.shop domains

[Randy Jordan]

I recently purchased a .shop domain but can not figure out how to make it work. When I do a whois on my server I get whois: shop.whois-servers.net: No address associated with hostname. Is ther some trick to .shop domains

Thanks
Randy Jordan

[CHC]

Ahem!

I'm sorry Randy but .shop domains are not "real" domains sanctioned by ICANN. They are a figment of the imagination of a company called New.net that decided it would be a cool idea, and their gullible venture capitalists agreed with them, to actually invent some new suffixes like .web, .gmbh and .shop and sell these to unsuspecting customers.

These "domains" are actually sub-sub-domains of the domain name .new.net and so for instance if you thought that you had bought donuts.shop what you really got was donuts.shop.new.net and their absurd little software plugin that you have to be using to "see" your domain strips the .new.net off the domain and lets you see the site as donuts.shop.

The big problem here is that 99.99% of the World's Internet users do not have this plugin and so if 99.99% of your potential customers type in "donuts.shop" it will come back saying page not found.

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, my advice would be to initiate a chargeback on your credit card as imho what new.net are doing is clearly misrepresentation, at best!