some time now.

2) I don´t know what you exactly mean by "do you haven open bids"? Could you please explain what exactly you are meaning by that? :) In case you mean wether we accept unfunded bids, then the answer is no. Any credits given to us are of course refundable, but we are only trying to snap domains that are bid on by a credited account.

3) Well we deciding a few weeks ago to make our snap service public doesn´t mean we didn´t snap .se domains before ;) The difference now is just, that we provide that service now to public. So we snaped already when snapback.se had not been crippled - as you say.

4) Yes it´s just a coincidence. Probably a bad time for us to start, but sincerely we wouldn´t have even noticed questions having arised concerning snapback.se if we wouldn´t have been told by a swedish customer at first (as mentioned we are not Swedish native)

5) Why you couldn´t find much about Ulrich Internet Marketing on Google is because it´s a company not doing many public Services - except now - among a few other companies of the cooperation - that snapservice.

As mentioned we just started and therefor we don´t yet have many customers but some are also reading in here obviously (since we have been notified) so they might wanna give their own opinion on the service we provide - but that´s up to them :)

best regards, Al :)

P.S. As a sitenote: We are currently facing massive Server attacks by someone we didn´t find out yet. So please don´t associate that to any problems snapback.se might have (?) in case our servers are not accessible the next hours for some time.

P.P.S. We once already posted in this forum with a short explanation about our service and stuff, but it was deleted for being advertisement, which we understand. But on the other hand we meant by that post as well to give some information beforehand. So I will be happy to answer any further questions and hope the forum administration won´t take that for being advertisement :)

By open I think he means that you reveal to identity of the bidders. That was one of the problems snapback.se had/have. Since they don't reveal that information we can't know if there are real bids or if the bids are made by them.

Thanks for the clarification, aquastorm. Now I got it :)

Well in fact we believed that to be rather more a service to the customer than a problem, since I guess not everyone would be fine with being publicated on snaping domains?

But I get your point. Basically there doesn´t exist a real reason against publicating the bidders I guess, except for the bidders themselves (in case they don´t want us to do so). So that leads us to a dilemma: Of course we could integrate a function where bidders can authorize us to publicate their name on bidding history, but what if most of the bidders don´t authorize us (which I believe would happen) since they don´t wanna be publicated? I mean that would again lead to mostly anonymous bids and again to the accusation our bids wouldn´t be real... and we are not the type of guys that act against our customers wishes just for us not having to deal with such accusations (which are simply wrong, but understandable)...

I mean I know we don´t do such kinda things, but I get the point - how would you know?

I believe the only reasonable way out of that dilemma will be to give it some time, so that the one or other customer will review us and people have, so to say, an independant point of view on us.

Nevertheless I welcome and will pass on any proposals how to solve the dilemma mentioned above so that catch.info works to your satisfaction. :) So if you got any idea on how to solve, just shot :)

Making a public list over bidders whenever the bidding is done, is easy.
I'm not talking about the technical part, but a option in the "Control panel" where you are asked something like:
"I accept that my username or userid is beigin published as bidder on a domain.".

By doing above, you display bidders towards the public, but only with customers approval.

eliasson, thx for the input. We are discussing that right now. Should probably be implemented within a few weeks. Personally I am no tech, but as far as I understood in the discussion, that implementation shouldn´t be hard to from the tech point of view.

Besides of that for those who had a look on the recent bids on our site saw that there haven´t by far been that many or that high bids as e.g. on snapback... so if we would do fake bids, why would we tolerate such a bad pr so to say? Correct, because we don´t do fake bids :)

Here is an update on our performance on the last drop in august:

Our success rate has been bigger than 90% while all of the domains backordered with us had been challenged by at least another backorder service (just as information - since if we would have 90% on not challenged domains it wouldn´t be much of a success, while as all of them have challenged I guess we profe to be capabale of snaping the names you want).

Best regards, al

As long there is a discussion here, I would like to ask you how many registrars are you using or do you as a registrar snap the domains for the customers?

well that is internal information, sorry...

what I can tell you is that our queues obviously last to give good enough performance...


__________________________________________________ __________________________________________
ADDON: Ouch I just saw that we already publicated our performance from august. Please apologize that double post.

