The company has three weeks to pay up and address issues.
ICANN sent a breach notice (pdf) to Epik yesterday, giving it until June 22 to fix a number of problems.
The official reason for the breach notice is the company’s failure to pay its accreditation fees. But it also cites numerous complaints by domain registrants that their domains are not being renewed when they pay for renewals. ICANN says Epik has been responsive to its inquiries about the expired domains, but problems persist.
Yesterday, it became apparent why many renewals weren’t going through: Epik is behind on payments to many suppliers, including registries and reseller platforms. Some of these appear to be blocking new transactions.
Epik entered into an agreement this week to sell most of its assets, including the registrar and hosting business. The deal would pay off the company’s trade debt. But one person Epik owes money to has asked a court to issue a Temporary Restraining Order blocking the deal. The judge will hear arguments today.
They owe me money. They have sold my domains out of my account under my nose. I’ll never see a dime. Taking renewal money and not renewing the domain name knowing is fraud. The executive management should be charged with embezzlement and fraud charges.
I will be filing a complaint with the FBI today hopefully to start an investigation.
Glad I transferred out of Epik at the end of last year.
Now that ICANN has sent the breach notice, the end of Epik is likely only a few months away.
Are criminal charges coming next?
Who is going to jail?
I have to now undergo a huge expense to move everything away from them, Bryce has been hostile to domainers. Wrong guy to have taken over. Rob though, should have been better at running that business. Epik is toast
Also consider the WA Attorney General…. https://www.atg.wa.gov/file-complaint
How do you know they did this , were they renewed , what were the specifics of the names, high value, liquid etc?
The lawsuit includes reports from multiple people who paid for renewals but the renewals were not done.
Also look on TrustPilot, Twitter, NamePros, etc.
There are almost countless reports of Epik not being able to process registrations and renewals in a timely manner, if at all.
There are also reports of people paying for renewals, then the domains expiring.
Brad
I know because I paid $300 in renewals and they until this day have not been renewed. I had to pay to transfer away so I wouldn’t lose them.
Well it’s about damn time ICANN did something about Epik.
I still have domains, not as many as a month ago and I don’t know if I have the saint on my face, the 52 domains renewed in May have taken several days to do and have them already in the year 2024.
Now I am missing 5 renewed domains so that they are in the year 2024.