UPDATE Monday: Enom emailed me to advise that only a ‘several’ registrars provided Enom contact data. I went to the list again just now and counted 50 registrars with an Enom number. Enom adds that an entity from New York is responsible for 396 accreditations.
ORIGINAL POST: Open registration for the .EU top level domain name begins on April 7. Accredited registrars were listed here. Approximately 400 registrars give Bellevue Washington (Note Update Above) as their location and provide their telephone number as that of eNom, a registrar in Bellevue. Eyebrows were raised because at 10,000 euros per accreditation, those are hefty fees.
One registrar has circulated a memo (that does not identify eNom) that states:
“. . . our preliminary investigation indicates that this may be an attempt to register valuable brands, generic names and then profit by reselling them back to clients at a high premium or monetize the high traffic names for pay per click revenue.”
Another registrar, Nick Wood of Com Laude said, “This alliance is not doing anything wrong in rushing for attractive names as long as they have genuine end-clients. [However] there is a provision in the agreement that all accredited registrars sign with EURid, the registry operator, that specifically forbids warehousing but does EURid have the appetite to enforce it?”
At first glance, one wonders if the 4 million euro investment could be re-couped if only retail registration is envisioned.
My emails to eNom asking them to comment on this have not been returned as of yet. (Note Update Above).