Al,
I think you've gotten the wrong idea of Webmaster Network, as a forum.
The purpose is not to in any way promote your own web pages (incl. services) nor possible subsidiary, except in the trade subforums, but still you're promoting your company.

Anyway; No, that implementation is not difficult to apply.

eliasson in fact I only saw your proposal late - so to say - today... even though I have been in WN.se a few times recently I never checked in this thread but rather trying to train my swedish by reading...

Now since I saw it and I felt I should answer you as a matter of politeness, which would have obviously lead to this thread being top again I thought it would make sense to publicate within the same post our success rate rather than doing so some time and toping the thread again, just for publicating our results...

anway anything is answered so far anyway, so I won´t post in this thread any more unless there is any question asked again or any proposal given for not topping it again.

best regards, al

How do you comment the issue presented in Snapback-thread, where the information released from .SE clearly state that registers working directly with service like Snapback and yours are violating the agreement with .SE ?

Terabyte, what exactly are you refering to? I read through that thread, but obviously my Swedish doesn´t last to get all of it or find the post you are referring to.

What I can tell you is that neither us nor any one associated with us did receive any notifications by nic.se stating that we would be violating any agreement?

best regards, al

Well you can red the letter that was sent to all registrars and also maybe comment, give your thoughts, on the highlighted part of it:

Simply put, .nic.se considers that the service offered by snapback.se is a breach of contract plain and simple and has therefore warned any registrars involved in with those activities. One registrar has been banned permanently, in part for association with snapback.se.

Edit: typo

Är detta verkligen relevant för catch.info. Som jag förstår det så är de 1 ombud som snappar precis som vilket ombud som helst. Istälet för fasta priser så styrs priset av efterfrågan via bud. IIS förbjuder väl ändå inte det i sin heliga allsmäktighet. Eller ?

Väldigt suspekt med ett "företag" som inte har någon som helt information om företaget eller ens kontaktuppgifter på hemsidan. Inte ens i ToS står det vilken som är den juridiska motparten. Det enda som nämns är i about och det är Ulrich Internetmarketing.

Håller med om detta. Dåligt.

Thx for quoting terabyte and thx for declaring autosvar. Well all I can say is that I personally hadn´t been aware of that fact (but then I´m just a promo guy so to say ;) :)) - I will discuss that with the others behind catch.info and will post a statement as soon as this is done. In case nic.se would not allow such services any more we might be forced to take it down... would be a pity though.

best regards, al

As a large domain owner in sweden i have to try this as well, have an account and in a few weeks i will let you know the result!

Alltså ju mer jag söker så blir varningslamporna bara fler och fler. Företaget finns inte, har ingen företagsinformation på sin hemsida, inga kontaktvägar, inga spår på Google mer än WN och SEO-forum - helt enkelt ingen information av värde eller historik att komma med. Tittar man dessutom på deras "snappade" domäner så ser man att registranten verkar vara en person eller möjligtvis en enskild firma med en persons namn. Exempel här.

Kollar man upp adressen som är angiven till nic.se så går den till en lägenhet, telefonnumren finns inte (kan vara hemliga men sifferserien är suspekt).

As mentioned several times I sometimes get the sense when reading swedish texts, sometimes I don´t - I ´m sorry this time I didn´t get the meaning of what you wrote?

As far as I can see you posted a link to a personal handle at nic.se of mine? But I am sorry I didn´t get the sense additional to that or why you did so? Since I understand the word "suspekt" I guess you are some kinda suspicious?
In case I am right about that I can offer you, since you know my personal name anway, you might wanna do a google search on me as a person to see how long I´m into that business and wether there exist complaints about me (which I doubt)...
Alternatively you might ask any german speaking domainer you know wether he/she could give you a review of me as a person, I guess chances shouldn´t be too bad he/she would know me and I guess/hope there shouldn´t be anything he/she would complain about.

But besides of that I guess you interprete catch.info the wrong way (if I got that correctly?): It´s not one of my personal projects or a company of mine but rather more a cooperation of several companies, where one of my companies is a part of while my job in that cooperation is mostly to promote/get in contact with native domainers.

Finally luckily there do already exist some swedish domainers which are already customers of us or testing us, so I hope there will be soon some reviews in here, which are more trustable than my words - a person you don´t know yet. :)

Here is the promised update on wether we will be able to continue our service: I´m happy to announce that I´ve been informed that we are allowed to continue our service.

So I am not totally sure what exactly snapback did do, but it seems as it wouldn´t only have been the backorder service (which btw are other companies as e.g. binero doing as well without problems as far as I know)...

best regards, al :)

There's nothing wrong with providing snapback for released .se domain names. The thing that was wrong with snapback.se was the unfair cooperation of several registrars/ombud. .SE registrars/ombud are free to provide snapback, granted that they don't warehouse the domain names (register them for themselves, their employees or friends/relatives).

Dont see the point in writing in english really. The service the site claims to provide is 100% targeted to Sweden and people who read and speak swedish unless it's supposed to service a very small amount of customers (hardly). So in short, no information at all about the company behind the web site, the ToS since has no legal counterpart, no contact information at all and the domains provided as reference(?) are registered to you. That, to me, is suspicious and sets of all my alarms. I'm not debating, I'm stating facts.

You've been allowed? From whom? Your boss, parents, nic.se ....

I am afraid you are not stating facts, but are rather interpreting things (wrongly)...

1) In fact the majority of our customers so far are non-swedish. It´s an illusion to assume international domainers would not be interested in .se market. Of course one reason for our customerbase being mostly international is that most of our business contacts are international, still the other is simply international demand/interest...

2) The ToS are Terms of Service nothing more or less. Here is the link to the information you were seeking I guess (legal counterpart):
http://www.catch.info/contact.php

3) About registering firsthand on a handle of ours: That´s based on simple technical/speed issues. We encourage even all of our customers - as you could have/can read in our ToS - to transfer the domains they won to the registrar of their choice.
So in case that makes you suspicous, may I ask you a question: Do you know anyone of our customers who ever said anything like we would not transfer the domains to the winning bidder or that there ever has been any problem with doing so or wether we even did the slightest action that made them believe we would not hand on the domains our customers won?
I guess not.

But to bring it down to a point: Almost everything you say here is mainly a matter of trust. So I can see your point in being reserved on a service you don´t know yet, that´s ok. We don´t exspect everyone to become our customers all of a sudden. I guess it´s simply a matter of time - after some customers/people testing us - as e.g. posse can/will give some independant reviews as announced, you will probably see that there is nothing to be suspicous about us.
If you want to know faster feel free to give my proposal a try and check up on me - as one of the persons involved in catch.info and since you know my name already - by google or by asking any german speaking domainer you know - as mentioned the chances should be good I will be known by your german speaking domainer contacts...

I hope my answer could clearify a few things. :)

best regards, al

sorry, bad wording I guess ;) :)
To put it in other words - I checked back with the guy in charge of nic - matters who told me there had been a conversation beforehand with nic.se that didn´t see a problem in us catching domains.

best regards, al :)

;)

I would like to see some written proof of that; but I guess you will not be able to provide that ....

.... since registrars are not allowed to be involved in domain speculation in any way.

Well you don´t exspect me to publicate privately written conversations, do you?
You might ask nic.se yourself wether what we do is allowed or not, if that´s that important to you, but I am afraid we are not the people to publicate original quotes of private emails or even screenshots or scans, if that is what you are searching for - or in other words we are trustworthy, even though some of you don´t believe so... ;)
So what you are asking is not a matter of ability but a matter of being trustworthy or not...

But what difference would it make to you, anyway? If I would be lying about that, which you seem to mean to imply(?), nic.se would have us stop anyway (together with all other snapservice providers)...

I might quote JonathanS on that question as a representant of binero as it seems, which is providing among other services a similar service as us for a longer time (and therefor should probably be more trustable to the one or other in here):
On that regard, thanks for the public declaration, JonathanS :)


best regards, al :)

Well you are comparing yourselfs to Binero and other services of backorder for Swedish domains, but they do it for a fixed price, while you have an auction of the domains and there is the difference that is relevant to nic.se as I have understood.

Also the answer given by JonathanS is not in you favour, since the service you provide is a cooparation of several registrars ... so I think your interpretation of his answer is skewed.

Snapback aggregated several snapback services. Registrars only working for themselves should not be a problem.

Is this claim correct, catch? Or do you have any other close connection to the registrar(s) you're using for your snapback service?

no - as mentioned before somewhere - we´re a service created by a cooperation of several companies being more or less based in the online business...

no it´s not... it´s what I meant to express by "interpretations" rather than "facts" in my other post...

what we are doing is a simple backorder service here with quite some good performance as we believe... so basically I can´t see the big deal here, nevertheless I will of course keep trying my best to explain arising questions allthough honestly I would prefer if we could take the "trust" - thingy out of discussion for a while, since I believe for those that are suspicious on us, it wouldn´t make a difference anyway no matter whatever I say, so only experience and time may teach that we are trustworthy people.... :)

best regards, al

Ok. So you're just using one (1) registrar for your snapback service then? Without any professional/personal connection to this one (1) registrar? You're thereby offering the exact same success rate as all other snapback service providers, though with an auction approach.

well our success rate has been >90% in the last drop (on the domains backordered with us)... know-how is the real valuable resource...

if you read through the thread, please have a look on what happens here. There is more or less 2 things we are critisized for and asked justification for

1) being new and therefor "suspect"/not to be trusted

2) having good performance and not being willing to publicate the complete way how we manage to be good performing.



Facts are:


1) None of our customers did post anything that would/should make someone suspicious - since we simply do serious business.

2) Of course I cannot and will not post internal information on how we do exactly - since that would equal to a how-to/tutorial on how to copy our system and performance for everyone.

3) Of course I won´t post privately written communications just to "proof" something - that would be unserious, which we are simply not.

4) Nic.se doesn´t have a problem with what we are doing (as it doesn´t with other snapservices that operate within the given limitations as we do).



So don´t get me wrong, I am willing to answer all queries that are arising, but can´t and won´t do anything as given in 2) and 3).

best regards, al :)

No, you're not. I've asked you the same questions twice, without any answers. And these are questions that doesn't require any revealing of "internal information" or "privately written communications". Do you cooperate with multiple registrars? Do you have any professional/personal connection to the registrar(s) that you're cooperating with?

The success rate really doesn't state all that much. It really only depends on how "interesting" the released domains are (ie, the number of registrars that are competing for the domains). I'm pretty sure you guys aren't the only once with know-how when it comes to .se domains ;)

All of the domains backordered with us had been backordered with at least one other service (of those where one can view wether there exists a backorder)... anyway doesn´t really make sense discussing that... time will tell...

hopefully ;) :) In fact I didn´t mean to express that others wouldn´t have know-how but rather explain that it´s not all about what some of you obviously suspect us to do - probably based on our success rate since there wouldn´t exist any other reason I can think of - but rather more about know how, while of course I won´t give a tutorial here on how to copy... :)

About the privately written communications: That hadn´t been adressed to you but mentioned since I was asked to do so when reading above...

About the registrar thingy, I already gave you the answer when reading a little between the lines... so yes I am... once again, we are operating within nic.se limitations... and no, the claim above is not correct... ;)

best regards, al :)

I don´t really understand the problem. If their service works, then I don´t care if they use multiple registrars. If it doesn´t, we will sure hear about it here on the WN forum.

If someone doesn´t think that the service is following the rules of Nic.se, I suggest that that person (if he bother) send a complain to nic.se and let them handle it themself.

Or am I missing something? :)

Well if you only work with marketing, then I have to admit that you are like a sleek polititian - basically avoiding answering questions, you don't want to answee, in a very smooth way.

The qestions by JonathanS have not been answered and you probably will not answer them, because it would probably reveal cooparation with several registrar and it is not allowed.

Can we understand this as they are several registrars??

I don't either believe that you have been foward with nic.se and got clearence that everything is allowed if you cooperate with several registrars, but once again you will never admit it on an open forum.

well if catch is here to market his service, then I think it is allowed to ask him questions ... or? And following more questions are asked since he is nicely avoiding answerig some of them ...

Otherwise it merely would be just an advertisement and not a discussion thread ...